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| Down the Royal Mile |
The first thing Bonnie and I did on the
Sunday was take a walking tour of Edinburgh. The tour company is called
Sandeman’s and operate all over Europe. They were a free tour option and in 2.5
hours were able to speak about the history of the city and some of the history
of the country. Our tour guide Sabela was wonderful and she really made the
history of the city come to life.
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| At a close |
The tour started with the history of the
country from a geological perspective before getting into the people that have
influenced Scotland. This part of the tour explains the formation of the
Highlands that happened because Scotland collided into England. It also talks
about the 7 hills of Edinburgh, most of which are dead volcanoes.
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| The prison |
This portion of the tour also gave us the
history of the people who have lived in Scotland. It started with the Picts,
who were the reason that the Romans didn’t stay very long and built Hadrian’s
Wall to the south. These picts painted themselves blue and fought in
practically nothing, their descendants still claim residence in Scotland and
apparently can be identified because they will forgo the warm clothing as
winter draws in. Then north of Hadrian’s wall the country belonged to the
Picts, the Scots, Vikings and the Irish, all of which eventually became united
under a common enemy to the south.
Skip forward many years Scotland is then
left without a monarch and so they go to England asking Edward I what they
should do. He then picks a fairly weak leader who will be his puppet. However
from this the people of Scotland are not happy, and up come their great hero
William Wallace (Braveheart). I will go into more detail about him when I talk
about my visit to Stirling Castle, the area where he won the battle of Stirling
Bridge. After William Wallace the next person to take charge of the country was
Robert the Bruce and he was the true hero that saved Scotland from English
rule.
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| Edinburgh castle |
The tour starts on the Royal Mile, so
called because the street is capped at one end by Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood
Palace at the other end. This road also serves at the spine of Old Town
Edinburgh. With numerous small closes running down either side
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| St. Giles |
We found ourselves outside of St. Giles
Cathedral (which really can’t hold cathedral status because it doesn’t have a
bishop, but the name has stuck) and heard the story of the battle of the
stools. Which a hilariously Scottish story of a woman who was sitting in mass
when she noticed that the service was different and from a new religion that
she got so angry she picked up her stool and hit the priest in the head with
it. The rest of the congregation then followed her move and nearly killed the
priest.
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| Merat Cross Pediment |
At the corner of St. Giles there is also
the Mercat Cross pediment, which is where the new from England would be
announced 3 days later (the time it took to get from London to Edinburgh). Also
to preserve that tradition when Prince George was born the news was announced
from there 3 days after his birth.
One of the most common sights in all of
Scotland and at the top of the Mercat Cross is a unicorn with chains around its
feet and a crown around its neck. This is because the national animal of
Scotland is the Unicorn – proving to not let drunk Scots vote on their own
national animal. The choice of this animal also draws back to their history of
being untameable and wild. The crown and chains represent the English who put
it on all the unicorns to show that they could capture the Scots, however the
fact that they remain on the unicorns show that it does take all that strength
to keep the Scots.
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| Skyscraper |
Edinburgh is also one of the first cities
to have skyscrapers. Not in the sense of New York or London, but that the
houses that were originally built were called skyscrapers. This is because the
city was walled in from the Castle down to World’s
End. So having nowhere to build but up,
which is what the people did.
Near the Mercat Cross on the ground is a
heart. This heart is a little bit odd, that is because it has nothing to do
with love or something good. It is known as the Heart of Midlothian and marks
the place where public executions used to take place. Currently it is the only
place in Edinburgh where it is ok to spit on the ground, apparently you can
tell locals from tourists by how they react to the heart. Locals will spit and
avoid the heart, where tourists think it is something cute and pose beside.
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| Heart of Midlothian |
From there we walked up towards the castle
and got a good view down the Royal Mile. We also got a story about the city in
medieval era. When the city had been walled in the waste was just tossed out of
windows. There had been some much of it and it was constant they told people
that they could only toss it at night. When they were tossing it they would
shout out of the windows: “Gardyloo” which comes from the French: “Garde a
l’eau” meaning ‘beware of the water.’ So people out at night after a few drinks
would be walking in between the narrow alleyways and hear that being shouted so
they would look up just in time to see the waste hit their face. This they say
gave birth to phrase: “SHITFACED” for being drunk.
One of the most significant things about
Edinburgh is that it is the literary capital of the world. This is because the
city was home or the birthplace of some of the world’s most famous writers. The
most celebrated in the city is Sir Walter Scott, but there are quite a few
others as well. Sir Walter Scott does have his own monument and it is the
world’s largest monument dedicated to an author. The other famous authors that
have ties to Edinburgh are Arthur Conan Doyle who was born in the city, Irvine
Welsh, J.M. Barrie and probably the most famous J.K Rowling who wrote Harry
Potter in Edinburgh and currently lives in the city.
In fact there is a lot of reference to
things in Edinburgh that are seen in the Harry Potter series. There is a road
that does run on a diagonal, and most likely inspired Diagon Alley. There is
the George Heriot School, which has four houses and looks like a palace,
obviously inspiring Hogwarts. Finally there is a cemetery that has graves with
the names Moody, McGonagall and there is one to Tom Riddell (which is Lord
Voldemort’s real name).
Before we finished the tour we saw what is
Edinburgh’s most famous statue. That of Bobby the skye terrier. It is a dog
that was made a citizen of Edinburgh because of what he stood for. He was the
dog of a night police officer, who when he passed away Bobby would sit on top
of his grave everyday and he did that for 14 years until his own passing.
This has been a very wordy blog post, but I
did learn a lot about the city and its history on the walking tour. I wanted to
share some of that knowledge. There is still more that I have to say and it
will appear in the next few blogs.
