Arthur's Seat (For Real This Time)

The highest point in the middle there? That is Arthur's Seat.

After the failed attempt to climb Arthur's Seat with Sarah, Vicki and I set out on one of the nicest days we had all summer, at midday, to have lunch on the top of Arthur's Seat. There may have been some sunburns as a consequence. 

Above: not-Arthur's Seat

From Wikipedia:

Arthur's Seat is the main peak of the group of hills in Scotland which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue of its bold design". It is situated in the center of the city of Edinburgh, about a mile to the east of Edinburgh Castle. The hill itself rises above the city to a height of 250.5 m (822 ft), provides excellent panoramic views of the city, is relatively easy to climb, and is popular for hillwalking. Though it can be climbed from almost any direction, the easiest and simplest ascent is from the east, where a grassy slope rises above Dunsapie Loch.(x)

Arthur's Seat is also often mentioned as one of the possible locations for Camelot.

I don't officially know which route up the hill Vicki and I took, all I know is that there were a lot of stairs, and I (predictably) forgot my inhailer. But it was fine, as it turns out Vicki is a disgrace to the Canadian military and thus, in worse shape than me, so even though I had an asthma attack halfway up the hill, Vicki still needed to stop more than I did. 

(when she flopped down at the top of the hill, I told her my parents would have abandoned her in the mountains as a child)

The stairs themselves were very cold and cool looking, though you definitely had to keep an eye on where your feet were going. 

Below the cut is more photos of the hike up (which included, as promised, some amazing views of the city) and some random fun facts about Arthur's Seat.


 (all facts shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia)

Fact: In 1836 five boys hunting for rabbits found a set of 17 miniature coffins containing small wooden figures in a cave on the crags of Arthur's Seat. The purpose has remained a mystery ever since the discovery. A strong contemporary belief was that they were made for witchcraft, though more recently it has been suggested that they might be connected with the murders committed by Burke and Hare in 1828. There were 16 known victims of the serial-killers plus the first person sold "to the doctors", namely a man who had died of natural causes. However, the murder victims were primarily female, while the eight surviving figures are male. Alternatively, the coffins may have represented the 16 bodies sold to the doctors, plus that of the final victim who remained unburied at the time of the duo's arrest, but was, as a destitute beggar, very likely dissected in any case. The surviving coffins are now displayed in Edinburgh's Royal Museum.

Fact: Hill fort defences are visible round the main massif of Arthur's Seat at Dunsapie Hill and above Samson's Ribs, in the latter cases certainly of prehistoric date. These forts are likely to have been centres of power of the Votadini, who were the subject of the poem Y Gododdin which is thought to have been written about 600 AD in their hillfort on Edinburgh castle crag. Two stony banks on the east side of the hill represent the remains of an Iron Age hill-fort and a series of cultivation terraces are obvious above the road just beyond and best viewed from Duddingston.

Fact: Many claim that its name is derived from the myriad legends pertaining to King Arthur, such as the reference in Y Gododdin. Some support for this theory may be provided by the fact that several other hilltop and mountaintop features in Britain bear the same or similar names, such as the peak of Ben Arthur (The Cobbler) in the western highlands, sometimes known as Arthur's Seat, and Arthur's Chair on the ridge called Stone Arthur in the Cumbrian lake district. There is no traditional Scottish Gaelic name for Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh but William Maitland proposed that the name was a corruption of Àrd-na-Said, implying the "Height of Arrows", which over the years became Arthur's Seat (perhaps via "Archer's Seat"). Alternatively, John Milne's proposed etymology of Àrd-thir Suidhe meaning "place on high ground" uncomfortably requires the transposition of the name elements.

Fact: Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags adjoining it helped form the ideas of modern geology as it is currently understood. It was in these areas that James Hutton observed that the deposition of the sedimentary and formation of the igneous rocks must have occurred at different ages and in different ways than the thinking of that time said they did. It is possible to see a particular area known as Hutton’s Section in the Salisbury Crags where the magma forced its way through the sedimentary rocks above it to form the dolerite sills that can be seen in the Section.

Fact: Tradition has it that it was at the foot of Arthur's Seat, covered by the forest of Drumselch, that Scotland's 12th-century king David I encountered a stag while out hunting. Having fallen from his horse and about to be gored, he had a vision of a cross appearing between the animal's antlers, before it inexplicably turned away, leaving him unharmed. David, believing his life had been spared through divine intervention, founded Holyrood Abbey on the spot. The burgh arms of the Canongate display the head of the stag with the cross framed by its antlers.

Fact: The slopes of the hill facing Holyrood are where young girls in Edinburgh traditionally bathe their faces in the dew on May Day to make themselves more beautiful. The poem 'Auld Reekie', written by Robert Fergusson in 1773, contains the lines:

    On May-day, in a fairy ring,
    We've seen them round St Anthon's spring,
    Frae grass the cauler dew draps wring
    To weet their een,
    And water clear as crystal spring
    To synd them clean 

 

And then we reached the top...

The top of the hill was a) very rocky and b) very crowded, so we went back down the hill a bit to a more grassy and quiet section to have our lunch.

Above: view down on the stairs we walked up - they zig-zag up the hill before curling around the back. 

Such a gorgeous day - it is really cold here now (in August for frig's sake) so I am feeling very nostalgic to the very short warm period we had this summer - they aren't kidding about Scotland having very short summers.