What a Day!

A long entry for today, but bear with me: it is a day to remember - and to think it began in confused disappointment.

My plan for the day had been to wake up at 8:30, shower, eat, &c, and meet a group of students at 9:30 to walk the seven hills of Edinburgh. So when I arose at 10:30 to see that my phone alarm had been on vibrate I was a little dismayed. So I showered, &c, sulking that I now 'had nothing to do.'

Yet I could not accept defeat. After all, there's always something to do when you're in a new country and have only been in one city for 99% of your stay there. So I went online and looked up bus schedules, hopped on a bus, and hopped off again after about thirty minutes. It was a pretty place that looked 'country-ish' enough to be a change from the city. Turns out it was Roslin.

And what a day I had there! I originally only got off because I saw a sign that said "Roslin Glen Nature Park" and figured I could walk around. Pshhh. Turns out there is a chapel there built in 1446 - Rosslyn Chapel - that was commissioned by a Scottish noble back in the day. It's had quite the history and is currently undergoing extensive restoration. This put a damper on a lot of photo-ops but I still took a lot of great shots. It's made of sandstone, and age has turned it all different shades of brown, pink, red, and orange. All around it were old graves and memorials to duchesses and earls and such. Among its historical significances are a visit by Dorothy Wordsworth (Willy's wife), a stabling of horses there once by Cromwell, and a seizure/destruction of property during the reformation.

It was covered inside with intricate carvings and masonry, supported by tall pillars, and covered by an all-stone barrel-style roof. Flying buttresses and everything. No photos allowed inside, though, so I'll just have to remember.

After a twenty minute talk about the chapel I embarked to Rosslyn Castle - or the ruins of, rather. It's a private residence but you can easily walk all around it. Truthfully there's not a lot left, but what is left is commanding. I took an absurdly dangerous route down a muddy, winding hillside path (wearing my Sperrys, which were not designed with Scotland in mind), and emerged from thorny thickets and moss-grown trees onto an old, stony pathway leading to a massive arch built in between two cliffs that had a pathway on top. The castle is very much ruined. Only a few large walls are left standing, and an eerie quality of time-wornedness (<-- invented word) pervades the whole place. It was a place grown up and piled upon itself - here a bit of ancient sandstone breaking through a verdant tapestry of vines and moss, there the crumbling remnants of an arch found only half-formed, reaching over a space where centuries have covered up the path that once lay below.

Not to bore my non-English-Literature-keen reader base, but the whole experience rang of Ozymandias to me, a la "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! / Nothing beside remains" &c &c...

I found out after I'd been there that apparently the last scenes of the DaVinci Code were filmed in the very spot, as well as at the Chapel. That's called retroactive tourism, I imagine.

From the castle I meandered rather aimlessly (having no plan seemed to be working at this point - after all, if you don't know where you're going, everywhere you end up is a surprise!). I found my way to an abandoned gunpowder mill by following a small river upstream. Not much remains, but you can clearly see where the great wheel must have stood between a pair of central walls, cut apart by a deep gully that once connected with the river. Apparently it supplied gunpowder to British troops fighting Napoleon in the 1800s, as well as soldiers in WWI & II.

From there I found my way to a sheep pasture at a place called Kirkettle Farm. I had been walking uphill a while and BAM I had another shocking experience reminiscent of Arthur's seat, when upon turning around I realized the scenery behind me was astounding: snow-capped hills rolling away under a uniformly blue and white patchwork of sky reaching to the horizon.

I turned around and headed back the way I'd come when it became apparent I was trekking into the anonymously wide-open and muddy Scottish countryside, away from civilization. Yet my day was not done! The walk back was just as interesting as the one I'd had there. All along the pathway there were remnants of older 'somethings' - rather eerie, again, but in a grand way. Inexplicably I would pass a great height of crumbling brickwork embedded into the face of a ravine with odd branches of rusted metal winding out, or else simply a few dozen cobblestones set into the forest path, though none had come before and none followed.

I hiked back up to town and ordered a hearty supper at The 'Original' Roslin Hotel (it's apparent competitor - simply the 'Roslin Hotel' - stands across the street). I'd had a coffee there that morning upon arriving, and the atmosphere was very quiet and relaxing. The food was excellent, and once I got talking to the lady who tended the bar, I learned the most extraordinary thing! One of the best things my father ever gave me, I believe, was the confidence and means to begin conversations with complete strangers. All those times you embarrassed me when I was little, Pop, it was clearly for the best. But what did I learn?

Well, apparently I was sitting next to a farmer - a shepherd, to be exact. But not any shepherd. This one's name was John, and he happened to have been the shepherd in charge of caring for a certain sheep named Dolly, the first cloned animal. And here I was having a pint with him. What a day. So as I horsed on with John and the barkeep, I realized that Roslin was in fact the town in which Dolly was cloned. Retroactive tourism strikes again! The critter to the left isn't Dolly, but the resemblance is uncanny...

So I hopped back on the Lothian 15 bus headed for Edinburgh after paying my bill, and wondered what I would have done had I simply accepted the defeat handed to me by an all-too-silent cellphone alarm earlier in the day. I am glad I didn't. Instead, I stood amongst the pillars of a 15th Century chapel, clambered around a castle of comparable age, met a famous farmer, and had the best apple and toffee pie I've ever eaten to boot! That's proactivity for you.

In other news, I had two great nights out this weekend, compared to last weekend's quietude. I went out with the kickboxers to a student union pub/club called Potterow (The Big Cheese), which mixes top 40 kind of songs with cheesy ones. For instance, they played "cotton-eye joe," and to my amazement, no one knew the dance! And here I was swinging my legs around and pantomiming lassos like I was back in the sixth grade. Wales has broken the European market, btw (for those in the dark, I mean a certain drink, not the country). I ordered an entire pitcher after explaining it to the bartender, and shared its glory with others.

Class at noon tomorrow - just two lectures to attend. The picture above is my attempt at a self-timed photograph with the camera balanced on a pile of rocks that had fallen off the castle from above. It was right below the massive arch that supported the main ramp into the castle's courtyard.

O and someone stole my cashmere scarf at some point last night. Buzz... Won't be wearing that out again. Hope everyone at home is doing well!

And one last thing!! Whenever I tell (British) people I go to uni in Pennsylvania, the immediate response, 100% of the time is: "O! UPenn!" which prompts me to explain that, no, Pennsylvania has more than one uni. In fact, I tell them, you couldn't hurl a rugby ball forty feet in Eastern Pennsylvania without hitting a college, or two. They usually respond by saying, "O, so you must go to Penn State?".....but I think there's hope for them yet.