Edinburgh Scotland to Iceland 1 (June 7, 2023)

 

We took an overnight direct flight from Calgary to Edinburgh. The first day was mostly to get over jet lag which we have almost managed today. Yesterday we went to the train station and bought tickets to get us from Edinburgh to Inverness and then from Inverness to Glasgow. The agent was very helpful and saved us money by suggesting that we buy return tickets from Edinburgh to Inverness and then a single ticket from Edinburgh to Glasgow. We don’t need to change trains the day we go to Glasgow and we have an open ticket so we can leave pretty well any time we want to.

The accommodation here is fairly nice. It’s a bit noisy as we have construction right across the road from us and we found out the hard way on the first day that the smoke detector is pretty sensitive. R was cooking when the smoke detector went off and that set off the sirens in the whole building. It brought the lady from the front desk running. We assured her that nothing was going to burn down and I think she was able to stop the fire engines from responding. Since then we have been very careful to have both windows open when we’re cooking.

We have a bedroom / sitting room area with a TV which we don’t use. There is a small, decently equipped, kitchen complete with a small dishwasher and a clothes washer under the counter. We took advantage of the dishwasher last night and did a small load of laundry today when we got back from our bike tour.

The bike tour was fun. We both opted for e-bikes which we didn’t need for most of the ride but there was one significant climb where they certainly paid for themselves. We saw quite a lot of the city and the guide was knowledgeable and a good sport. There were six of us: two from Australia, two from Newark New Jersey USA, and the two of us. We were mostly on bike paths and when we were in traffic it certainly didn’t bother me. What I did find difficult was getting on and off the bike. It had no crossbar but I still had to lean the bike over quite a bit in order to get my leg over. After a while I started with my left foot on the pedal, gave the bike a push and then swung my right leg over the way I used to do when I rode my touring bike. I didn’t do as good a job stopping though and definitely felt uncoordinated as I struggled to get my leg back through the frame.

The other thing I found very awkward was not having my clipless pedals. I’m used to clipping my right foot in, pulling the pedal up to the top of the stroke and then pushing down while I get settled on the saddle. I found myself fluffing around trying to decide whether to push down on a partially raised pedal or to give a mighty push and then try to get the other foot onto its pedal while trying to steer. Fortunately, although I did a fair bit of wobbling, I didn’t end up in the canal as one of the people on our Holland trip did. Our guide for the day told us that we were going to dismount at the first bridge because he had had one person from the US and one person from New Zealand actually miss the corner and end up in the canal. It was a rather tight turn. I had enough trouble negotiating the bedsteads which clearly shows me that I haven’t done enough riding of late. Clumsy as I was getting on and off the bike, once I got riding I was fine. We covered about 45 km and saw a lot of the city.
On this trip we chose not to do the regular tourist things. We didn’t go to see the castle or any museums. We have walked part of the Royal Mile because it is on our route from the Old Town to our apartment hotel.

I have my new carbon fiber ukulele with me and I decided that I should get a sticker for the case. Apparently they don’t do stickers here, or at least, not in any of the souvenir shops I’ve been into. There are a ton of fridge magnets but no stickers and no pins that I’ve seen. I don’t think I’m going to be able to find one because we leave for Inverness tomorrow and I’ve tried about half a dozen shops in our immediate area.

When we arrived at the airport we bought a three-day tram pass and that has turned out not to be a good idea. We have been able to get anywhere we wanted to go by walking or on the bike today. Oh well, we’ll chalk it up to our contribution to the infrastructure of Edinburgh.

Yesterday we climbed up to Arthur’s seat and had lovely views in all directions. Today we cycled up the road to below Arthur’s seat and our guide pointed out that Edinburgh is founded on 7 hills. When we were up there yesterday we noticed a coiled sculpture that looked a little like the Dairy Queen swirl on the top of an ice cream cone. Today we asked about it. He said it was a shopping centre and that the locals call it the ‘jobbie’ i.e. the piece of poop. That was the other thing it reminded us of but we were trying our best to be polite.

The first night we had wraps in a little Turkish place. They were quite tasty. There is a Tesco Express half a block from us and we have made two trips there for provisions. Yesterday we ate all our meals in the hotel. Today we were just a wee bit hungry by 2:30 when we finally got to sit down for the first meal of the day. We’ve been past a little place that sells baked potatoes several times so we decided to stop there for brunch on our way home. I had a potato with chili and jalapenos and R had one with tikka masala. We very much enjoyed them. Tonight we need to eat up the salad and veggies we have left so we can be ready to leave in the morning.

I think it might be just about time to take stock of the food we have and take care of it. I’m not sure when my next entry will be but I’ll try to summarize what we do in Inverness and Glasgow before we join the Ocean Endeavour to sail from Glasgow to Aberdeen and visit the Scottish Isles.

Memories of spring break

Today is the end of spring break for teachers and students herein the public system. It’s been a long time since that mattered to me but this year I find myself thinking back on how much I looked forward to spring break and how the few years that we travelled to the coast to cycle now loom large in the catalogue of holiday memories.

I remember staying later than I meant to at school so a couple of students could finish a project. I remember the growing anticipation as the break approached. I don’t remember exactly how many years we made the trip west with the Elbow Valley Cycle Club but on one of the first trips I remember being in our hotel room in Washington where a few people were playing cards. I was lying back on the bed and I drifted off in the midst of the fun and laughter only to awaken when Richard closed the door as the last of the visitors left. I was always tired when holidays came around.

We did our fair share of cycling in the rain and some trips were wetter than others. Some trips were entirely in Canada and some ventured into the San Juan Islands and onto the Olympic Peninsula in the US. Our starting place was usually Sydney on Vancouver Island. The hotel we stayed in overlooked the sea and many of the rides went along the sea wall. It was always a treat to go to the coast in March, to leave the mounds of snow in Calgary, or if not snow the brown left over from winter, and land in the warm moist air where there were carpets of green. Often the flowers were starting to bloom and sometimes the cherry trees were a riot of blossoms.

We took ferries between various islands and travelled on the lowest level with huge transport trucks for company. We were generally the first off the ferries which gave us a chance to get through the narrow exits and up the hills before the flood of traffic. It is always uphill from a ferry dock and we quickly learned to put our bikes into a low gear on the way down to the ferry so we would be prepared for the climb on the other side.

We ate smoked salmon and Dungeness crab and as much clam chowder as we could hold. I certainly wasn’t going to come from the prairies to the sea coast and eat beef. Often there were grocery stores within walking distance from our hotels and we bought supplies for breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we chose to buy food for dinner as well and stay in our room with an urban picnic rather than eat in a restaurant.

I don’t know what year it was or where we were exactly the day we sat in the sun against the wall of our motel, ate coleslaw, bread, cheese and ham and were entirely content. At home it was snowing but in the fading coastal light we were warm.

Of course memory is a great editor and looking back it all seems idyllic. I have conveniently edited out the times we got soaked through and squelched our way into a shop or fast food joint in order to get warm before going back out to cycle more miles in the rain. I have almost forgotten about the time I caught a cold and felt miserable for most of the trip. Chances are, I will not take trips like these again but when spring break rolls around I can pull up the memories and, in my imagination, sit against that wall in the sun eating bread and cheese and being content with the world.