Category Archives: edinburgh

May 24 2012
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edinburgh

Walking Edinburgh’s Union Canal Tow Path

On Saturday, I crossed part of an interesting walk off my Scotland Bucket List. Leaving from Fountainbridge, I walked 14 miles of the Union Canal getting as far as Broxburn.

Looking at the map, I thought I would have gotten a lot further – at the start of the day, I thought I would make it to Linlithgow without any trouble. The distance was a little deceiving. Things always seem a lot closer on the map.

Unusually for Scotland, the weather stayed fairly dry for the whole day. Most of Edinburgh was inside watching the Scottish Cup Final so I definitely felt like i was doing something different.

Near the start of the walk, around Harrison Park, there were loads of people playing with their kids, running, and walking dogs. Once I got past Hermiston Gait though and crossed over the motorway I would see other walkers very rarely.

There were more cyclists than walkers as I got further out, which is probably what I would do if I wanted to go all the way to the Falkirk wheel along the canal.

The whole thing is a pretty impressive piece of engineering. Its very narrow and shallow in places, but you have loads of bridges and these massive viaducts including a very high one at Slateford that passes over the Water of Leith.

When it was first built in the 1820’s, it was mainly used to haul coal and other freight. The narrow canal boats were pulled along by the current and horse power.

Nowadays, the remaining boats are more recreational. A few people even live on them.

I don’t know if I would be able to do but it seems like a pretty idyllic life – you can choose to berth wherever and if you don’t get on with your neighbours or just want a change of scenery you travel a few miles upstream. People in the UK have some really romantic ideas about their canals, but in reality I don’t think many really take full advantage of them.

Around the 1930’s, the canals fell out of use as freight moved to railways. Cities like Amsterdam have tens of thousands of people living on canal boats, but in the UK its definitely a smaller scale, more rural thing. I saw a fair number of these boats berthed in Ratho but its not on the same scale that you’d see in Europe.

Initially I was hoping to stop their for a bite to eat, but I discover that the Bridge Inn was fully booked up for a wedding.

Before tiring myself out, I managed to cross over a couple more impressive aqueducts, and was able to do some plane and train spotting from the same part of the canal. About a mile and a half outside of Broxburn, the canal goes right underneath the Edinburgh Airport Landing Path, which coincidentally is very near one of the two Edinburgh-Glasgow rail lines.

You can see the Ratho viaduct in the distance, which is also a not too shabby bit of engineering.

By the time I got to Broxburn I was thoroughly wiped so decided to forego the last 10 miles to Linlithgow and catch a bus back to Edinburgh.

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Apr 24 2012
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edinburgh Video

Adopting a kitten in Scotland was one of the best ideas ever.

Its been almost 6 months that we’ve had her. We named her Eva (after the character in Wall-E). I’d just put some catnip on her scratching post and she went right after it. She’s looking at me as I writing this trying to telepathically convince me that she should get some more. She’s almost a year old now – we got her from the cat shelter in Leith at the end of october and love her to bits… even if she wakes us up way too early on weekends. Also, her whiskers are really long and floppy now – it makes her look like some kind of wizard.

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Apr 09 2012
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edinburgh

Oddfellows Hall – Edinburgh

I often walk by this building on my way to the gym in Quartermile, and was a little perplexed by the strange, but incredibly detailed carving that stands out even in a city known for fine masonry. Plus, the name was begging for a more exhaustive Google search to quench my curiousity.

Of course there are fraternal societies in Canada that I am a little aware of,  but I never really understood their meaning growing up and was put off by the occasional pomp and ceremony.

I now know that term Oddfellows comes from medieval times and the modern group developed from early guilds: in small communities men coming from an ‘odd’ assortment of trades would form these societies for an early form of social support. Members would lend a helping hand to each other in times of sickness or financial hardship.

Normally, guilds were made up of the apprentices (trainees), journeymen or fellows (wage earners), and masters (owners/managers). However, fellows and apprentices were marginalized under this system. Masters would make special uniforms a prerequisite for attending meetings and set up other regulations to keep the lower orders from being active in the guild. In response, apprentices and fellows set up yeoman guilds  to counter the influence of the masters.  These gatherings of working people were a precursor to the modern day labour movement and caused substantial concern among those in government. These organizations were even illegal for a long time.

Oddfellows Hall / Malones Irish Pub

Oddfellows Hall was converted to a pub which is now Malone’s Bar on Forrest Road near Edinburgh University. This area is a hub for some extremely odd but very entertaining folk during the Edinburgh Festival.

There was a big remodel a few years before I moved here, but I found some excellent photos on this architecture blog.

Its a pretty good pub to hear some live music or watch a big rugby or football match since there is a lot of space. Not surprising because of its convenient location, university students are the primary patrons nowadays. The Oddfellows are still around but the only branch left in Scotland is over in Kilmarnock.  I suppose there wasn’t as much demand for these fraternities after the 1960’s as government took over more social welfare responsibilities and trade unions grew, membership in these organizations shrank. Still, it was nice to read up on their history and take a closer look at such an interesting Edinburgh building.

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Feb 24 2012
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edinburgh

Bus fares are going up again in Edinburgh

Having lived in Edinburgh for less than two years, I have now witnessed two separate fare increases on Lothian Buses.

Lothian buses is publicly owned, and they are taking some serious heat for the latest round of fare hikes. They claim increased costs and cuts to government subsidies. Even though bus service is generally quite good, I see no apparent improvement in service hours or frequency as a result of the second annual fare increase.

Lothian buses are the primary operator for municipal buses in Edinburgh, but First Bus company (which is private) also operates in the city.  In Canada, municipal bus service is almost always operated by local governments or crown corporations.

That doesn’t always mean affordability, but in the UK there is a long nasty history of privatization in the transport sector. In most cases, service levels dropped and fares increased when train and bus routes were contracted out to private companies. Those companies slashed wages and cut staff levels, and several still couldn’t stay in business. Political pressure forced the government to intervene.

I’m told that bus drivers actually do quite well here in terms of salary, but I don’t really see users getting as much value here as they should be. The bus routing is not well done. Part of that can be attributed to the poor Edinburgh road system, and the current tram works on Princes street. However, even before that, there was always a logjam of buses on Princes Street and in the rural areas outside of Edinburgh, its common to see those big double decker buses with fewer than ten people on them.

There is only one express bus (to the airport) and you pay a premium to use that. You also have to pay a premium fare to travel on the night buses (even if you have a monthly pass).

Its difficult to make a direct comparison in service levels, but I was curious about just how those fares compared to my own country. I tried to focus on cities that were similar to Edinburgh, didn’t have metros or LRT systems, and were the central city for their region (not a suburb of a larger metro).

When I did the currency conversions, I found that single journey tickets and day passes in Edinburgh are still quite cheap compared to Canada, but you can often spend less in Canada on monthly passes, particularly when you factor in the public transit tax credit. There are concessions in Edinburgh as well, mainly the Scottish National Entitlement Card, which allows some young people and anyone over 6o or disabled to travel on the bus for free.

City Transit Operator Single Cash Fare DayPass Monthly Pass
Edinburgh, Scotland (pop. 486,000) Lothian Buses £1.40 £3.50 £51.00
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (pop. 345,000) BC Transit £1.58 £4.91 £53.94
Quebec City, Quebec, Canada (pop. 516,000) Reseau de transport de la Capitale £1.62 £4.34 £47.40
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada (pop. 663,000) Winnipeg Transit £1.62 N/A £48.82
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (pop. 692,000) City of Hamilton £1.62 N/A £55.11
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada(pop. 403,000) MetroTransit £1.42 N/A £44.33
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Feb 08 2012
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edinburgh, Film

Trainspotting at The Scotsman Hotel Cinema

For the longest time I didn’t know that there was a cinema in the basement of the Scotsman Hotel. When Aarti told me about it, I was very excited to check it out.

I had a picture in my head of one of those private screening rooms that people used to put in their houses, but was pleased to find out that it felt like a proper movie theatre… except with bigger comfier seats.

It was the two year anniversary of the Edinburgh Cinema Meetup Group and the film Trainspotting was chosen by popular vote.

I’d seen it before, but plenty of time had passed so I was a little hazy on some of the details.

It stars Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, and introduced Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald (who is now becoming famous for her role in Boardwalk Empire). It was directed by Danny Boyle and is based on a novel by Irvine Welsh (who has a small cameo in the film).

Welsh is from Leith (where I live), so even though the film is fifteen years old there are plenty of recognizable locations including the worst toilet in Scotland.

This is the Port O Leith Bar, which is out by the shore. Its a little better than it was in Welsh’s day, but I’m told it can still be a pretty rough place.

There is also a scene where the main characters are being chased down Princes street for shoplifting, and I was amazed at how remarkably similar the street looked compared to today.

There are plenty of memorable scenes from the movie, many of them disgusting. One that always freaked me out was Ewan McGregor coming off Heroin after having an overdose. He has some pretty disturbing hallucinations including one where he is being attacked by a dead baby crawling on the ceiling.

However, probably my favourite was the scene where after getting off at one of the most remote train stations in Scotland at Corrour near Loch Ossian, Ewan McGregor’s character gives an awesome speech about what it means to be Scottish.

When I saw the whole rant on a T-shirt, I very nearly bought it.

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Dec 16 2011
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edinburgh

Opening of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

I’d been waiting for this gallery to re-open since I arrived in Scotland, and managed to go in early December. It has been undergoing renovations for the whole time I have been in Edinburgh as it expands into the entire building of its traditional Queen Street location. Finally getting inside is more than just idle curiousity.  More than just the artwork, the building is exceptional for many reasons. It is done in this red sandstone which is rare in Edinburgh and the statues placed overlooking the surrounding streets represent key figures in Scottish history and are all of amazing quality even though they are still shielded behind the protective black netting.

This is quite common in old Scottish buildings under restoration. Its my understanding that it keeps birds off the delicate areas and protects the public should a piece break off and fall.

Because I have been many times to the National Gallery on Princes Street some of the paintings and sculptures were a little familiar but most of it was entirely new for me. In the main hall, there was a huge Christmas tree and about 8 marble busts of important figures in Scottish history like Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, James Watt and others. When you look up, you see these murals between the different levels, with an even larger collection of historical figures. It was meant to be a kind of incomplete encyclopedia.

The Portrait Gallery is also home to a massive collection of photographs. An abstract painting of a young Billy Connolly guards the elevator a short distance from photographs of Sean Connery, James McEvoy, and other Scottish celebrities. Famous paintings of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth and Sir Walter Scott by Henry Raeburn hang in the gallery. Henry Raeburn was one of the most famous Scottish artists and achieved remarkable success in his day, and the gallery includes many of his finer works. He painted many in the Scottish aristocracy, but has become best known for his portrait of the skating priest on Duddingston Loch which now hangs in the Princes Street Gallery.

The Skating Minister by Henry Raeburn

I liked the library very much. It had old copies of Treasure Island and busts of Burns and Stevenson, and a rather bizare portrait of JK Rowling. Old Victorian libraries are not the most functional of places but they did know their furnishing and how to study in fine surroundings.  

I found the murals on the 1st level to be very educational. You’d expect to see the Battle of Bannockburn, but you also see a lot of other events in Scottish history that are not frequently portrayed in the present day. Its a disadvantage of getting so much history knowledge from television programs and Neil Oliver from the BBC. Before widespread literacy, this is how people would visualize their history.

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Nov 27 2011
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edinburgh

Edinburgh Christmas Market

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Nov 06 2011
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edinburgh, Sport

Hockey in Edinburgh

Hockey is not a big sport in Britain. However, as a stereotypical Canadian, I had to find me some hockey.

I’ve been following some of the developments in the NHL, but it’s quite tough to watch games because of the 8 hour time difference between me and my Vancouver Canucks.

The local team is the Edinburgh Capitals, and they play in the top division of the British League. Unfortunately, the British League is not really on par with other European hockey countries like Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Germany. I’ve been out to watch a couple games, and the Capitals are the equivalent of a division 3 men’s league back in Vancouver.

Last year, they were bottom of the league, but they’ve been a little better the last few weeks.

To get back into it, I’ve started playing with a rec team, and have been borrowing the team equipment for the last couple weeks. I think I’d like to stay in Scotland a while longer, so I’ll have to see about getting my equipment over here.

As for watching NHL games, I’m curiously watching what happens in Winnipeg and have been pleasantly surprised by the performance of the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs. I’ll have to try to watch a couple more games instead of just the highlights.

I’ve got another training session this week to help me get back into shape, and then a game in a couple weeks.

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Oct 17 2011
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edinburgh, Film

All Night Horror Madness #3

The cameo is my favourite theatre in Edinburgh. They play great movies, have a nice little bar, and they host amazing events like this.

The marathon started at about 1130pm on Saturday night, and we weren’t on our way back until the sun was coming back out again the next morning, at 715am. I don’t pull as many all nighters as I used to, and it feels good every once in a while. Plus its a very social atmosphere and you’re meeting lots of new people at an event like this. The organizers even serve Bacon Rolls in the lobby to keep you going.

Compared with #1 and #2 (which I also went to), the lineup for #3 stood up quite well. The organizer likes to pull together a mix of well known cult classics and very niche films that only real devotees have seen. He polled the audience at the start and only a couple people had seen all of them.

All Night Horror Madness also uses old 16mm film reels instead of the now standard dvd versions – you get all the lines and scratches, and times when bits are cut off or off line. Its just like going back in time, and watching it in one of those old drivethrus because the films were all from the late 70’s and early 80’s and showed off that grainy quality.

Blue Sunshine

Parts of this film are just so over the top or badly acted. Its not supposed to be funny, but turns out to be hilarious. It stars Zalman King, who directed and produced the softcore porn (Red Shoe Diaries and Wild Orchid) that many of us watched in high school.

The story revolves around Jerry Zipken, an odd man who is suspected of murder after his friend goes insane and goes on a killing spree. He spends the rest of film trying to find out why, and he stumbles upon a conspiracy involving a hopeful congressman.

King’s overacting is brilliant, and he somehow finds a way to be in almost every scene.

Halloween

I think I was 13 or 14 when I saw this for the first time, and its still great no matter how many times I’ve seen it since. The part where Myers gets up still creeps me out

Pieces

This is exactly like college in every way with the exception of the chainsaw wielding psycho trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle with human body parts. Its kind of a precursor to Silence of the Lambs.

I especially loved the professional tennis match, and that the campus has a water bed. They try to make the killer a bit of a mystery, but its pretty obvious for someone who has watched a lot of these slasher films. The cops are brilliant, they keep asking this college kid to help on the case for no apparent reason and even ask him down to the station to help them go through files. When they go to take the killer down, he even goes in with them. He never even signed a waiver – if he got cut up, they would have been in so much shit.

Evil Dead

This is one of my favourite horror movies. I have a huge man crush on Bruce Campbell and his character Ash. I loved his book My Life as B Movie Actor and have seen the entire trilogy a bunch of times.  Its so great because his character is not heroic at all, but does all of this amazing stuff. He also has some great one liners in the Evil Dead films.

It got me thinking about the Evil Dead musical that came to Vancouver a couple years ago.

Bruce Campbell is on Burn Notice now and gets some of the funniest lines out of the characters on that show.

 

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Aug 05 2011
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edinburgh

Edinburgh Tattoo

Last night, I finally went to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

I’d seen video from past years online and on TV, but being there was something else entirely.  Before now, I don’t think I was able to appreciate the scale and coordination that an event like this demands.

And these people have to do this twice a day for three weeks.

I was expecting that there would be pipe bands and highland dancing but was presently surprised by the Dutch Bicycle Band, Bavarian Music, the Field Gun Run, and the Brazilian Marine marching band.

The field gun run was probably one of my favourites.

There were a large number of props used over the course of the show, which was a pleasant surprise. To represent the current work of the navy and royal marines, they rolled out some masts, metal pipes, etc to represent a ship that was under attack by pirates.

I know its all meant to be family friendly, but I  still love pirates.  I even reread Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island a few months back to honour a favourite scottish author. I just wish they would stop making Jack Sparrow movies and let pirates be scary again.

The tattoo is really about the whole visual experience. Images are projected onto to Edinburgh Castle and fireworks and sound effects reinforce the stories they’re telling.

They said that the stands were new, but the seating was incredibly uncomfortable which was probably the only downside to the evening. Also, the little extras seemed highly overpriced. People had to pay £1 to hire a cushion, £7 for a programme, £14 for a dvd, etc.  I chalk it up to the tourist factor.

One thought I had when I was going in – and again when I was going out – was that the reason the castle was good for defense is also a reason that its a bad place for a stadium. There is only one way in.

On the other hand, it makes for a pretty unique  backdrop and was incorporated very well into the show. At the end, a loan piper played the farewell hymn from the top of the ramparts before everyone marched out.

Overall, the show was very high quality and I would definitely recommend seeing it.

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