Edinburgh’s Hogmanay

On New Year’s Eve we woke to a beautiful morning. After a leisurely start, we caught the bus into the City centre, planning to visit Edinburgh Castle during the day, before the Hogmanay celebrations began.

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There were so many people everywhere! However, although the castle was very busy, there was plenty of room for everyone and, with lots of people hogging the standard viewpoints, it made me look around for out of the ordinary locations for my shots.

The castle is high on the hill overlooking the city and the views from the top are fantastic! The colours were lovely as the sun dropped on 2019.

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We then left the castle and wandered down the Royal Mile. We had a look at Saint Giles’ Cathedral, and watched the stages being set up for the evening concerts.

We’d booked a table in a restaurant for 4.30, where we had a lovely meal and relaxed for a few hours, away from the chaos in the streets. Afterwards, we managed to find a couple of seats in a pub on the Royal Mile. There was a great atmosphere and, as we chatted to people around us, we ended up staying there until almost 9 o’clock. We probably didn’t get our money’s worth out of the street party tickets that we’d paid for, because we missed a lot of the entertainment. However, we saw Idlewild, who we like, then The Snuts, and we had a great time!

The evening ended with an amazing firework display over the castle to welcome 2020, then we caught a night bus back to the campsite… once we found out where to get it from as many of the streets were closed!

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Thankfully, we weren’t too hungover the next day because we’d planned to run Vogrie Parkrun. If you read yesterday’s blog, you’ll know we’re doing the Parkrun alphabet challenge and it was good to get V ticked off the list.

Then we went for a New Year’s Day walk up Arthur’s Seat, which is an ancient volcano, and the highest point in Holyrood Park. At 250 metres above sea level, there’s a great view of Edinburgh. Everyone seemed to have had the same idea and it was really busy, despite the cold, grey, blustery weather. It was a lovely walk, past a couple of lochs and a ruined chapel.

On the final day of our trip, we left Edinburgh and went to meet our friends Chris and Claire in Linlithgow, with their daughters Nicole and Rachael. It’s a lovely place with a palace (which was the birth place of Mary Queen of Scots), park and lake, but it started to rain so we curtailed out visit. Not a problem though… we ended up at Chris and Claire’s house in Glasgow instead, which gave us more time to catch up with them before we headed back home to Wales the next day.

Now we’re planning our next trips… Germany and the Black Forest at Easter, and then it’s looking like Austria and Italy in the summer. We attempted Austria a few years ago but were unlucky with the weather and moved to France, but I still have a list of places that I want to go, and hikes that I want to do. We’re hiking part of Alta Via 1, high in the Italian Dolomites, and have already booked the mountain rifugios. I can’t wait!