impulsereader | You wonder what the king is wishing tonight? He's wishing he were in Scotland fishing tonight! (Reply)

Edinburgh trip report - early April 2012 - Day 4 - Hill Walking So on this day I struck out from Edinburgh proper and took MacEwan’s Coach service to Flotterstone in order to walk the path to the summit of Scald Law. If anyone is reading this in the future looking for info on MacEwans - despite the fact that they have zero internet presence - as of April 2012 they do exist and www.traveline.com seems to have their route info correct. Their buses are a bit - vintage - and my morning driver was a bit - colorful - but I made it there and back completely safely. The fare was only £1.50 return and the bus stop was right across from the info center as well as the Flotterstone Inn. That’s the good news. The slightly less good news is that this is absolutely all that is there. Don’t make this journey expecting to add anything on to this activity of hill walking other than a (relatively) good meal or a drink. The Inn starts serving lunch at noon, but there were people in there ahead of me in the bar so they may serve drinks earlier. I proceeded to follow a walking path that took me from the Flotterstone info center to the top of Scald Law, and then I decided to go back down the way I came rather than taking the shorter route past the reservoirs, because I’d surprisingly done this in rather good time and I had started really early. That said, being a relatively non-physically-active person and normally a strictly urban walker - this walk was challenging at times. My Kurt Russell has this bit he does where he wonders about the first person who saw a crab and/or lobster and thought to him or herself, ‘Hey, I know, I’ll break it open and then eat that. What could possibly be yummier or involve less effort?’ More than once on this walk I said out loud - I’m not above this when alone, ‘Who decided we should go up here? Clearly we aren’t meant to go up this way. The hill does not want me to do this!’ However; I persevered. I persevered despite the fact that I could see that the summit (see how I make it sound really impressive and mountain-seeming?) was completely engulfed in fog so any possible view I had been hoping for was not going to manifest once I arrived. Still - I got some good shots on my way up. Here they are. A beautiful - extremely small - portion of the Pentland Hills, everyone!

Evidence of sheep!

And, the promised sheep!

A close encounter

The top - that cloud was not only fogging but also raining on me generously so I ended up hightailing it back the way I’d come from - by hightailing it I mean it took me another few hours to get back to my starting point.

There was a bush that was just haunting with the sheeps’ wool wrapped around and whipping in the wind.

And on the way back to my tea break...

I was actually really excited about eating at the Flotterstone Inn, and if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that ‘what I eat’ is super not exciting by default. I really need to go out to dinner at least once before this vacation is over. Tea and scones aside, I’m living on a block of cheese and these awesome ‘bake for ten minutes’ Tesco baguettes. This menu, however, features warm food and I am quite chilled at this point. Also, they have things such as a ploughman’s lunch and baked potatoes with a choice of fillings. Fortunately I ended up ordering the cream of cauliflower soup - which was awesome. I also unfortunately tacked on the potato wedges which were super overcooked. Go with the baked potato - I think it would be safer. The follow pics I took on the way home after arriving back in Edinburgh.