We had to drive my brother to Edinburgh airport on Saturday morning so we thought we might as well go and have another walk along by the Water of Leith and into Stockbridge.
So we parked the car at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and had a look round as usual before walking down to the footpath. As you can see they have a neon sign on the gallery building, to cheer us up I suppose.
Stockbridge is always dangerous for me because I can’t resist the book shops there, but more of that another day. Apart from being windy, which is the usual situation in Edinburgh, it was a nice blue sky day so we decided to continue the walk along the river in the direction of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.
We hadn’t walked that far before because we usually drive there and I thought it might be a bit too long a walk but we managed it. By that time we were carrying our book purchases too, well I have to admit it MY book purchases because my husband didn’t buy any, so it was all fairly knackering.
We just had to sit down when we got to the botanics, they’ve finished the refurbishment at last, they seemed to have been at it forever, but it’s all spiffing now and must have cost a fortune when you consider the price of stone nowadays.
It was VERY busy, but to be honest there wasn’t an awful lot to be seen plant-wise, which was a surprise to me because I think of the botanics as being fairly sheltered but my garden plants seem to be further on than theirs. Most of the trees are still fairly bare but we’ll be going back again to check it out again soon because I wanted to buy a small magnolia from the garden centre but the thought of carrying it the very long way back to the car put me right off because we were exhausted by that time.
I think it was about a 10 mile round walk, which is the longest one we’ve done this year. Anyway I took some reasonable photos, there’s nearly always at least one heron in the river, yesterday there were two, and also a few anglers. I haven’t a clue what they can catch in there, maybe brown trout. I bet the birds would have the most success though.
I love the neon sign on the museum. I must find a photo online and make it my wallpaper! it reminds me of a modern-day “keep calm and carry on.”
Karen,
I’ve put the photo on flickr, feel free to use the embed code for it if you can’t find a better one. It is like ‘keep calm’, but that is absolutely everywhere now!
I always wonder if such signs do subliminally influence us to feel happier? and for more than ten seconds?
Niranjana,
I suppose it depends on who is viewing it. I must admit to being a bit of a cynic and it seems a bit desperate to me, so it could make people feel even worse. On the other hand they are at least trying. It can be seen as a piece of art work and believe me it’s quite a lot better than some of the exhibits inside! Some are very good though!
I love the Botanical shots…especially the one reflecting the beautiful blue sky.
Maybe I need to add that to my Edinburg itinerary! Never been there…just hoping that Holyrood is open to the public this trip. It’s been closed the last 2 times and we really want to see it.
Pearl,
I think you would like the Botanic Gardens, they are huge and they also have glass-houses full of exotic plants, they probably aren’t exotic to you though!
I think you must be going to Holyrood when the queen is in residence, I think that’s the only time that it is closed to the public. She’s hardly ever there, so you have been really unlucky. Fingers crossed for your next visit.