Edinburgh

We had booked even before we left Australia to take a few days here as a bit of a rest up from a fairly big week riding around the coast to get here and also to check out the town. We missed out on coming up here last time we were in the UK. We walked the final mile or so to our accommodation as we found our way through the center of the city. Riding here would be a bit of an art, it's very hilly, many streets are 'pavé' (cobbled) and there are heaps of roads which go over and under each other with bridges, or through buildings etc. The whole city is very multilevel.

When we arrived at the address we'd written down, I could feel myself thinking 'stupid woman, she's got the wrong suburb or place or something'. It was just residential house, a door in the middle of a row of georgian buildings on a normal street. Anyway, we checked, checked again and eventually decided we were in the right place. Finally I saw 'Robinson' on the door bell and that matched the email. Ok then, ding dong. About a minute later a voice answered, I explained who we were and Eric chirped back 'Oh are you downstairs with your bikes ? I'll be right down.'.

A spritely white haired gent answered the door and welcomed us in with perfect BBC english. We worked out where the bikes were to stay in the entrance hall locked up to the stair rail and followed him up with our panniers. From there we were welcomed into Eric's stunning georgian home, superbly decorated and covered floor to celling in every room with art collected over his 70+ years. Our room was just superb, big comfy bed, a few reading chairs arranged around the window with an excellent view. The rest of the day was spent organizing our selves and having a quick dinner at a place at the end of the street before flopping into bed to sleep off the last week's riding. Breakfast the next morning was just served in the kitchen, rather than some fancy/sterile dinning room like most places and was just as elegant as the Eric and the house.

While we were in Edinburgh we walked all over town to look at things, past most of the popular tourist stuff electing not to pay £26 for the Castle or £20 for Holyrood Palace etc, even the whiskey experience wanted to fleece us for £22 for a look around a model of a distillery. The royal mile is the street which runs from the Castle to the Palace and sadly it's been a bit of a victim of it's own success. Great spot to come if you want to buy a cheaply made (but expensive) kilt, over priced whiskey or a postcard etc but kind of soul less as you walk up and down avoiding the tour busses.

It often seems with touristy towns the more expensive something is, the more likely it is to be a bit crap. Anyway, after a quick trip to the bike shop to get a few odds and ends we ended up in the Scottish National Museum which takes you through the history of Scotland chronologically over 7 levels of a very cool and modern museum. Three things I really loved about it; the first is that unlike many other modern museums (*cough* Melbourne *cough*) they hadn't taken away most of the collection replacing it with overly explained and elaborate display of a handful of items. The bottom floor which contained most of the older artifacts (coins, swords, bones etc etc) was stuffed to the gils. The second thing was a series of art works by Andy Goldsworthy around and through the exhibits, the slate walls and a perfect sphere of whale bones were a real highlight. The third thing is seeing the other 10 lewis chess men which live here (we'd seen the rest of the set in London 2.5 years ago).

Apart from that over two days we saw the usual mix of monuments, statues, churches and parks etc. The botanical gardens are especially nice here. We certainly ended up foot sore and tired by the end of each day trying to take it all in. I think it's always a good test of a place to see if the TV gets turned on or not, here it didn't even enter our heads.

Right now we're on the train heading deep into the Highlands to a tiny town called Dalwhinney, riding out from there to stay in a cottage very near the top of the near by mountain pass as we work our way back down through the lochs and passes before catching they ferry to Ireland in a few weeks. A few people had told us we would be sad to be leaving Edinburgh; I was, but only to be leaving Eric, his beautiful house and charming company.