A city under a city, and a country stroll

We woke this morning to another man wandering around the house. When asked what his friend’s name was, Malcolm looked clueless and said ‘he’s not my friend’. Which is to say, it was his long time friend Jim.

Malcom had work in Edinburgh, so he took us in so we could potter until he was done. Edinburgh Castle and the start of the Royal mile was crawling with tourists, which we can hardly complain about. Edinburgh has half a million residents, but something like 3 million visitors each year. How it can manage 6 visitors for every resident, I don’t know.

When asked about Scotland’s traditional language (also called Gaelic), Malcolm explained that the language was banned in the 1800s, so only a fraction (57k or 1.1%) of the population can still speak Gaelic today. He said it was most common in older, working class demographics, so it was more common in Glasgow than Edinburgh (because workers came to Glasgow from rural areas). He said highland dress such as tartan kilts were also banned for hundreds of years, which I hadn’t appreciated until now.

Halfway down the Royal Mile, we did an underground tour of Mary King Close. In essence, in the 1600s, there was a city-wide effort to level out the city’s streets and push the slum-like and plague-infested quarters of many closes underground. There are three storeys of labyrinthine alleys and homes hidden beneath Edinburgh’s modern-day ground level, which from an architectural perspective, is quite terrifying. The sandstone buildings built on top of them can add several more storeys to the hidden ones, and I don’t understand how people don’t just fall through sink holes into the 17th century.

Back home, we took Marco for a walk, and Malcolm said he couldn’t take his ball because he’d drop it. 96% of the way through the walk, Marco bloody lost the ball. But, the beech forests were immaculate, and the cattle and donkeys were all very sweet.

The four of us relaxed in the garden for a little while, before heading to an excellent pub in Melrose. It’s still light outside, but it’s not going to get much darker, so good night!