An Edinburgh Interlude

As regular readers may remember, I have met up with my mother on a couple of my previous trips (Amsterdam and Riga). On this occasion it was time to spend a few days with my father at my parents flat in Edinburgh.

Scotland's capital is a wonderful city with impressive buildings around every corner, some sizeable hills to make the scenery more interesting, and the great benefit of many museums and galleries (most of which are free to enter).

The Edinburgh skyline, from Calton hill

Finnair operates a regular, but infrequent, direct service from Helsinki to Edinburgh and this time I was able to fit my schedule to that timetable. Avoiding a transfer makes a big difference to your travel and also makes a big difference to the chances of your luggage arriving on the same flight as you. When travelling direct with Finnair from Helsinki I think I have a 100% luggage arrival rate over many tens of flights... which tells that they are doing something right.

My flight arrived early in the morning and I had breakfast in the Marks and Spencer's cafe in Princes street to pass the time until my father arrived. Here I had an unexpected new experience... I have eaten hard boiled eggs before, but never a hard poached egg. Not recommended.

After meeting my father at the flat we made our way to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, an interesting and ever changing set of exhibits in a beautiful building... with excellent coffee and "good things" in the downstairs cafe.

the central atrium in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

From the gallery I continued with a couple of ideas in my head, I wanted to check out different angles for getting pictures of the castle and I also wanted to visit the Usher Hall to see if they would allow me to photograph their staircase.

It is quite often the case as a photographer that the things which catch your eye are not the things you are "supposed to be" interested in, and so it turned out out on this occasion as I spent quite some time ignoring the historic and fabulous Edinburgh castle in favour of taking pictures of a slightly grotty public car park. 

yellow lines on a spiral staircase

the descent

Staircases have been on my mind quite a lot having found very nice ones in Prague, Riga, Budapest and Vienna and my Edinburgh research had pointed me towards the Usher Hall as a place where I might find a good one. I went there to enquire about whether I might spend some time with their staircase, given that it is not in a part of the building that is normally open to the public. The reception staff were extremely helpful and informed me when it would be best for me to visit for that purpose.

Walking back through the city I had to take shelter from some extremely heavy showers and these rather removed my enthusiasm for further photography, although I did make a scouting trip to the top of Calton Hill to get an idea of the views and angles from there.

The next day it was time to head north from the city to visit my nephews in Lundin Links, stopping on the way to look at the three iconic bridges spanning the firth of Forth.

the Forth Bridge as seen from South Queensferry

The three bridges, the Forth Bridge (a railway bridge), the Forth Road Bridge and the Queensferry Crossing were each built in different centuries (opening in 1890, 1964 and 2017) and each represents a remarkable step forward.

The Forth Bridge is absolutely my favourite of the three and was a true marvel of engineering at the time of its construction. The invention, patenting and licensing of the Bessemer process for steel production  in the second half of the 19th century made that material available in bulk cost-effectively for the first time. The Forth Bridge was the first major British construction made from steel, about 55,000 tonnes of it - including 6.5 million rivets.

some of that steel... under the northern section of the bridge

There was also the small matter of over 18,000 cubic metres of granite (from Aberdeen of course) involved in the construction.

the village of North Queensferry at the foot of the Forth Bridge

The end result of the huge construction effort which lasted most of the 1880's was a 3 hour reduction in the rail journey time from London Kings Cross to Aberdeen.

the bridge disappears into the mist

The Forth Road Bridge is not so visually fascinating to me, but for road travel through Scotland the impact must have been huge. Before it opened in 1964 the north-south vehicle traffic would either have to make a 50km+ detour to make use of the Kincardine Bridge or cross the Forth estuary by ferry. The possibility to have much faster and more direct access to Edinburgh from the north must have been a great economic benefit for the settlements along the Fife coastline. It was also something of a record breaking feat of construction, the largest suspension bridge outside of the US at the time.

a ghostly long exposure (161 seconds) of the Forth Road Bridge in the fog from the south.

The pillars of the newest bridge, the Queensferry Crossing, can be seen faintly through the mist in the picture above. On this occasion I did not pay it much attention apart from while being driven across it... perhaps I return to that as a subject in a future trip.

Back to the important stuff... my nephews, Hamish and Finlay. These two young men are at that very endearing stage where they have interest and energy to do a million different things, and they are close enough in age that they do many of those things together. It is always a lot of fun to spend time with them.

We also spent time with their parents, my brother and my sister-in-law, but when looking through my pictures I can see that my camera only had eyes for the boys.

The nearby beach provides a great playground (and occasional workplace) for the boys and I followed them on an afternoon visit there.

some climbing...

There were many different activities undertaken in a short space of time!

some acting...

Throwing is important, but it should be done "at", not "to"... and naturally it works better when the ball is first soaked in a puddle.

some posing

A good deal of jumping from high places was also in order...

... it seemed to be fun!

ready for lift-off...

Although to any watching responsible (?) adult the walls seemed pretty high!

ok, I may have exaggerated this a bit in photoshop...

This day was certainly a highlight.

The following day it was time to head east instead of north as we journeyed to North Berwick. On our way we visited the National Museum of Flight where the attractions include a Concorde.

A proctological view of the famous supersonic passenger jet

One immediately obvious thing when entering the passenger area of a Concorde is how cramped it is, the long thin fuselage does not leave much room for seats. You may have paid £2,500 for your ticket and be drinking fine champagne with your roast beef but you should not expect much elbow room.

a Hawk jet from the RAF's Red Arrows display team

A Hawk jet from the Red Arrows was another interesting exhibit, as was the imposing Vulcan bomber, a long range heavy jet which would have carried the British nuclear deterrant in the days before it was felt that a submarine based system was preferable. The spitfire hanging from the ceiling in the wartime hangar inevitably provoked the warmest feelings.

The museum was definitely worth a visit and we passed a couple of hours there before heading on to North Berwick.

This is a fantastic golfing area where you can find the likes of Muirfield, Gullane and Luffness as well as North Berwick and many others... but on this occasion I was chasing a different kind of birdie - the Northern Gannet - a large sea bird which inhabits Bass Rock off the coast of North Berwick in huge numbers.

Bass Rock as a storm approaches (pictured in 2015), those white dots are all birds

Bass Rock, with its distinctive Stevenson lighthouse (automated since 1988) is now uninhabited by humans but absolutely inhabited by birds. There are around 200,000 Northen Gannets on the rock in the breeding season, the largest Gannet colony in the world. I took a catamarran trip from the Scottish Sea Bird Centre to go and meet some of them.

The first destination on the boat trip was Craigleith, another rocky island a few miles from Bass Rock. There we were able to see various gulls but also common eiders, common guillemots, cormorants, shags, razorbills, grey seals and.... puffins.

just chilling... a grey seal

a puffin!

It was really great just to see a puffin (my first time), but there were not that good chances to photograph them on this occasion. They are a lot smaller than I imagined and you would need to get quite close to them, but they were quite nervous (probably for good reason) whenever the boat came near. Shooting small birds from a boat on the open sea is no easy task so I am happy that I at least got a documentary picture of this encounter.

Normally when you go searching for a particular bird, there is at least a small question of whether you will even see any individuals of that species... but on this occasion I could say that finding a Northern Gannet was not that hard.

wait... I think I see one

These remarkable looking birds, which can have a wingspan of up to 2 metres, were covering every available nesting spot on the whole island.

Welcome to our island?

on lookout

With the best spaces being closely guarded and very little ledge being fought over there was a good deal of "keeping an eye on the others" going on.

It pays to look over your shoulder...

This was a really super boat trip and I highly recommend it for any bird watchers or bird photographers. If you want to get good photographs then I guess that the catamarran trip offers better possibilities than the RIB boat trip as there are more possibilities to move around on the boat and to shoot on the journeys as well as at the destinations.

Back in Edinburgh it was time to concentrate on interiors for a change, starting with a visit to the Usher Hall and their interesting staircase, a winding spiral with an illuminated column suspended in the middle. The light in the centre and the window at the top create quite a huge difference in illumiation between the lights and the shdows and I felt that the pictures worked the best when edited in a high contrast black and white style.

at the bottom, looking up

Thank you very much to the staff at the Usher Hall who were helpful and welcoming to a visiting photographer.

at the top, looking down

Leaving the staircase behind I went on a small tour of churches, stopping first at St John's church on Princes Street where they have a very interesting ceiling...

... pausing to pay my respects to a lone piper playing a rousing tune / making a hell of a noise (delete as appropriate) with the castle in the background...

... and eventually making it to St. Giles Cathedral in the Royal Mile, where I had arranged to meet my father.

St. Giles Cathedral has a really beautiful interior with high vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows and various interesting artifacts.

detail from a stained glasss window... no, thats not a golf club in his hand.

an impressive set of glass panels

a memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson

The ceiling of this fine old church was definitely the most interesting part for me to point my camera at... it had such a beautiful blue colour.

the ceiling of St Giles

Alas, my time in Scotland was now coming to an end, there was just time to make one more climb up Calton Hill to see if I would be blessed with a beautiful sunset... but after all this is Scotland, sometimes you have to just be thankful that "a bit overcast" has not deteriorated into "you should probably build an ark".

In Scotland we have the black hour instead of the blue hour...

I really enjoyed these few days in my home country, and especially enjoyed being able to spend time with my father. It was a memorable trip.

Until next time!
Andy