Edinburgh to Rosslyn and Back Again

quote on wall outside Parliament

July 23, 2010
Our breakfast group from Canada, Mexico, France, and Denmark discussed the many places people had been and how great the local bus service was. Not having ridden an Edinburgh city bus before, I opted for a trip To Rosslyn Chapel on bus route 15 that Robin recommended. Initially – and unfortunately – seated on the top deck in front of an American woman who not only sneezed and coughed incessantly in my direction, but also proselytized to her seatmate all about American politics in terms of absolutes that made me cringe, I made a dash to a seat towards the front of the double-decker bus. There I met Eko, a young Japanese woman who was traveling around Scotland for a couple of weeks, and she filled me in on some of the details of the chapel. See http://www.rosslynchapel.org.uk/ for more information and pictures on this intriguing structure!

We arrived in time for a lovely tour by a docent who not only gave us the mere facts about this 500 yr old beauty of a chapel, but also informed us of the meaning of its presence to the local area. After suffering the ravages of weather for several hundred years as well as the unintended ill effects of renovation in the 1950s, the sandstone of the chapel was now sufficiently dried out and an all-encompassing scaffolding was starting to be dismantled. In fact, the docent remarked with a look of sheer joy on his face that a sunbeam came through one of the windows during his talk, the first time that had occurred in 13 years. Of the many unusual architectural characteristics of this chapel is the fact that there are Christian, Pagan, and Masonic symbols throughout the church. Some may remember seeing them from the movie “The DaVinci Code” that included a scene from the chapel.

Photographs of the chapel were prohibited, but below is a postcard of the apprentice's column. Here is a list of the remarkable details that I found interesting:
~ details of corn/maize in an archway. Keep in mind that this chapel was begun 50 years prior to Columbus’ 1492 journey to the New World, so that begs the question - how did they know about this North American crop, corn?
~ angel playing bagpipes. One of the dearest images I saw both at Rosslyn and at St. Giles’ High Kirk in Edinburgh
~ angel hugging the Gospel
~ stars, crescent moon, and sun motifs on the ceiling, as well as the rows of forget-me-nots, roses, and lilies
~ several green men, longtime Pagan symbols
~ musical notes in the form of carved tubes decorated with different Masonic symbols
~ statue of the murdered apprentice, his weeping mother, and the guilty party condemned to forever gaze upon the incredible masterpiece of a column carved by his apprentice in the master’s absence
We finished our tour of the chapel with sausage and haggis sandwiches, Eko’s introduction to traditional Scottish cuisine, and headed back to Edinburgh. I was in good exploring company!

Eko wanted to find the Elephant House, the tearoom where JK Rowling wrote the Harry Potter books. We did locate it and sat at table 9, where Ms. Rowling wrote. Scores of muggles wrote many fond messages on the walls of the loos, thanking her for that splendid series!

Table 9

Visiting Scotland entails walking, eating, and drinking, then repeat the cycle, and we began the next escapade of the day by walking by a very entertaining and charming street performer, our king in shining armor. Along with many children and their stuffed animals, we were knighted by him.

Across from him was the stately St. Giles High Kirk, which is worthy of a much longer visit than we could get in that day.

It is a beautiful church inside and even with the steady tourist movement you could sense an ability to find peace within. On down the street we walked to the Parliament building where the top quote is located – very cool architecture! – and then climbed to Arthur’s Seat and the Salisbury Crags. The weather was gorgeous with a deep blue sky that complemented the sunset-drenched rocks of the crags. It was a nice bit of exercise that of course had to be offset by a nice dinner at The Abbey Bar (and its menu of 50 Scotch whiskies). I had the Scottish game casserole which included in its delicious brew venison, partridge, duck, wood pigeon, pheasant, hare, and rabbit in a red wine sauce. It was a very pleasant ending of a fun day sightseeing with a new friend, and we parted ways with each other’s contact info. Amazing how small the world can be – residents of Seattle and Yokohama meeting in Edinburgh!

Salisbury Crags

Eko and me at The Abbey

Scotland Hiking!

July 21-22, 2010

It was time to travel again and this time I signed up for the REI Scotland Highlands and Islands hiking tour. Being 8 time zones and 20 hours or so of travel time away from Scotland determined my early arrival in Edinburgh, which left plenty of time for my body to catch up to the right continent.

When seated in pre-hinterlandia in the back of a plane with only 10 minutes to catch your connecting flight across the Atlantic, you hope that your body catches up with the right plane. It did, but only after a sprint to the gate.

I stayed at a beautiful B&B with wonderfully gracious hosts – The Elmview B&B in the Tollcross area south of Edinburgh Castle, across from The Meadows. Randy and Nicci, my wonderful hosts, are great sources for local information and ideas of what to do. And the breakfasts were divine.

Off I went exploring one of my favorite cities in the world, first to the Castle to visit the humble St. Margaret’s Chapel and the beautifully solemn National War Memorial.

http://www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk/index/tour/highlights/highlights-scottish-national-war-memorial.htm. Inside were a couple of areas dedicated to wartime nurses in various organizations, and I found the whole memorial to be very moving. Afterwards I walked to the National Museum to see the Lewis Chessmen, a collection of 12th century Scandinavian carved walrus ivory chess pieces that were found in Uig on the Isle of Lewis in 1831. I love the expression on the Berserker, as seen in this postcard:

photo courtesy of National Museums Scotland

I finished the day off with haggis, neeps, and tatties and more walking.

Happy New Year!

View of Mt. Rainier from I-90 floating bridge at 9:30 am

Sami and Jeanne, two of my hiking buddies, decided that a snowshoe outing was just the way to celebrate the first day of the new year. We settled on snowshoeing up a forest road near the Gold Creek Sno-Park that ends up overlooking the Kendall Lakes. This trail cuts across the face of a hill that overlooks I-90 as it descends Snoqualmie Pass (if you're going towards Spokane), and because of this, it can get some wild weather. Today the wind was blowing 30 - 40 mph at the summits around Snoqualmie Pass. Great potential for blowing snow, cold-cold-cold wind, and, as we found out, faulty equipment! More on that later.

Maple wings

It was a beautiful day when we arrived! Fortunately, we weren't in the path of the winds on the side of the hill we were walking until we reached the area at about 4,000' where you can either continue upwards to the top of a hill where you see lakes in the summertime, or over to an adjacent unnamed hill just south of Guye Peak. We could see clouds of snow blowing off its top as well as the summits of Silver Peak, Denny Mountain, McClellan Butte, and Snoqualmie Mountain. Rampart Ridge loomed to our SE and because of the temporarily clear weather, we could see contours of nooks and crannies accentuated by the snow that usually don't stand out as well.

Rampart Ridge

Denny Mountain

Snowman kit
Jeanne getting ready to head downhill

In addition to the normal 10 Essentials that one should carry with them out in Nature, one should also have a bandana or two. The front gripper of one of my wonderful 8 year old bright red snowshoes broke away from the metal connector and all of a sudden my gait was somewhat crab-like. Hmmm. It was easy to sink down 1 - 2' in this great powder, so I really didn't want to just walk in my boots. But I remembered that I had a bandana - color-coordinated a nice red - so I tied the gripper through the first strap and around the side of the snowshoe. It actually held very well and even though I had to drag that shoe a little in order to reduce snow buildup under my boot, it didn't slow us down going either uphill or downhill.















Happy trails and great journeys to everyone during 2008!

A White Christmas

Lake Keechelus

10" of snow fell Christmas Eve, traction tires were required on Snoqualmie Pass, and the 4WD had a full tank of gas, so obviously I had to head out for the first snowshoe of the season! My destination was at the Hyak exit east of the pass where the parking lot was already full of new plastic sleds and lots of happy little folks under 4' tall. I followed part of the Iron Horse Trail, dodging large pickup trucks and many off-leash dogs all the way down to the lake. A smallish peninsula juts out into this stump-filled reservoir, and that looked like a nice place to sit for a bit and take in the scenery. Since it was 22 degrees and a chilly wind whistled through the pass and over the lakes along the highway - which gave the back of my head an ice cream-type brain freeze - I didn't stay too long. Here are a few pictures from this sojourn.

Interesting conifer

My Annual Favorite Street Sign

Scout Lake, 11-11-07

I'd heard that the weather in the mountains wouldn't be too bad (always a subjective notion), so off I went with a neighbor to see if the big storms last year had obliterated the road to the Scout Lake trailhead. The old logging road was potholed enough, but entirely driveable.

There is a very underused road partway up the main logging road, and that's where we began our hike. The weather was very grey, but the snow line was very clear and we were going to go above it. We loaded up on the usual extra clothing, food, H2O, gloves, and hats. And did we ever need them when we got to the lake at 3900' and the wind came down the side of the cirque and across the water! It must have easily been in the 20s with the windchill.

Talus covered much of this side of the lake. Lots of avalanche potential when heavy snow. And of course I'm standing on the icy, snowy rocks at the base of that talus in the bottom picture.The path parallels Hansen Creek and one would think that you could just walk along the banks, but no, there are some nice 10 - 20' dropoffs with waterfalls, tons of fallen trees and defoliated Devil's club (thorns wholely intact). Redtwig dogwood, brilliant green ferns, golden orange chantarelle mushrooms, and dark, dark green conifers made up most of the landscape until we got into the snow, and it all became the dark green equivalent of sepia and white. I imagine in a few weeks there will be at least a foot or two of snow, and white and the dark brown of any exposed trunks will dominate the visual field.

This little waterfall is just below the outlet of Scout Lake.

But the few inches of sticking snow that we walked through was plenty cold and Scout Lake was starting to freeze over with a slushy layer that rippled in places according to whatever was underneath it. A waterbug skimmed the surface and I can't imagine that it had much of a protective fat layer to hold it over the winter. The reflected trees and rocks on the glassy surface resembled a Fair Isle sweater pattern.

The hike up was 1 1/2 hours, only 1 hour down - pretty slippery mud along the way and several blowdowns to climb over. Oh, yes, and there was that 30' traverse over the creek balancing on 2 large trees...

This is only the last third of the crossing.

Coming down the road we had a clear view of the Granite Mt. lookout across I-90. A dusting of snow covered its bald top and I'm sure the wind coming down the I-90 valley kept it even colder than where we had been!

Lookout at the very top of Granite Mt.

Mt. Washington (Cascades) 10-27-07

Mt. Washington, elev 4800', north of the Chester Morse reservoir

Interior central Cascades

A very crazy week promised to end with a beautiful autumn weekend, so a fellow school nurse and I went out I-90 to Mt. Washington, west of the Snoqualmie Pass summit at exit 38. The drive started with considerable fog, especially in the urban valleys of Seattle and the Eastside, but farther east found a bright blue sky shining over the multicolored mountains. Mountain laurel, vine maple, birch, aspen, and oak were all just past their prime, but there was a dominant rust color that blended in so well with the evergreens.

Fog towards the west

It is a 5 mile hike to the summit, and somehow we missed the turnoff halfway up to the new trail (and nicely-done new trail, thank you to those responsible for that!) and took the old trail past a pond that had ice cracking between logs and branches that had with met the water due to wind or beaver. We came to a spot where the temperature dropped to the upper 30s - wooo, it got really nippy really fast - and the beginning of frost and ice on the trail. The trail itself is not as steep as some, but it was very rocky and wet leaves were both blessing and hindrance as they softened the path but made it awfully slick in places. After a couple of icy scrambles that left us considering how much care we would have to take to navigate the steep, curved frozen hills of dirt on the way down, we located the new, improved trail! It was a boulevard compared to what we'd been on, so we opted to continue to the top.

Beautiful Washington State granite

Ice

First snow and snowball of the season!

The autumn colors were not prevalent on this hike; most of the leaves had fallen or there simply weren't alot of eye-popping deciduous trees. The reason you go to Mt. Washington is for the views. Oh, my. One can see Mt. Rainier (a little cloud-covered, but right there on the near horizon), Mt. Baker over Mt. Teneriffe and Green Mtn., and Glacier Peak in the distance. For most of the morning there was fog over parts of Lake Washington and the nearby valleys, but it cleared up in the early afternoon. It was one gorgeous day for a hike!

Sami and the weather station, summit

Glacier Peak

Mt. Rainier (lower part of mountain)