Author: mountweazel_ai10td

A gentle walk downhill from Fairmilehead to Morningside, with Auld Stanes and grand views out across the Forth.

Type

About 4km, not circular, downhill unless you want to deviate.

Getting there

Take the #4 bus to the stop named “Caiystane View” at the top of Oxgangs Road.

Alternatively, the #5 to its terminus at Hunters Tryst and walk east up Oxgangs road, or the #11 to Fairmilehead Cross and walk west along Oxgangs Road.

Route

Oxgangs Road; Caiystane View; Caiystane Avenue; Caiystane Hill; Camus Avenue; Buckstone Terrace; Braid Road; Cluny Gardens; Morningside Road.

Getting back

Lots of choices from Morningside, but the #5 takes an interesting route through the Grange, the Southside and finally gives great views as it comes down the Mound.

Curios

  • The Caiy Stane
  • Fairmilehead Park
  • The Buck Stane
  • The Braid Burn
  • The Hingin Stanes

Deviations

Lots of opportunities to deviate on this route. The obvious ones are a stroll round Fairmilehead Park, a hike up the Braid Hills Trail, or a wander along the Hermitage of Braid.

Refreshments

The legendary Canny Mans’ or the local’s local “wee” Bennett’s of Morningside. A multitude of cafés and bistros. Morningside is not known for fine dining.

Description

<Narrative to be written>

Paris

Although I first visited Paris on the Magic Bus in 1978, we passed through, stopping only for a breakfast of croissant and café, gazing astonished at La Tour Eiffel.

I returned in 1980, still poor, and stayed a week at Hotel de France off the Place de Clichy, the bar a home of exotic transvestites. 

I visited again many times, with work, on vacation, for conventions and twice for shopping weekends, taking each of my daughters there for Christmas shopping as they turned sixteen.

Most recently, I passed through again, spending an evening dining in Gare de l’Est as we waited to board the Orient Express to Venezia.

 

 

 

Gare de l’Est, 2016 48°53′N 2°22′E

 

 

 

First moves

We hitchhiked from Scotland to Hull and took the ferry to Ostend, where we stayed in The Red Dragon, a pub with a squat above it, run by Welsh hippies. My first trip abroad. We ended up hitching to Amsterdam.

The following year I went to university and travelled no more until I’d graduated, when I took the Magic Bus from London to Athens in spring 1978 – sadly I didn’t own a camera. The trip from London was over four days – overnight to France, breakfast in Paris; by late afternoon we were driving through the Mont Blanc tunnel, and had breakfast on the second day in Milan.

At Trieste we crossed into still-Communist Yugoslavia – the bus operators were smugglers, and had exactly 200 Marlborough cigarettes, 1 litre of Metaxa brandy and 1 Bible for every passenger, those being the personal allowances that the Yugoslav border guards could not object to. Once over the border, the contraband was reclaimed from us and delivered that night in Belgrade. 

On the final leg, one driver abandoned us at the start of his shift in Thessaloniki (his home), meaning the swing-shift driver had to do a second 12-hour stint, kept awake by us passengers crowded around him singing and playing guitar. By the time we limped into Athens it was 3 a.m., and we had to wait till 7 o’clock to get into our hotel, having been up all night.

After only one full night in Athens, we realised we could not afford to stay in the city, and set off for Naxos, where we spent the rest of the vacation camped for free on the beach.

 

 

 

Hitchhiking in 1972
Oostende, 1972 51°14′N 02°55′E