Hiking Weekend

This past weekend we went with our host to Edinburgh and stayed in their family flat for the weekend, which was awesome because we got a free place to stay and a free ride! A good chance to get away from the midges and see more of Edinburgh. Friday night we went to Mary Kings Close which is an underground tour of the royal mile. A close is essentially an alley but this one just had buildings built on top of it until it was completely underground. It was really interesting because it ensured the unchanged survival of old homes and businesses that existed in the 1700's. We couldn't take any pictures because it was under the the city council chambers.....something about taking pictures = us wanting to blow up the city council.

Saturday morning we got dropped off at the bottom of Arthur's Seat which is basically a mountain that is located right beside Edinburgh. It was fairly windy in the city but we still decided to climb up anyways, by the time we got to the top we were almost getting blown off! Which was really fun because you could just lean into the wind and not fall over or just jump straight up and get blown a few feet.

On the way down I spotted some ruins that turned out to be an old abbey, which was sweet cause you can just spot some ruins and check them out, can't really do that in Canada.

Ruins

In the Afternoon we headed back to Duchray to recover from our hike up the mountain. Sunday we had lunch and then headed out for a hike to find some ruins and Rob Roy's cave where he hid after fleeing the redcoats at Duchray. Discovered that there is actually a huge network of trails nearby, too bad we are running out of time to hike them all. Hiked for about five hours and saw the castle ruins, pretty much just an old stone wall, so a bit of a disappointment.

Hill of Torture

Could not find Rob Roy's cave either, afterwards the gardener told me where I could have found it....should have talked to the locals first I guess! After seeing the ruins we followed the trail which kind of ended which was ok because just over the hill is where the main trail was.....Little did I know the other side of the hill held a torturous journey in store for us. Thorns! Ferns! Midges! Moss covered logs that haven't been disturbed in a millennia! The worst bush whacking decision I have ever made. Took us over 20 minutes to cover 300m.


After that we headed back to the castle to recover. Our hosts took us out to the local pub for dinner which was really nice of them and then we watched England get knocked out of the Euro cup. This week Sophie has been doing a lot of painting in the castle, doing the trim and panels in one of the hallways. I have been taking all the moss out of the lawn an trying to remove the most stubborn paint from a 150 year old door. We leave Duchray this Friday, which kind of stinks as we have come to love hanging out with our hosts and the food is good. But on the other hand it will be soooo nice to get away from the midges! They are so small, last night they invaded our trailer as they can fit through typical screens. Our bodies are covered in bites and Sophie is going a little bit insane with scratching! On Saturday we leave for a tour of Northern Scotland for five days which should be lots of fun and then off to a sheep farm/B&B in Oban for our next job!