Sunset over the city



The sun had just set over Edinburgh as I left work this evening. Gathering gloom as darkness falls, lights one across the city and yet still there is some light fading light in the sky. So I took out my new toy and thought I'd try a couple of pictures to see what worked. This is the Castle, standing sentinel over Edinburgh atop the great volcanic rock and the Scott Monument, the largest monument to an author int he world. The carvings on this mock-Gothic version of Thunderbird 3 are incredibly intricate (and delicate to preserve), featuring a vast cast of characters from Walter Scott's novels in stone. The foundations alone go over 40 feet down into the Scottish bedrock - did the Victorians know how to build to last or what?



Sometimes the workaday week is a grind and life seems a pointless routine. But then I think of how I pass an enormous, history-steeped Castle overlooking beautiful gardens and walk past under the shadow of the Monument each and every day on my way to work. Medieval buildings, ridges and hills sculpted by glaciers, gorgeous gardens and mangnificent Georgian buildings, all rich with Scottish history, from the time of the Ice Age through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and the modern day. Even the pubs are historical - see here where great stones from the old city wall are now part of the wall of the pub; here is where Sorely MacLean and other Scottish poets met and chat and argued and drunk. Here is a spot from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, there a street from an Ian Rankin novel. I pass these every day going to and from work. And that is wonderful.