16/08/08
Me, Arthur and Dawn -
Categories: My girlfriend's up this weekend. Woo! Haven't seen her in 3 weeks. What a bad boyfriend. And it's her birthday on Monday (and every August - which is a problem, given Edinburgh's timing.)
So we've lots of plans over the next few days, largely consisting of running between venues cos we've packed in too much. Something I do want to do at some point with her is (not that, but yes that, but that's not what I'm talking about here) Arthur's Seat at sunrise. I've done it once, 10 years ago, and I'm waiting to get the stamina to do it again. To climb Arthur's Seat for dawn, you need several things:
- Sturdy footwear
- A sense of the romantic
- A damaged body-clock, so you can still be awake and alert at 4am and ready to climb a mountain (alright, hill)
- A torch (I forgot this first time round - made it trickier)
- More ambition than sense
When I did it, I was up here with a play, and everyone else climbed it on our penultimate night. I was going to but fell asleep. When they returned, drunk, singing Climb Ev'ry Mountain, telling tales of the magical sights they'd seen, I thought I'd better do it too. Which left our last night, and everyone else had done it, so I was doing it alone. But I was determined, so at 4am, after a good 6-7 pints (I could drink that then, and still stand), off I trekked, alone and torchless. Cos how difficult can it be? You just head up. There's no need for a route or anything. In that sense climbing a mountain is easy: you can't go wrong - just go up.
(Incidentally you can go wrong on Arthur's Seat, cos there's a fake peak - you think you've climbed to the top and then you find you've climbed the wrong bit. So I had to go down and up again.)
Can I confess something too, dear bloggee? On a place like that, atop a mountain (I know it's a hill, but I'm sticking with mountain), you have to be naked, just once, to experience it. So I did. It was proper cold. So cold that I lasted all of about three seconds of the North Sea wind, just long enough to look down at the city of Edinburgh, go, "Ha-ha, I'm up here with no clothes on and you can't see me," before reclothing myself. Literally within five seconds of that, a couple of American tourists joined me, never knowing that seconds early they'd have had quite a surprise and potentially lost their footing.
Amazing. I hadn't seen a single person for the entire ascent (why would I? It was 4am on a Monday night/Tuesday morning), and I had about 30 seconds at the summit on my own (27 seconds clothed, 3 seconds unclothed), seeing that amazing view of the sun coming up over the sea, while the rest of Edinburgh remained in darkness... before Mr and Mrs Loudenbrash appeared at the top with me. I never saw them on the ascent, so they must have climbed the other side (the side with the path).
And the view there is great, especially at sunrise. I recommend it to anyone. To see the sun coming up over the sea, looking aimlessly out at (presumably) Norway, and then turning around and seeing the city beneath you to the west, with the sun slowly, but noticeably, lighting up the city bit by bit. Aw, I've gone all gooey. It's one of those images that will never leave my head. If you ever do it, just be aware that if someone's beaten you to the top, they may have had a similar idea to me... So brace yourself, cos you might see something that will also never leave your head, no matter how much you want it to.
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