East to West Photos: Day 31

Tues 19 April (0825-1430) (Musselburgh to Edinburgh)
Distance: 13 miles (Tot: 543)
Weather: rain in night! Day: high cloud clearing to wall-to-wall hazy sunshine

This was a day that surprised me, mainly because I hadn’t expected to walk through a seaside resort as we skirted Edinburgh. I also hadn’t expected to walk past the Scottish Parliament building and thus get a glimpse of what all the overspend fuss was about. First though our day started out at the ‘Ash Lagoons’. The oldest ash-dumping areas have now been landscaped into green areas with lakes.

But further on the area is still used for the dumping of ash from Cockenzie Power Station. I should have put Mick in the foreground of this photo to give a sense of how huge these ash piles are.

This French couple must have heard about Scotland’s liberal access laws and had decided that it was appropriate to wild-camp on a residential street, alongside the River Esk!

Having heard the night before about how this is a borough which goes all out to obtain ‘Loo of the Year’ awards, I was amused to have that borne out just hours later when I wandered into these facilities:

Soon after we were officially in Edinburgh, even though our route really only skirted the very edge:

It was on that edge that we found a proper promenade, and a long sandy beach! There were even the obligatory amusement arcades further on.

Like a millpond! (Or a milk-pond, to some people…)

Those blue skies really did make the harbours look attractive today:

But the day wasn’t without a bit of haziness, which increased as the day went on:

Perhaps it was because we were so focussed on Cramond Island (the land emerging from the mist in the snap above) that we overshot our campsite…

When we got there Mick was perturbed by this sign. Looking over at the only other tent in the field he turned to me and said ‘But I don’t want to pitch 3 metres away from that tent when the rest of the field is empty!’. Based on the instructive wording of the sign, he had a point!

The original post for the day can be found here.