Scotland Week Part 3: Arthur's Seat

In Edinburgh, you basically have two ends to the city. At one end is Edinburgh castle, high on a hill above the city. At the other end, connected by a road called The Royal Mile, is Holyrood Palace and the Scottish Parliament building, backed by the dramatic scenery of Arthur's Seat. On our free afternoon in Edinburg a few of my friends and I casually decided to climb Arthur's Seat. It was nice out, we were in Scotland, why not?  We clearly had no idea what we were doing.

It started out so civilized

Halfway up. I didn't know what was coming, clearly.

First of all, we were confused as to which mountain was actually Arthur's Seat. There's a really distinctive one that we all thought was the Seat, but it turns out it's an entirely different hill. Arthur's Seat is behind it, and about twice as high. Secondly, none of us were particularly dressed for hiking. We were wearing boots of the non-hiking variety, and Denae was in a dress. Lastly, we had't read the weather very well at all. 

The tippy top!

At first it seemed like everything would be fine. The path, while not paved per say, was graveled and fairly flat. Then it started to slope up. And up. And up. It finally got the point where we were basically rock climbing without a rope. It felt that way to me, at least. Now, I realize that Scottish "mountains" are little tiny babies when compared with, like, Mt. Hood, but tell that to me when I'm clinging to the side of one. Then, predictably, as soon as we hit the top it started storming. Incredible wind combined with moderate rain and the exposed face of a mountaintop makes for uncomfortable hikers. We didn't even stay at the top long enough to eat the celebratory fudge we'd bought ahead of time.

All worth it for the spectacular view

So then we had to crawl down, now with the additional challenge of inclement weather that had turned the solid dirt to muddy slip n slides. Through an act of God, none of us really fell over, though I did end up with a sizable bruise on my thigh. It was dark and windy and cold and wet and we were miserable. By the time we hit the bottom, we still had a twenty plus minute walk to our hostel. Dripping and freezing, we burst through the doors like we'd found the gates to Heaven. 

Wet and cold but still happy

As crazy and miserable as it was, all any of us could talk about afterwards was the story. Now we have a story, a conversation we can start with "Remember that time we climbed a volcano in Scotland in a storm?" That's what living life is all about, right? Having shared experiences we can talk and laugh about for the rest of our lives.

The mountain that did not beat us