A small diversion for friends in lockdown

Morena Auckland. I hope the quick, decisive actions of your most capable leaders nail the Delta variant as efficiently as they moved the team of 5 million into lockdown. Your 10 cases would be a blessing here; 2,538 new infections today and a bunch of f***wits running the show. It's a completely different narrative but I'm really sorry your freedom has to be reined in for a while.

By way of a small diversion, I thought I'd share some pics from a favourite morning walk along the River Almond here in Auld Reekie - Edinburgh's nickname earned from hundreds of reekin lums (smoking chimneys) that used to smudge the city skyline on winter mornings before the 1950s smokefree zones policy. Nothing reeks much nowadays, except an occasional walker or cyclist sporting essence of weed.

This tranquil spot near 17thC Dowie's Sawmill is where my mother taught us kids to swim. The water runs deep and still beside the falls. BUT the level dropped in a drought one year to reveal the end of a large sewage pipe spewing forth onto the wall. We built immune systems strong in those days ;-)

Views along the two mile path.

 

There is a yacht club too. Devonport it ain't, but great sailing when the rain takes a break from lashing and the gales pause to take a breath. Lots of bird life here, kingfisher, crane, heron, swan, skua, gulls ... Must remember to bring binoculars.

 

The Kingdom of Fife lies across the Firth of Forth, with Cramond Island midway. Every local kid has a stranding story from crossing a causeway that's under water at half tide years ahead of mobile phones.

I love the juxtaposition of castle and oil refinery in this picture, but my camera wasn't good enough to show it well. 

The River Almond runs into the Firth of Forth at Cramond Village, settled by humans at least since the Roman occupation in 2CE. A few traces of history remain - a village pub that served punters for 300 years but sadly shows no signs of opening again; an auld kirk built on the remains of a Roman fort; a stone lion pulled from the riverbed in the 1970s. 

 

A popular story says clumsy Roman wharfies (or their unwilling servants) dropped the heavy statue during landing. I prefer to believe - without a shred of evidence - that jubilant locals heaved the last monument to their colonizers into the river as soon as they left. Think BLM and statues of slaveholders in 2020, and the long tail of history.

 

 

Nice houses in this part of town - worth roughly the same as a 3 bed home in Devonport.

 

That's all for now. Stay home, stay safe. Arohanui.