Scottish Wilderness?

You can get on a bus in the center of Edinburgh, bright and busy and modern, and sit for 4 minutes, and end up among hills and farmlands. Really. It’s a complete transformation. And a popular one on Sundays.

We headed out to the Pentland Hills today. Just a few miles southeastish of Edinburgh, these large hills (not quite the size of the reliable Appalachias) are dotted with sheep, large farmsteads and fishermen’s camps. Beware of the anglers backcasting. The most important rule.

We arrived at Balerno in the late morning and amid gray skies. It sprinkled here and there, but that didn’t stop the many hillwalkers from breaking away from city routine and escaping to the green hills. We chose a path that would take up through the hills without actually ascending any big ones (I was sore from a kickboxing session), about a 9-mile loop, not counting the distance to the park from our various bus stops. A good day, trip.

I hate to be brief, but taking a hike like that is really all about inner reflection and relaxation. I could tell you how misty and green everything was in the mornings, how the sun pushed through the fog and brought out each of the minute greens and yellows and pinks in the hills, or how I’m pretty sure one of the horses I saw was foundering, but it’s not something I recorded color-for-color, step-for-step, to be written down in a blog entry later. It was nice to spend a day out of the city, without car noises and crosswalk beeps and tourists wandering aimlessly and in large, space-consuming quantities down the street. In Gardiner, I could walk easily into the park or national forest and escape the hoards; here, I have been surrounding by the hoards inescapably for 9 months. While the Pentlands are kind of a cute, if fruitless attempt at creating mountains in Scotland, the whole hike was really... nice.

And of course, at the end of our journey, we found a delightful pub with a beer garden, strategically placed at the Penicuik entrance to the park, just for weary and relaxed hillwalkers ending their journeys. Rock on, park planners.