The scheduling just couldn’t be made to work. We would arrive from Doha at 6:30am, with the only available connection to Shetland leaving at 7:30am; so we had a stopover in Edinburgh, and flew to Shetland early afternoon the next day. This gave us a day and a half in Edinburgh.
After waiting for an early check-in at the hotel, we decided we would get the tram into the city. Last time we chose the bus; the tram would be a new experience that would take us through different areas.
The walk from the hotel that promoted itself as ‘within easy walking distance of the terminal,’ was neither straightforward, nor convenient. We had dragged out bags uphill over rough bitumen pavements in need of repair just to get to the hotel; now the walk back along a different path proved to be just as frustrating without any luggage.
After a couple of detours, we discovered the tracks and arrived at the station The attempt to crack the coding of the ticket machine failed, so we asked for the assistance of a uniformed supervisor who said that he could sell us two return tickets: nineteen pounds. There was a silent “Gosh!” as the payment was made.
We waited and pondered: we had been told that a tram leaves every seven minutes, but we had been waiting for longer. A tram eventually arrived and folk filled the carriage voids.
Before we could pull out, another tram pulled in. Soon after we had left we passed yet another tram on its way to the airport. It seems that public transport likes to travel in groups everywhere across the globe.
After a slow start the speed picked up, until we reached the next stop; after comings and goings we were off again, and again. A uniformed man came by and asked for tickets. It seemed that his job was to cancel the tickets with a scribble through a box. It seemed to be a tedious process when technology promised so much.
The country opened up to green fields and nearby hills as we left the airport, offering an idyllic vision of Scottish countryside. The enjoyment was not to last very long. A grand country house could be seen surrounded by a clustered modernist development, the beginning of what was to come. We passed stations with ‘park-and-ride’ parking areas, and other railway connections. People arrived in no great number. Soon we were in industrial/commercial areas filled with large empty buildings up for lease or sale: most of them. What was happening here? Was this a reflection of the economy?
The vision was a foreboding of what was to come. We passed through areas filled with the wretched housing of the fifties and sixties; grim, dowdy, brown boxes with small rectangular openings and gabled roofs sat as a shambles around car parking zones, connected to the nearby tram station via a dirt, goat’s track about half a kilometre long weaving through high weeds. It hardly looked comfortable or convenient.
More housing appeared; and more development: a drive-through Costa was the first ever seen; a new convenience. Did the locals not have time to sit? Murrayfield, a dour modernist amphitheatre that looked like it needed some attention, appeared gnarled and old as a worn metal and concrete mass.
The density of development grew more intense, but equally alarming. What seemed likely to be fashionable, sixties commercial mega-structures were now boarded up, almost derelict.
As we approached the city centre, more dirty sandstone buildings appeared, and then the streets of shops came into view. These looked rundown, grimy: more appeared. We knew we were close to what one might consider to be the city centre when the familiar names appeared: Waterstones; H&M; Boots; etc. We alighted at Princes Street, aimlessly. We had come to experience a city we had not visited for some years. “We’ll go this way.”
The street felt uneasy; the broad footpath was filled with a chaos of movement, crowds crashing along carelessly, irrespective of anyone else’s trajectories. One was left zigzagging along the momentum of an open flow. It was the missing canopy that left one feeling exposed. Coming from a subtropical clime where footpath awnings are used for public shelter, one is left wondering why they would not be useful in cold, wet Edinburgh.
The stroll was hardly enjoyable. What were the masses doing other than walking along? Was anyone shopping? To us, the shops seemed boring, on a street that was oddly one-sided: shops one side; park the other: in between were tram tracks and the lanes for buses, buses, more buses, and cars. What was going where in such quantities? It seemed to be a town planning arrangement that might look good on paper; but it left much to be desired.
We turned to stroll uphill at Hanover Street, away from this lopsided pandemonium. We stopped for a coffee and then strolled along Rose Street, the road parallel to Princes Street. Ah, at last, a true street, buzzing with people in an enclosed zone lined both sides with jewellery stores, pubs, and cafes. There was a real ‘street’ quality here that one could enjoy, but there was the suggestion that places had been left to run down. Some buildings were for lease or sale; others were boarded up. Remnants of the sixties and seventies appear to be seeking assistance in their dilapidation; the sandstone of the older buildings was begging to be cleaned.
We strolled to St. Andrew’s Square and then turned back down the national Cycle Route 75 to Princes Street to discover more sad, boarded, sandstone structures. Sprawling on the footpath was a group of ‘lads’ with one throwing rubbish through the open vent of a passing tram, while others sat banging the pavement with their proprietary ‘break glass’ tools ignoring this bravado. What mayhem was being planned here? Did these boys come from the housing estates we had passed? We crossed Princes Street to walk by Princes Street Gardens. People were out sunning themselves in the available patches of bright light. The huge Scott Memorial seemed out of place and scale, standing in its sooty blackness screaming out for a scrubbing. The massive public presence looked like a declaration of an effort that could no longer be matched today, let alone sustained.
The same thought came to mind again as The Royal Scottish Academy was approached. Edinburgh did not enthuse; why did it have such an idyllic reputation? Even the castle seemed like a dirty rock, cluttered with the dominant seating stands of its grand military display event. We these now permanent structures?
Looking across the road, the once pretty sandstone detailing no longer excited. Edinburgh was a boring hustle, an ooze of walking people seeking something that was not there. With nothing better to do, people photographed a young man making a lot of drumming noise to blaring recorded music outside Waverley Station. It was hardly a cultural event. We sat on the steps of what looked like the derelict academy building and watched the passing crowds with as much enthusiasm and interest as everyone else.
“Have you had enough?” With an affirmative nod, we rose and strolled to the tram stop we had arrived on, and waited; and waited as the buses roared by by the dozens. The question was: why are so many buses driving along the tram tracks? Is public transport just left to be a disorganised competition?
A tram eventually arrived, full; still the crowds moved in. We were left standing nearly all the way to the airport. As we retraced the marathon, maze of a walk to the hotel, we resolved that next time we would get the airport shuttle bus. The tram was hardly an airport service; it was a suburban facility that terminated at the airport. It did not appear to enrich Edinburgh ,the city that one kept wondering about: how can such an apparently struggling place maintain such a sparkling reputation?
We looked through the tourist guide booklet in the hotel room: were we missing something? Unfortunately, no. Edinburgh seems to thrive on a vision rooted in myth, like Scottish nationalism and the desire for independence. The guide declared the sheer excitement of the Camera Obscura and a World of Illusions. Maybe one needed to see Edinburgh through this gadget, as through rose-tinted glasses, if one wanted to maintain the promoted vision?
Perhaps the approach to the airport immigration section as one embarked from the plane should have been seen as a warning. Corridors and bridges hundreds of metres long are punctuated with a flight of stairs up, and then a flight of stairs down. It is a most inconvenient welcome that no one seems concerned about. The city itself is a bit like this. Is this a sign of our times where cost of living and grimy politics seems to be on everyone’s lips? Will the election on 4 July 24 really make any difference? If Britain had not left Europe, maybe things would have been better? There might have been money to clean up some of the classical delights that frame the streets and fill the Photoshopped tourist guides of Edinburgh.
“Let’s go to Glasgow next time.”
