Living on the Edge

Today, Heather invited me to go out for a "light jog" and we decided to go to Holyrood Park. This previously noted "light jog" turned out to be an epic adventure as we spontaneously decided ditch to the park and instead run up Arthur's Seat (a 350 million year old extinct volcano/a huge Highland-esque hill).

Exhibit A:

We didn't have our cameras with us (remember it was supposed to be a quick jog?) so thank you Google  for this picture of Arthur's Seat. To us at the time, it didn't look quite so..."wild" or very steep. In fact, it kind of looked rather small! 

So, we started to run up. It started getting challenging quite quickly but we kind of managed to run up the first bit and Heather totally dominated the foot-high stairs (me, not so much). We kind of started winding around and had to slow down when we got to the rock climbing part. Thank you one semester of P.E. rock climbing (like, really). I wasn't really sure what I was doing or where I was going but the view was absolutely fantastic.

Exhibit B:

There's the Scottish Parliament (at a lower elevation)

The peak

The peak was extremely windy and super awesome and a little scary at the same time. We touched the monument at the very top (I think it's 823 ft at the highest point) and then started our descent. We were attacked by these absolutely horrible prickly plants and we definitely went down the pro way because all those rocks and mud were not there for simple playtime. 

Exhibit C: 

Imagine this is us at the top!

Not really sure why, but I loved the soft grass on Arthur's Seat...

We finally made it down and made it in record time (14 minutes?) from Pollock to the front door of 4 Kincaid's...AND ran up the stairs. It was an epic adventure and I couldn't have done it without my Coach Heather :)