I'll make my own path, thanks: Day 4, Aug 13 (Monday)

Day 4, Aug 13 (Monday)

Shopping for rain gear. Went to Tiso Outdoors, which is a lot like an REI, just not as big. Bought Diane a new jacket and some waterproofing for mine (which worked really well). Later had coffee and honey cocoa cake at Clock’s in Leith. Diane found a nice place to hide a letterbox in the Leith Links, a local park across the street from our hotel.

Took a bus to Gilermton Cove, an underground attraction in a south Edinburgh suburb. Bus service in Edinburgh is amazingly good. There are tons of options and they go everywhere with high frequency pretty much all day and night.

the unassuming front.

the dorky hats were required

punch bowl and kitty pic

Gilmerton Cove is a local mystery. It’s an underground tunnel and chamber system that isn’t very large (although some is obstructed and filled in due to Drum St above it, and nobody knows how far that goes). Nobody knows where it really came from; it was walled up sometime before the 1700’s, and then again after the 1800’s and then reopened by some local guy in the 20^th century. There is no record of origin for it, and some of the shafts to the surface are at very true to east/west locations. There are a couple of chambers with “tables” and a “bed” or “altar” that seem to have been used for rituals of some kind. Local conjecture is anything from the religious war eras of the 1500’s-1700’s to all the way back to the druids. This one gave us the creeps in a few places. We were with a woman and her 3 very well behaved children on the tour. It was nice to be with others that are passionate about history like us.

Walked over to the Abbey Lodge nearby for lunch. Fun local place, not a tourist area at all. Chatted up some locals that were doing some day drinking because they are retired. The game shows were funny and a little odd. They old men were clearly staring in rapture at them.