Day 58: The Firth of Forth

Distance: 19.4 miles
Urchins: 4

The normal way end to enders head west from Edinburgh is to follow the Union canal towpath from the heart of the city out toward Falkirk. I remember sitting at our living room table, a hundred years ago, marking that route with highlighter on our map. It seemed like the right way to go: flat, direct, easy to follow. But my eye kept wandering north, to the coastline of the Firth of Forth, where the map showed manor houses, bridges, beaches, cliffs, and castles. It felt like that's where it was at. I made a second highlighted line that was longer, and a little sketchier, with a few spots where it wasn't quite clear how to get from one path to the next. That was our route today.


Nearly twenty miles with a couple of sketchy bits made this a tough day one for Jan and Michael, though neither slowed down much until the time came to climb the B&B stairs at the very end of the day. Here they are at lunch, in a terrific high end pub we ran into after our first ten miles.


After ten miles of clear sailing, we hit the first spot where the path on the map wasn't real clear. It wasn't real clear on the ground either. We had left South Queensferry on a dirt road that looked well travelled, and went in the right direction, but after a half mile if came to an abrupt end with barbed wire topped fences and coils of razor wire.


Getting through looked like it could be dicey. But I didn't want to backtrack a half mile. So I poked around and scrambled to a place where there was a road, the road we should have taken, just over the fence. And right there someone had clipped the barbed wire, and one of the fence posts was missing. Looks like we were not the first to get stuck here. It was tight, but we were able to pass our packs over the top and squeeze through the tight opening.


An hour or two past lunch, we passed Hopetaun House, billed as "the finest stately home in Scotland". It's a pretty sweet place, with a real Downton Abbey feel. No servants lined up to greet us, but there was a stone sphinx lady with an iron ring bolted to her chest.


Even though lunch was still a recent memory, and we still had miles to walk, we could not help but stop for tea.


We started through the extensive gardens of the back yard, where we ran across four children, stuck with their Moms on the wrong side of the wall, a rusted gate between them and us. I decided to help and see if we couldn't bust them out.


A Mom held the youngest one up on her side of the gate. The little girl looked concerned when the giant man with the big hat reached over, picked her up under her arms, and swooshed her over the top, but she was smiling once she was flying. I flew them all to our side; it was great fun! Then there we were, four small English children on our side, and two English Moms on the other side. The Moms were young and fit, but it was a tall wall. Impasse. It seemed I'd be flying the kids back to the other side. But then, one of the Moms made up her mind that she really could climb the wall, and, after a couple of false starts, she pulled herself up and made it over. Her oldest child, the red headed boy, beamed. "Well done, Mum!", he said proudly. We moved on, our work at Hopetaun House complete.


The path moved into a wood, which was nice since the wind had really picked up. Through the trees and over the water, we could see Blackness Castle, out on a spit sticking into the firth.


By the time we go to Blackness, it was past five o'clock, and we still had a few miles to go, so we skipped the twenty minute walk to the castle and continued along the shore to Carriden House. It was a long day, and we were glad to get there!


Tomorrow we leave the shore of the firth, making our way south to the Union canal towpath, and on to Falkirk.

Location:Carriden Steadings,Bo'ness,United Kingdom