Living in Edinburgh and having not taken enough advantage of the nice tiny mountains we have right in (near) the middle of the city, I thought it might be nice to spend a month hiking (walking) up Arthur’s Seat every day. Also, it’s not that difficult, but it is enough to cause a sweat and get the breath rate up (because I’m unfit) and theoretically it’s something I could do before work (I will pack deodorant in my bag).
December’s almost over and there are holidays coming up, so if I’m going to have a month-long challenge, I might as well start on January 1st and pretend it’s like a New Years resolution I only have to keep to for a month. I’m going to make it 31 hikes in 31 days, as there may be times where, for whatever reason, I can’t do it in the daylight for, so I’ll just have to make up for it by climbing twice on another day (I’ll try to keep to 7 a week, so there’s no massive backlog, but maybe no more than two a day just to make sure I have to have some horrible rainy times…). Does anyone think this is worthy of a charity sponsorship appeal? I don’t want to be presumptuous.
Anyway, this started when I went up yesterday on a whim, and today I went up and timed myself to see how well I could fit it into my daily schedule. The way I see it, it’s a nice wake-up, it’s like a free gym, and without all the embarrassment.
Today I was also working out which routes would be the quickest and least dangerous. I ended up going down a really stupid way and to avoid death from falling down a (small) mountain, I ended up re-enacting that bit in controversial Disney favourite Song of The South where Br’er Rabbit gets thrown in the Briar Patch. Except I don’t have Br’er Rabbit’s mad-spike-avoiding-skills and ended up getting spiked by scary Scottish plant-life a fair few times.
Anyway, here was how long it all took me:
Left for Arthur’s Seat
10:41
Arrived at Roundabout Near Base of Arthur’s Seat
11:10
Arrived at Main Base of Arthur’s Seat
11:12
Arrived at Base of Rocky Top of Arthur’s Seat
11:25
Arrived at Top of Arthur’s Seat
11:27
Heading Down
11:32
Back to the Base
11:48
Back to the Roundabout
11:52
At the top I took a picture of the triangulation pillar, with today’s news on my BlackBerry. It didn’t really work. I’ll come up with some better idea later, but here it is anyway for fans of blurry BlackBerry photos:
If I was to go for charity-sponsorship it wouldn’t be for the physical skill or hardship involved (except that I’m totally unfit, but will hopefully be a bit fitter by the end), but for the discipline to get up early every day before work, and just to make me feel guilty enough to continue to do it. Oh and for the charity.
What do people think of Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland? My grandmother used to do a lot of volunteering for the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Canada (amongst many other things), so it’s a bit of a sentimental link.
