Feb 2, 3

Saturday, around 10am I biked over to Edinburgh Castle, where I was there until they fired off the 1 o'clock cannon. There are tons of museums and monuments and such in the castle to see. After that I headed back to John's place to grab all my gear and put it on the bike, which took a while. Getting the bike out of his flat also took a bit of work. Once I got going, I tried to take an alternate route through Edinburgh to avoid some of the hills, which of course didn't work and I ended up riding up the hills anyway. The royal mile is not exactly flat. Finally made it to the start of the canal out of Edinburgh around 4 which didn't leave much daylight so I didn't get more than 10 miles before having  to start to look for a place to camp. Most of the canal is completely separate from the rest of the countryside, making it impossible to leave the narrow stretch of land beside the canal, which made it really annoying to find a place. Also, the pavement ends not too far outside Edinburgh so I was going through about an inch of mud and water for the rest of it. The bike handled it fine, but I needed to find a place to stop before my light ran out, so I settled for the first field I was able to access.

Bit of a view from the castle:

One o'clock gun:

Military Museum (apparently since joining forces with the brits in 1700, the scots have been fighting all over the place):

Canal near Edinburgh:

Canal everywhere else:

Tucked in for the night:

Was sleeping well until about midnight when a ~40mph wind rolled in and started pushing my tent all over the place making noise.

Woke on the 3rd around 7:30am to get more daylight, the wind was still going strong and I had a heck of a time tearing down the tent. A Scot out walking his dog came by and commented on how "wild" a day it was.

Made my way back to the canal but made terrible time. Faced with 40mph of wind directly in my face on the open canal, skidding through the muck, and splashing through the water I was barely passing the dog walkers. After about an hour and a half, having made it only about 6-7 miles, with 40+ more to go in the same direction before being expected in Glasgow that night, I decided to take the train the rest of the way. There I met up with Hannah, another host, dropped off some gear and explored the city for 5 hours, after following her to a lunch spot at the top of an old church converted into a climbing center.

I guess they have so many churches here they just give them away. Inside of this:

is this:

Glasgow Cathedral:

Just beside the church is a huge necropolis on a hill: