Corstorphine Hill is a name of significance for all walkers and hillwalkers, being an early case taken up by the “Association for the Protection of Public Rights of Roadway in and around Edinburghâ€. Continue reading Walk – Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh
Author: John Davidson
Walk – The Hermitage and Blackford Hill, Edinburgh
From Blackford Hill in Edinburgh you can walk half a mile with small children and feed the ducks in Blackford Pond or you can go for a strenuous 3-mile run. Here is an interesting and varied walk. As it is a figure of 8, you can join in anywhere, do half only, as you like. Continue reading Walk – The Hermitage and Blackford Hill, Edinburgh
Hitting the Heights (of West Lothian)
For this walk, we feature a trip out of Armadale along the old M8 – no, not that one. The road we’re referring to is the original road between Glasgow and Edinburgh, that was built in the 1640s and was the first road in Scotland of more than a metre wide.
Binny Craig – Lothian Walks
I worked for many years in Fife and learned to pick out our West Lothian hills from the other side of the water. Easiest to recognise are, without a doubt, Cockleroi and Binny Craig. Now everybody knows Cockleroi, Linlithgow’s hill, with access from Beecraigs Country Park, and the Knock, Bathgate’s hill, and Cairnpapple, the Beaker People’s hill, but it never fails to surprise me how few people know where Binny Craig lies and how to get there.
The Esks at Dalkeith
Rivers of the Lothians are like members of a family – the North Esk at Roslin, the Avon near Linlithgow, Almond, Water of Leith etc. The valleys bear certain resemblances to one another. They are all beautiful but, as I was brought up here, Dalkeith must have the finest setting of all.
Fauldhouse to Levenseat
Walking from Fauldhouse to Levenseat and back, some of the earlier industrial development in West Lothian seems to us now, unbelievably tasteless and destructive. But it was seldom on a huge scale and towns and villages stayed fairly compact, so that people did not lose touch with open country. Again, as mining and heavy industry have died out, the scars disappear, to leave behind areas of country that are often enhanced by recent industrial history.