We went to a wonderful exhibition on Saturday at the City Art Centre of various rather charmingly random objects from different city collections. This is part of an amazing painted panorama of Edinburgh in the late 1700s: rather less built up than it is now.
And this is about 1870 - only ten years before my older grandfather was born, amazingly (to me), since all these fields are built over now and it's hard to believe that it all looked like this when he was a boy. This shows Craigleith Quarry, from which much of the stone for the New Town was taken. It's now completely filled in and there's a shopping centre there. We live not far away. It would be so nice if the city still looked so rural, though inconvenient if our house weren't there any more.
It was a lovely day as we walked home,
through the gardens,
watching people as they paid to climb the Scott Monument, which I did once in my energetic youth but don't plan to do again.
And along we went through another part of the gardens.
We admired the plants still flowering in Coates Crescent. (This is part of the New Town - begun in the 1760s and built of that Craigleith sandstone.) Edinburgh Council has started giving us these beds of herbaceous flowers instead of bedding plants. I like them but they'll be quite labour intensive. I'm interested to see whether they're just dug up after the season or cut down and left for next year.
I'm off to London tomorrow for a flying visit to Daughter 2. I can't wait to see her. Probably this will be my last visit before the baby arrives. Changes, changes... .
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