Edinburgh – Arthur’s Seat

On Saturday just past I popped over to Edinburgh for my once-every-two-or-so-months-sometimes-longer catch up with Jono. Since the weather was fairly nice, and it’s always good to do something a bit different beyond just get lunch or a coffee, we decided that we would go up Arthur’s Seat. Katie was also in town to visit Jono, so we all spent a rather pleasant afternoon scrambling up hills and eating excellent Curry. In fact I’d say that the Mosque Kitchen is actually one of the most important locations to visit on this excursion.

We started out from the North end of Holyrood park, next to Dynamic Earth and the Parliament Building, climbing up first towards St. Anthony’s Chapel. We stopped on the ledge just below the chapel where you can find some carbonised plant remains. I was almost entirely certain that I took a photo of these, but judging by the contents of my memory card I apparently didn’t. The view down towards St. Margaret’s Loch is pretty however:

St. Margaret's Loch

View back Towards Edinburgh

From St. Anthony’s Chapel you can see back the way we climbed (see above). At this point we’re already up onto the Basaltic Lavas which make up Whinny Hill. From here we continued climbing upwards, eventually transitioning from the Lavas to some Agglomerates. The top of Arthur’s seat is a mixture of Vent Breccias as well as porphyritic Basalts.

Foreground: Vent Breccia | Middle Distance: Dunsapie Hill (Basalt) | Far Distance: North Berwick

Posing for Photos halfway up

View out from the Top (Basalt), over Salisbury Crags (Basic Sill). Note Castle Rock in the distance (Basaltic Plug/Crag and Tail)

At the top we waited for the large group of tourists to get out of the way, then stopped for a break at the trig point. At this point Jono decided to regale us with the delightful tale of a group of his friends who apparently decided to strip-off up there on a foggy day. This is a fairly typical Jono story.

Jono and Katie at the Top (view North towards the Firth of Forth)

We then continued westwards, going down the hard way. Here’s the slightly terrifying view back towards the top:

View Back up (Foreground is mostly Agglomerate, Peak is Basaltic)

Jono seemed keen for some Quaternary Geology, so being the nerd I am I decided to take them down to the Roche Moutonnée which is nicely exposed as a road cutting on Queen’s Drive. My memory proved accurate, and we actually scrambled down the hillside basically right on top of it, startling a group of Rabbits. Whilst coming down we once again stopped for a quick break, and Jono took what has become one of my favourite photos of me:

Perched on an Outcrop

I failed to get a good photo of the Roche Moutonnée, but if you’re dead keen I’m sure you can find one elsewhere. Before heading down for lunch I dragged the pair to one last stop: Hutton’s Section. Then, on the way back round we also briefly passed Samson’s Ribs – an example of lovely columnar jointing.

Jono's (Hutton's) Section

Samson's Ribs

Holyrood Park is a great day out if you’re wanting to get out into the field and clamber over some rocks. We only spent about 2 and a half hours there (so as not to bore the non-geologists too much), and barely scratched the surface of what you can see there – there’s heaps of other things to look at. So if you’re ever in Edinburgh and have a bit of free time, it’s a great place to go. It helps that it’s only 10 minutes away from the centre of the city.

The usual drill with regards to photos, higher resolution examples can be found on my flickr page (until they get knocked off by new ones).

Recommended Reading:

Craig, G.Y. and Duff, P. McL. D. (Eds). (1975). The Geology of the Lothians and South East Scotland: An Excursion Guide. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh. [This is a great book, but I can't imagine it's particularly easy to find copies of].

University of Edinburgh Field Trip Info – Really fantastic summary of what’s going on with the geology of the area. I highly recommend it.

Tags: Carboniferous, Edinburgh, Geology, Jono, Quaternary