John o'Groats to Land's End 2013: Day 15 – Linlithgow to Edinburgh

Saturday, 6 July 2013

Day 15 – Linlithgow to Edinburgh – 24 Miles

Before I continue to talk about today’s walk, I can officially confirm, thanks to Tim’s friend Pat in the pub last night, that the creature we saw in the woods at Inversnaid, was a Haggis!

Today’s walk was hard. Long, predictable and painful. We both now have blisters, brought on by the canal’s rough surface. This combined with the hot (yes the sun has finally shown its face) weather, meant that we are stopping every hour to let our feet breathe and apply any necessary remedies. The Union Canal is pleasant enough and pretty much devoid of boats. Plenty of people cycle and walk along the towpath, which is nicely wooded in places, but I’ve had enough of canals now and want to get back into more interesting terrain.

We stopped for lunch in Ratho, then after what seemed like forever, we got into the less attractive outskirts of Edinburgh and made our way towards the centre of the city. As always, we hadn’t booked any accommodation, so stopped in Costa for a coffee and made use of the free Wi-Fi to research places to stay. We soon found a nearby B&B that was just what we wanted and got checked in.

Later, we met up with an old friend Niki who kindly took us for a few drinks in a very trendy part of the city, filled with students and young types who were too busy having fun to bother about our less trendy apparel and flip flops.

We have now completed our “Z” shaped traverse of Scotland and tomorrow we head directly south for another 25 Miles to Peebles. Apparently it is set to get even hotter, but at least we will be off the canal.