Walked to the Royal Palace of Holyrood after breakfast, and did a tour of the Palace with an audio guide that was very good.
i think it would be nifty being a royal, although quite a few of them have made rather hard work of it over the years. They seem to allow religion and politics to get in the way of simply reigning and having a good time.
The weather started off with occasional rain and a bit chilly, and only deteriorated as the day went on.
From Holyrood we walked up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh castle. On the way we passed Baron Maule Close. Maule was my maiden name. I took a photo of this sign 30 plus years ago when I was here as a student. It’s still here, but in the meantime some rapscallion appears to have draped a banana skin over it, which detracts somewhat.
We did a guided tour of the Castle with a live (and lively) tour guide called Richard. He asked us where we were all from, and when I said New Zealand, he said the weather must seem familiar then. I was quite affronted, and said “Rude!”, but actually on reflection, he was probably quite right. If anything, it was a bit better than what we often get, because it wasn’t windy,
The castle is an assembly of assorted stone buildings of various ages, most of which were museums of one sort of another, which the guide isn’t allowed to take us into. The tour was thus all outside. We were there for the 1pm firing of the howitzer canon which was fun. I see I’ve taken no pictures at all of either palace or castle today which is a little remiss. Also remiss was not spending more time at the conference, so at the end of the tour I gave up queuing to see the Stone of Scone in person – soon to be moved the Scone Abbey – and headed back down the hill to the conference centre.
The talks were excellent, on frailty and death. One of the doorman waved at me as I was leaving the venue, I thought it was a friendly farewell, but he was just asking me to leave my name badge and lanyard behind.
Time for the briefest of naps before a vegetarian dinner, cocktails and bed. We farewell David and Kirsten here, as they are heading off to climb Ben Nevis. Simon and I have just a couple more days here before flying to Istanbul and catching up with some more expensive friends.