Monday, May 16, 2016

Edinburgh: Part II...

First up on the Things to Do in Edinburgh List was a trip to the Beltane Fire Festival. This is  'a dynamic reinterpretation and modernisation of an ancient Iron Age Celtic ritual of a pagan festival to welcome summer', according to the website.

This saw me, the Missus, the Other Woman and the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella, plus several thousand other folk, gather on Calton Hill in the middle of the city to watch some pagan re-enactors crown the May Queen and set fire to stuff before processing around the hill.

It was quite a fascinating event, mainly because the PA system was awful so you has to fight your way close to the action to have any clue about what was going on. The lighting of the fire from the temple (pictured badly above) was quite impressive, but it also happened an hour later than advertised.

Pagans and pagan re-enactors are clearly no the most punctual of people. There were other events going on but it was a slapdash on the organisation front and information was quite hard to come by, despite the fact there was a printed leaflet.

So we stuck it out for a bit, then left and went to the pub. 
'We'll talk about this for minutes to come,' commented the Other Woman's Long-suffering Fella. I think even he realised he was being optimistic about this prediction.

 The following day we went to Edinburgh Castle, which was a much more organised and enjoyable experience. The Missus tried to attack a cannon and won, and we also had a poke about in the jail cells, which were very good.

In the evening, we ventured out to the Pleasance, which was one of the venues hosting TradFest. This is a lowish-key festival celebrating traditional art and music, and we saw a folk-meets-bluegrass out called Blue Flint. Fronted by two banjo-playing women, they were excellent, and I bought their most recent CDs, Stories From Home. This has been getting a lot of air play at home and I'll be investing in their other two CDs.

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