Guiding in August

August has come to an end, and Edinburgh is beginning to settle after the Festival.

Much of my guiding has been around Edinburgh, bringing coach groups in from the shore and then walking through the Old Town, Canongate and New Town. I have also been further afield, into the Trossachs and Highlands and repeatedly through Fife to St Andrews.

Some of those places are very familiar to me, but guiding changes how I look at them. A question from somebody seeing a place for the first time can make me look again too.

Edinburgh at Festival time

Edinburgh in August has an abundance of excitement and street entertainment that seems to carry on day and night.

The Old Town fills with performers, visitors, queues, music and conversation. There is great energy in it, but there are moments when the city can feel almost too full to take in.

There are times to stay with the Royal Mile, the closes and the Canongate, and times when moving a few streets away gives everybody space to stop and look properly. Crossing into the New Town can change the rhythm completely.

A different pilgrimage in St Andrews

St Andrews has been particularly enjoyable.

Driving through Fife towards the town, I often find myself thinking about pilgrimage.

For centuries people travelled there because of the cathedral, its religious importance and the relics associated with St Andrew. Today, people still arrive from all over the world, although many are following a very different pull towards the home of golf.

I like having those two journeys sitting beside each other.

Once we are on foot, the town changes again. The cathedral and castle, university, Reformation, golf, streets and coast are all close together, and one story often leads naturally into another.

The university brings people and ideas into the town. Golf grew across common land beside it. At the Scores, the North Sea is never far away.

On a clear day, with the light across the town and the water beyond, St Andrews can be hard to leave.

St Andrews streetscape and walk towards the cathedral grounds.

Questions from the Pentland Hills

I spend a lot of time in the Pentland Hills, but walking there with overseas visitors is different from being out with local people or working with Duke of Edinburgh participants.

The view back towards Edinburgh starts questions.

What are we looking at? Where does the city end? What lies beyond the Forth? Why are the reservoirs here? How has the surrounding land been used?

I know the view well, but I do not always arrive at it by the same route in conversation.

Somebody else notices something you have walked past many times, and suddenly you are looking at it again.

Small Glen in the Pentland Hills, looking towards Edinburgh and the Forth.

Continuing to build

The formal course work has carried on alongside the guiding.

I have recently completed a three-day Outlander and Jacobite-themed plan. The screen story is a useful way in, but the material underneath it is about Jacobitism, dynasty, religion, loyalty, landscape and what followed.

There is plenty of room for a good story, but also a responsibility to be clear about where fiction, family memory, political argument and historical evidence part company.

I am now beginning a longer Highlands and Islands plan, looking particularly at how that part of Scotland changed after the Union and how political and economic change affected land, communities, culture and ways of life.

There will inevitably be some whisky involved as well.

Research does occasionally make demands of you.

I have ended August with more notes than I started with and quite a few more questions. Often the bits I remember are the questions that changed the direction of the conversation.