Inverness to Edinburgh… and the Falkirk Kelpies

Friday, March 21, 2025

This morning, we waved goodbye to Inverness and headed south to Edinburgh, stopping for a late breakfast at House of Bruar. At £6, the mini breakfast – an egg, a sausage, a rasher of bacon, and a hash brown – is great value.

It’s quite misty heading through the Cairngorms this morning, but that only adds to the moodiness. It’s truly the type of scenery that changes constantly.

Our big stop on today’s (relatively) short drive is the Kelpies at Falkirk. At 30m tall, they’re the largest horse sculptures in the world. While you can see them as you’re whizzing past on the M9, it really is worth turning off the highway and heading into Helix Park for a close-up view.

They’re supposed to pay homage to the working horses of Scotland, who worked in the fields where they now stand and pulled the barges along the canals. I, however, prefer to think they’re about the water horses in Scottish myths, the kelpies that live in the lochs and tempt travellers onto their backs before taking them to their watery graves. Of course I do.

In any case, they’re remarkable. Somehow, the artist has captured the velvety softness of their mouths in steel, the strength in their necks, the wildness in their eyes. As I said, remarkable.

Not so remarkable was the potato and leek soup in the visitor centre, but we’ll say no more about that.

We had planned to take a closer look at the Falkirk Wheel while we were here, but our Airbnb host had requested that we check in early, as she would be away for the weekend and wanted to show us where the car park we’d rented was located. Given Edinburgh was still an hour away, we (reluctantly) gave it a miss – but not before we watched a pair of nesting swans preparing for their brood. While she sits on the nest and arranges things, he is busy in the bullrushes, cutting them down to size and giving them to her to build the nest. We could have watched them for ages.

Our cottage for the next four nights is tiny but lovely, and our host, Rebecca, is an aspiring writer. I suspect we’ll be very happy here. The car is a block or so away and that’s where it will be staying for the duration.

The cottage backs onto Holyrood Park, about a mile away from the bottom of the Royal Mile (via a shortcut through the park). There’s a supermarket and craft brewery (Bellfield) just five minutes walk away, so we head there first for some supplies and a pint (in that order).

Back to the cottage to dump said supplies, and then through the park to Holyrood Palace (or, more correctly, Palace of Holyroodhouse), across the road to Holyrood (Scottish Parliament) and up the Royal Mile (I’d forgotten just how long that hill is!) to the castle.

We’ve visited the castle a couple of times before, so we didn’t bother going in.

Instead we went looking for dinner, landing on the Copper Still about halfway down the Mile.

We shared a starter of haggis arancini (really good), and I followed that with a bowl of Cullen Skink, a sort of creamy Scottish chowder that I adore, but which my lactose-intolerant stomach tends to complain about. As usual, I ignored the future complaints of my stomach and enjoyed it. Grant went for haggis, neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes) and was well chuffed.

Despite being in the car for most of the day, we still managed to rack up around 17,000 steps. I suspect there’ll be a lot more over the next few days.

The stats…

Temperature: 4-15

Miles travelled: 156*

*Even though we work in kms in Australia, all signage in the UK is in miles, so that’s what I’m going with.

These posts are taken directly from my travel journal … you can find the series here.