Haar

As Britain bakes in a heatwave, the haar rolls in.

Haar is the Scots word for a sea-fog. It rolls in in heat waves, cooling Edinburgh and frustrating the sun-lovers. Thick, low, distorting sounds. You can watch it, coiling over bodies of water, floating eerily at roughly tree height.

The thing about haars is they force you to look at the details. You can’t see the grand views, the vista over the Forth and towards the city. They may as well not be there. But the flowers and birds, rocks and insects, are all still there. And without the great views, you can focus on them.

A perfect day for wandering on Arthur’s Seat, then.

My daughter has art class after school on Thursdays, and normally I have my son with me and we sit in the lobby and catch up. But today Husband was working from home, so I left my son behind with him. It’s been too hot to breathe properly in Edinburgh, with buses like saunas and increasingly erratic car traffic. As we made our way to art class, I could see the haar blowing in. My first thought was “oh no, not another wildfire on the hill,” so I was relieved to notice it was just a low cloud.

I decided to see how far up Arthur’s Seat I could get inside art class time, so just under an hour’s round trip, in entirely the wrong shoes, and starting from St Margaret’s house.

So, this is a 0 sandwich trip. I did get a coffee in Bliss House cafe though. Public transport - nearly every bus in east Edinburgh. Parking, limited, but it does exist. Cafes, loads, toilets, not so much (except in the cafes).

In the little window I had I basically went up the quiet side of St Margaret’s loch, up to St Anthony’s chapel, on a little way higher, realised it was time to turn around and back the way I came.

I met some tourists who were puzzled to discover the ruined chapel wasn’t the top, and low key horrified to hear that it was only 1/3 of the way to the top. Which is logical. They aren’t from round here and they aren’t used to cities with tame volcanoes right in the middle. But it’s a real testament to how thick the haar had become that they really couldn’t make out the size of the hill at all.

Arthur’s Seat is full of wildflowers this time of year, and I don’t normally notice them so much. The gorse is past its peak, but there’s drifts of rosebay willow herb, three different colours of foxglove and clumps of a tiny purple flower I don’t know. Blue buglosses and pink wild roses.

The main bird song is blackbird, with its alarmed sprays of song, although I heard chaffinches and saw bullfinches, and the tufted ducks on the pond.

And pigeons. People are used to looking at pigeons rather than seeing them, and putting them in the box marked pest. But a healthy pigeon - the feral pigeons with their iridescence and the wood pigeons with their beautiful pink chests - are thoroughly beautiful.

Haar reminds us to actually see, because we can’t just glance at the view.

I hope you are all surviving the heat wave.