A Walk on the dark Side

His Lordship and I had a convoluted walk to the Portrait Gallery this morning which involved passing these rather uncharacteristically colourful arches at the top of Victoria Street.

It was a very cold frosty morning and the damp pavements had all the potential of being skating rinks , but wonderfully and surprisingly, the council had thought to deploy pavement gritters, which look like mini snow ploughs and did the business with sand and salt.

The Portrait Gallery was busy and more visitor friendly than before the refurbishment. The interior has so much glass, that everything seems lighter and airier.
It's lovely to see a long standing project finally finished in Edinburgh these days.

Apart from the t*** fiasco where large swathes of the main roads into and through Edinburgh are blocked with red and white barriers, there are countless road works associated with the renewal of utilities which require street closures; walking is the safest and quickest way to negotiate the city centre streets with their maze of entrances and exits.

Our walk home into the low sun proved a headache for his Lordship who seems unusually sensitive to the glare. It was a case of 'a walk on the dark side' as it were.
It seems a shame not to be able to appreciate a dose of vitamin D when it is freely available.