Western Harbour

There something rather pioneering exciting about boarding a bus, knowing not where it will travel but all you have to do is sit on it until it arrives at the terminus. In this case, Western Harbour, about the furthest we can go in Edinburgh in a northerly direction without actually falling into the Forth.

My friend o.m.ts and I were off to visit a mutual friend who had temporarily rented a flat in the new conurbation springing up on reclaimed land there while she recovers from a hip operation .

We sat like a couple of school kids at the front on the top deck of a no 10 bus while it crawled for 45 minutes from Tollcoss through the centre of tram disrupted Edinburgh, and the throng that is Leith Walk.

For someone usually very active it must be aggravating for our friend to be flat bound in such a spot where it seemed unnaturally quiet and dare I say it, soulless; no comings and goings outside where she could have a 'good hing ower the windae' and watch passing traffic. Not that she could have opened the window anyway if she didn't want frost bite in her extremities.

However, she can see the Royal Yacht berthed at Ocean Terminal across an expanse of water, but perhaps that is not enough visual compensation for the lack of activity on the ground outside.

She kindly permitted me to open the window for a minute in order to blip the giant yellow cranes operating in the harbour.