This was where the fun really begun: we were lead down to the pier, where we admired the Forth Bridges (the red iron railbridge and the silver roadbridge), while waiting for our boat to come and get us. We'd learned on the bus that the little hamlet we were in was called Queensferry precisely because it was where the Queen (don't ask which!) caught the ferry across the Firth.
Once the Forth Belle was safely moored, we half-walked, half-skidded over the somewhat slimy pier and stepped aboard. While the crew were smoking their fag and catching up on news prior to departure, we had shared the deck with a group of Thai tourists (Hugo decided they were Thai) and their cameras. Hugo even momentarily became their best friend when he took a group photo for them... 5 or 6 times! (It had to be on everyone's camera...) Once we started moving, however, everyone sat in the closed-in section, so we had the open deck almost to ourselves - our only company was a lonely photographer. The weather being similar to the previous day, it was quite nippy, but this time we'd come prepared: extra layers of clothing (including water- and windproof trousers), and hoods, as well as the mandatory scarves and gloves. We may have looked like we were wearing rather bad 'rebel hoodie' costumes, but we were warm!
One of the sights pointed out in the recorded commentary was an island at the mouth of the Firth, which was fortified during the Second World War: the fortifications were built specifically so that seen from a distance the island resembles a war-ship, in the hope that this would deter any would-be German attacks!
In fact, we only stepped inside to buy tickets to visit Incholm Island, with its medieval Abbey, built by monks who had to row all the building materials over from the mainland... I don't envy their task!
There are no longer any monks on the island, but a very special family lives in and around the island's harbour, and they were lying on the rocks as we arrived:
Having oohed and aaahed and clicked away with our cameras for 10 minutes, the crew finally persuaded us to get off and make use of our tickets by exploring the Abbey and the island. So we stepped ashore, spent another 10 minutes admiring the seals, and then set off for the Abbey itself.
The Abbey is now somewhat rundown, but the National Trust is taking care of it (our ticket money is supposed to go towards helping preserve it), and there are a few labels in some places, although most of them simply state the name of the room you're in or the feature they're attached to. Actually, this made it quite interesting, as we tried to come up with explanations for what exactly happened in those rooms or what the reason could have been behind particular names... We explored every nook and cranny, even squeezing into the narrow spiral staircase leading up the first half of the tower - only half of my foot fitted on each step, Hugo must have had to walk on tip-toe! - and the suspended wooden staircase leading up from there. The view from the top was worth it though, and granted us a novel look at the weather vane.
After that cultural interlude, we reverted to our default positions and set off on a walk around the island, birdwatching and photographing as we went. Of course there were seagulls gallore - mostly lesser black-baked gulls and herring-gulls, as far as I could tell - and the occasional pigeon, but there were also a fair amount of cormorants and shanks and - avian highlight of the day - we spotted a pair of Great-crested grebes! These beautiful birds were almost hunted to extinction in the UK for their feathers, but population numbers seem to have recovered, and as the species is not currently considered threatened. They are still distinctive, though, and it was wonderful to be able to see them after months of reading about them!
When we were nearing the end of our round-island walk, we spotted the Forth Belle coming to collect us, so we scrambled down the hill to the harbour, where our Thai friends had been waiting for about an hour, having apparently become bored after snapping a few shots of the Abbey and its environs... We bid farewell to the seals, and on the way back we had a treat: the captain switched off the recorded commentary and gave us his own live commentary over the microphone, about the wildlife he's encountered in the Firth over the years - including orcas last year, apparently - and some of the conservation issues involved: mainly over-fishing, climate change and oil-rigs such as the one we'd seen on the way out to Incholm.
During this return trip we got a closer look at cormorant and shank colonies, as well as some more seals, so all in all we were happy people when we moored at Queensferry.
We (or should I say I?) were also hungry, lunch having so far consisted of a Cadbury's Cream Egg each, so we were quite pleased to see the bus arrive, as Queensferry, pretty little hamlet as it is, didn't seem to offer much by way of entertainment (a quilt/souvenir shop, a second-hand shop and a pub was about it). On the drive back to Edinburgh I spotted a curlew, but my mouthful of crisps meant I informed Hugo of it by making strangled noises and pointing excitedly at the window... by the time I'd swallowed enough to be more eloquent, the offending beastie was, of course, out of site, but Hugo's reaction was a non-plussed "Oh, a kiwi-bird..." (If you're unfamiliar with the story, the whole family spent days calling curlews "kiwi-birds" when we were in Finland, because we didn't know what they were but thought they looked like kiwis)
On arriving in Edinburgh, we decided to make use of the advice one of the friendly bus guides from the previous day had given us: "if you buy tickets for Our Dynamic Earth on the bus, you get a discount". As this was supposed to be a rather good science display showing the geological history of the Earth, we thought we'd give it a go. So we bought discount tickets for it off the bus driver, hopped on a bus, and hopped off at the Scottish Parliament building, as the same nice guide had told us it was one of the cheapest places to eat in the area (and we still hadn't had lunch!). Hugo got some interesting glances from the security staff at the door, when he started pulling down his trousers before walking through the metal-detector: his wallet and mobile phone were in his trouser pockets... underneath the water-proof trousers! So a third of the time we spent in the Scottish Parliament was actually Hugo undressing... We grabbed a sandwich and ate it as we walked over to the Our Dynamic Earth building next door. Upon entering, however, we found a closed ticket office and couldn't find any way into the exhibition. After some searching, we located a couple of members of staff who informed us that the exhibition was closed on Tuesdays... So we hopped onto the next bus to come by, and went straight back to the 'headquarters' to complain. There was some confusion, as the exhibition was now supposed to be open on Tuesdays, but they refunded our tickets and we left them ringing up the exhibition people while we went for a walk instead.
We had just decided on where to have supper (a pub with haggis on the menu) when we heard from João, our host-to-be: his flight had been delayed, and he was still in Stansted... While we enjoyed a nice supper - yes, we liked haggis - he phoned up his Maltese flat-mate and got back to us with directions to his place, so after we'd stuffed our faces with tasty Scottish food we picked up our luggage from the station and caught the bus to the other side of town - with some help from the man who was replacing the leaflets at the bus station, who cross-referenced our map with 2 different leaflets until he could tell us which bus we wanted and where to catch it from! So we appeared on this poor Maltese girl's doorstep, saying "Hi, we're João's friends", and she let us in, made us a cup of tea, and chatted to us for an hour or so, until our host finally arrived...
