A mammoth undertaking

Edinburgh Castle

The conference had some very long days – on the Monday, I was in conference sessions from 08:30 right through to 19:00, with only a short break for lunch. I joined some other delegates and we took a table for lunch at a very nice little French bistro directly opposite the conference centre. The fixed-price menu for a two-course lunch was remarkably affordable, and the food sounded very good. Unfortunately, despite the waitress assuring us that it would be fine, the French chef was completely unable to cope with the concept of a lunch break of a duration any less than 90 minutes. Half of the people on my table had a firm deadline to be back at the conference, as they were either chairing a session or presenting a paper, so ended up putting money on the table and taking their food as a doggy-bag to eat later, cold! I had prudently stuck to just one course, and managed to wolf it down and get back to my conference session without missing anything important.

The main sub-conference I was attending was all day Monday and Tuesday, and I found myself with a couple of hours spare on the Wednesday, from lunchtime until the late-afternoon poster session/reception. I went back to the little bistro, on my own this time, and had a very pleasant and much less rushed lunch. I confirmed my suspicion that, provided one didn’t try to rush the chef, the food was delicious. I then decided that I’d refresh my conference-frazzled brain, and take some time out in the afternoon to visit Edinburgh Castle, which was only a 15 minute walk away. I really didn’t want to go all the way to Edinburgh and come home without having seen any of it!  As you can see, there were quite a lot of tourists there on a cold and rainy day at the end of September – it must get really heaving in high summer!

I did a top-speed dash around the castle. The entrance ticket was eye-wateringly expensive (£16.50) and I was determined to get the full value out of it! I saw Scotland’s Crown Jewels, the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to James VI, a very early chapel, and several military museums. Then I headed back to the conference centre, and rejoined the rest of the delegates for the poster session. I bumped into one of the people I’d had the hurried lunch with on the Monday, and he confessed that he’d slipped away that morning to go around the castle – so I wasn’t the only one with that idea!