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As a Postgrad in Edinburgh... - The Water of Leith, or how...


The Water of Leith, or how pollution became... 19/1/2008
 
One thing I very much appreciate about Europeans is their appreciation of green spaces. At least in contemporary times. 20 years ago, the green spaces in big cities such as Edinburgh, Berlin, Paris would have been the glowing fallout from years of pollution. But recently, Europe has turned over a new green thumb, putting the kibosh on a whole slew of environmentally detrimental activities, including dumping waste, diverting rivers for corporate bolstering, and the very 80s Soviet trend of creating deserts of concrete and wastelands of construction in any area that may even remotely be able to sustain a naturally growing strip of (non-glowing) green. Germany has taken amazing steps, even agreeing to re-divert the Rhine to its original course and cleaning it up so that, once again, it can freeze during the winter (during the infancy of post-WWII industrialization, freezing was deemed a disadvantage to companies that used the river for transportation; therefore, the river was purposefully polluted to the point where its freezing temperature was no long 32 degree F, but in fact, much, much lower). Here in the United Kingdom, this also meant cleaning up rivers, in Edinburgh’s case, enough so that in the past 6 months there have been a small handful of sightings of river otters in the Water of Leith.

And it was to this Water that Jonmikel and I found ourselves traveling on an idle Wednesday (Wednesdays are always idle here in the UK, because it is an unofficial day of rest/sport, where the pubs are packed full of students who, having the day off from classes, have taken the opportunity to drink, be merry, and watch a lot of football/rugby). The Water of Leith runs for about 28 miles from the southwest of the city to the Firth of Forth in, surprise, the neighborhood of Leith in the north. The Walkway runs for about 12 miles along it, and is part of a government maintained bicycle trail, which, if I ever felt so inclined to make a fool of myself again on a bicycle (ask me about Key West), would be a lovely weekend excursion. We took the bus out a ways, and walked about 6 miles of the Walkway up to the Firth of Forth. We maintained a leisurely pace, and spent a couple of hours meandering through previously unknown parts of town. Some of the walk was distinctly ugly and industrial (I even caught glimpses of several sewer pipes emptying into the river), other parts charming and lightly wooded, still other parts historically romantic. Of the latter category, and my favorite part of our sojourn, was Dean Village, a now-residential part of town that used to be an industrial complex of mills. The site dates back to the mid 12th century, and the current buildings date from the mid-1600s up until the late 1800s. In the current fashion of modern cities, these historic buildings have been turned into very attractive (with a price tag to match) flats and townhomes, the owners of which have seem to have taken an active interest in maintaining the river and a sense of isolation from the commoners of Edinburgh. My kind of neighborhood. We took sometime to meander through the town, picking out an ivy-covered building here and a stone flat there as future living arrangements.

We also ran into a small shantytown, charmingly (ahem) of the type of shantytown I would expect to (and, in fact, did) find in oh…. South Africa, India. Small, tin-roofed and plank-walled shacks, each with its own plot of mottled garden items and evidence of bouncing babies and rowdy children. A small, but surprisingly well-taken-care-of, mutt here and there for added authenticity. I was fascinated, in an anthropology and OK, I’ll admit it, Orientalist way. Edinburgh boasts an unemployment rate of something like 2%, and yet within its city limits are villages of the type seen in Chennai, Arusha, or the townships of Cape Town. I wonder if it is a city-sanctioned area, or an area that is idly ignored for political correctness. Or if it was a place that next week will be packed up and pushed to a further margin of British society, modern-day Scottish gypsies. The buildings looked fairly well established, but it is amazing how quickly people who are used to moving constantly can create that “lived-in” aura in a new habitation.

We hit Leith in the later afternoon sun (which actually arrives in early afternoon, being so far north). The old dock area of town, it is currently undergoing a revitalization as an up-and-coming yuppie neighborhood. Old warehouses have been converted to stylish tenements, some with artistic views of the massive cargo ships that still haul to the harbor there. The industrial piscine smells, the oil, the fish, the dirty metal and the inescapable wet scents that inevitably enveloped the area at the early stages of last century, have been replaced by the smells of ocean-side yuppie: fine wine, clean stone, fresh seafood and deliciously salty breezes. The wide streets that encompass rivers and saltwater coves look more like canal-side Amsterdam than broadsword-wielding Scotland. The entire neighborhood has a sexy industrial (at the risk of over-using that term) flavor to it, and it is easy to imagine why successful 30-somethings flock to the modern suburb in search of abstract (in a contemporary-art kind of way) lifestyle inspiration. There is definitely something sensual, something free and alluring and exciting, about commercial docks, and Leith certainly embraces each of those emotions and bottles them up, advertises them, and sells the farrago in the form of expensive flats and faux-traditional fishermen’s pubs. Delightful.

But we didn’t see any otters.
 
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