The Meadows in Snow – Watercolour
Edinburgh’s Meadows under a blanket of snow last month.
latest updates: Meadows
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2013Feb 126
tags: Brrrr | edinburgh | Meadows | Scotland -
2012Mar 5
tags: edinburgh | Meadows | Scotland
The Meadows, Edinburgh – Watercolour
Nothing particular about this. Just a scene of trees in front of houses at Edinburgh’s Meadows with nice shadows being cast.
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2010Feb 2
tags: Bruntsfield Links | edinburgh | Meadows
The land of trees – Watercolour in a Watercolour Moleskine
This is Glengyle Terrace, Edinburgh, as viewed from Bruntsfield Links. The area, in the distant, right background is The Meadows. All of this open space is surrounded by magnificent mature beech, elm, ash and lime trees while many types of flowering cherries line the smaller paths which criss-cross this green place. Just in front of the two prominent trees a short golf course allows free play from April until September. This is well used as is the Golf Tavern, out of shot on the left. This pub is reputed to be the oldest in the world and is worth a visit.
If you would like a fuller view of this area please see my small video, shot last Saturday, when the temperature was around -4C (my excuse for some shaky filming)
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2009May 22
tags: edinburgh | Meadows | trees
Pink Snow – Jawbone Walk, Edinburgh Meadows – Watercolour in an A4Watercolour Moleskine
Jawbone Walk is one of the main paths cutting across the Meadows. It gets its name from the curious arch constructed from the jawbones of whales, placed at the south end of the route. You can just about see this here:
This was a common practise in days gone by when whaling was one of the mainstays of Scottish industry, in fact whale oil was the only oil available for lighting until James Young developed a method of extracting oil from shale bearing rocks. There is a similar structure on top of North Berwick Law but it is formed from fibreglass, the original having disintegrated long ago. The path is lined with flowering cherries which only seem to bloom for a few days every year, the climate causes the blossom to fall prematurely. At least I saw it this year
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2009May 20
tags: edinburgh | Meadows
Edinburgh’s Meadows – Watercolour on a A4 Watercolour Moleskine
This is the view on the opposite side of Melville Drive (please see my previous post). This thoroughfare divides Bruntsfield Links from the Meadows – both areas are well used by folks relaxing, playing games, jogging etc. Thankfully there are a few pedestrian crossings which stop the traffic thus allowing access from one area to another. We used to say that no foreign power would ever be able to invade this part of Scotland as their soldiers, tanks whatever would not be able to get through the traffic. It is so popular that annual events, connected with Edinburgh’s Festival have been moved, this year, to give the grass a chance to recover.
The Meadows used to be a large expanse of water, the South or Burgh Loch. It was used as a water supply for the city but was drained, in 1801, to allow work for the “Industrious Poor”. When Melville Drive was opened, in 1859, people began to use the area as a place to relax and the grassed areas were landscaped with Elms, Limes, Chestnuts and many other smaller tree species such as Cherry. It is some of these unfortunate elms which now need to be removed. At the spot where this scene was sketched there is a “new” stump surrounded by pieces left by the chainsaw. I picked up a piece of the tree’s heartwood measuring a few inches across. Its rings suggest it was about 25 years old and would have been part of the original sapling 150 or so years ago. I’ll make something from it. These magnificent plants do not deserve to be forgotten.
