Wednesday Walk - A beautiful Autumn's Day Walk around my old university campus

On saturday my wife and I went for a walk on the circular path that surrounds the university I went to.

It really was a lovely day. The sun was shining and the autumn colours were in full bloom. The path runs right around the outside of the university campus and is mostly forested. We often come here for a walk, and it was lovely this weekend.

Its the grounds of Heriot-Watt University which is on the outskirts of Edinburgh. I loved my time there, and its great to be able to go back and walk around, noting that its only about a 20min drive from where we live.

We started in the car park by the sports centre, where we found a lovely row of monkey puzzle trees (above). I love these and think they look fantastic. These are still quite small, but they'll be awesome when they put some more height on.

From there we made our way up past the sports centre. Its grown massively since I was there in the 90s and none of what you can see above was there when I was a student. I love the roof you can see, which covers some indoor pitches. Its quite large and you can see it from quite a distance. I think the roof looks like a baked-alaska (a type of pudding). The Scottish Rugby team often train in there and the facilities are excellent.

Heading up around the top end of the path we came across this lovely arcade of tall trees. The people help to give some perspective to how tall they are. This walk wasnt actually in place when I was there in the 90s, which is a shame because its really nice.

Along the top edge of the walk a break in the trees gave a nice view back over the outdoor pitches. I stayed on campus in 92 and 96, and we would spend hours playing football here (soccer) - it always brings back lovely memories.

A bit further along we spotted this memorial to someone along the path - Tom Daly.

We were really just enjoying the weather and the colours. It was pretty awesome, and at this time of year its not often that we get such clear blue skies and sunshine - so it was great that we could make the most of it.

We are fairly far north here in Edinburgh and as such at this time of year the sun can be quite low in the sky. This was about 11am in the morning, and the sun was casting these lovely long shadows everywhere we went. Thats one of the new halls of residence for the students that you can see beyond the trees - again another new addition since I was a student here.

We kept on getting treated to lovely colours as we did the full circle of the campus, which is just over 3 miles.

It really was a lovely walk, and we enjoyed the morning exercise. Our daughter was away at a club that she goes to on saturday mornings, so we didnt have to drag a moaning teenager around with us which was a bonus !

So that wraps up my wednesday walk for another week. I'm looking forward to browsing through the others from around the world ! All the best from Scotland !