Roy's Edinburgh Park Stroll

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Follow links at https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/roythompson/home/edinburgh-walks/ for more details about the route, 25 works of art visited during the stroll, and links to poets and poetry readings.

GETTING THERE: The stroll starts at Patina Café in Airborne Place. The café (+bakery) is most easily reached by taking the tram from the city centre to Edinburgh Park Central (150m walk). Exit from the rear of the tram. Less helpfully catch bus 20 or 63 (300m walk) else bus 22 (500m walk).

Leaving the tram, follow the path for 50m. Aim towards the Paolozzi statue with the red coloured multi-storey car park far beyond. Cross over a water feature using a small bridge. Turn left at the Paolozzi. Pass the entrance to 1 New Park Square and then Padel on your right. Café Patina lies further on, to the left.

FOOTWEAR: Sensible shoes. Surfaces are of good quality throughout – being firm pavement, or asphalt. A few short flights of steps. Beware of numerous poorly marked surface elevation changes in the Square.

ROUTE: A 1-mile long, figure-of-eight stroll around the lochans and through the 1st phase of master architect Richard Meier’s mid-1990s Business Park. The route visits 25 public artworks (including bronze busts of 12 Scottish poets).

• Immediately on leaving Patina Café there are four sculptures to locate and visit. First, the angular and geometric Advocate off to the right by the sunken garden. Straight ahead and slightly right the abstract, figurative Dancer After Degas II, also Spun Chairs (summer only - try sitting and swivelling on them). To the left, towards the tram tracks Amarylla Guerrilla (constructed as a tribute to political activists who plant on public ground in defiance of planners' penchant for concrete or neglect).

• Leaving this fourth artwork of orange petalled flowers, take the footpath (to the north) alongside the building and parallel to the tram tracks to a fifth sculpture with a matt black patina – Square Line.

• Turn left to meet King of Kings: Ozymandias. A sculpture deriving from Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias - a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of political power. The poem explores the conflict between man, time, and memory through the inevitable decline of rulers and their pretensions to greatness.

• The reception area, of 1 New Park Square, is reached ahead. Enter to view the anti-war tapestry, figure sculptures & elongated Giacometti, and the award-winning concrete.

• Leave the reception area. Head for Paolozzi's Vulcan. Beyond descend ramp or steps to the lochan. Walk alongside the water for 60m, passing the first (HH) of twelve bronze busts.

• Here either continue straight ahead, else detour up steps to the left. A few paces on, the detour goes right to reach Questor a ribbon of stainless steel in a paved area outside the Xansa Building. Continue around the building with its expansive carparks to discover Epitaph for the Elm positioned in a short avenue of trees. Bear right, descend steps and regain the loch side path.

• Continue along the water’s edge, pass three more busts (DD, SM, TL) before turning right over a low bridge. [Our figure-of-eight route will return here shortly.] Descend steps on the left. The path leads between lochside vegetation and the tram tracks to pas by four more bronzes (WG, JK, NM, NM). In 200m a side road is reached. Do not cross. Turn left on the broad paving and left again to follow pavement along the far side of the lochan, with the long line of Richard Meier’s attractive geometric buildings stretching away ahead and to your right.

• Four more busts (IC-S, EM, LL, HM) are passed. On re-encountering the low bridge, cross, but now take the path to the right. Keep an eye open for Thoughts 4 paws. Stay on the path that winds alongside the lochside vegetation until The Orangery Urns and Ceramic Parrots appear to the left. Their inspiration derives from the Georgian urns that once graced Mary Eleanor’s beloved orangery. After passing the urns we arrive at the Edinburgh Park Central tram stop where our stroll ends.

Roy Thompson (March 2024)

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