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Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh
Explore Arthur's Seat - Tours | Self Guided Walks | Map
Arthur's Seat is Edinburgh's highest hill, visible for miles around. The rocky slopes and cliffs of Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags are part of Holyrood Park and provide a spectacular natural backdrop to the city. The park, Edinburgh's wildest and biggest open space, is a place of sanctuary from the crowded streets of Edinburgh and a piece of countryside within the city limits.
I offer guided tours of Arthur's Seat for individuals and groups; if you want to guide yourself there's an excellent leaflet produced by the Edinburgh Geological Society and I've suggested some routes, see the Self Guided Walks page for more details.
Arthur's Seat is an extinct volcano, which erupted about 350 million years ago. At that time, Scotland was a very different place, located close to the equator. The rocks of Holyrood Park give us some clues about what it was like in the past - there are sandstones formed in warm shallow seas, layers of volcanic ash created by many explosive eruptions of the ancient volcano, and lava flows representing quieter times. The volcano has been eroded so that now less than half of it remains, and this allows us to walk into the heart of the volcano and see rocks created underground.
Holyrood Park holds a special place in the history of science, for it was here in the late 18th century that James Hutton found evidence to support his theories about the workings of the earth. At Salisbury Crags, he observed igneous and sedimentary rocks and understood that they had been formed at different times by different ways. He suggested that the earth was very old, and continually changing; a startling new idea that changed forever the way people thought about the earth, influenced other scientists such as Charles Darwin, and has led to James Hutton being described as the 'father of modern geology'.
For
some fantastic images of the wildlife of Arthur's Seat, I highly recommend Graham
Checkley's website - amazing what's out there!
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