A Brooding Walk

Before we get into things, I’d like to apologise for the significant lack of posts. We moved permanently into our flat on February 28th, and we’ve only just gotten internet, so blog posts were a little bit difficult to sort out, particularly ones that require photos. But, with all our internet set up, get ready for significantly more regular posts!

Once we got our flat sorted, my lovely mum sent me a little care package of a few things I’d left behind in Central Victoria in December. We weren’t home, so we were left a little delivery note. That was where our saga began.

Now I didn’t take a photo of the delivery card itself (because frankly I didn’t think of it), but the handwriting was definitely an illegible scrawl. We couldn’t understand the tracking number (thankfully mum still had it so we could get it from her), and the “closest post office” was a scribble that looked a little bit like “Martshall”, which unfortunately isn’t a place that exists anywhere, let alone in Edinburgh.

And so began the trek to find this bloody package.

Our first stop was the post office on Waverley Bridge in the centre of the city. That definitely wasn’t where our package was, but we figured it was a good place to start looking, and if nothing else they’d be able to tell us where our nearest post office was, or maybe even look up the tracking number. The lovely lady at Waverley told us to try West Maitland. It wasn’t even close to the scrawl, but it was our closest local post office listed on Parcel Force’s website, so it was worth a shot.

After a quick trip home to pick up my phone (which, being the scatterbrain I am, I had left in the kitchen – insert mid-morning walk panic), we headed out to West Maitland Street.

A little screenshot of the route from home to the West Maitland Street Post Office

Once again, the ladies working at the post office were amazingly helpful. After also being baffled by where exactly “Martshall” Place was, they were able to track down the location of the parcel using the tracking number.

And it was…

1.7 miles away, in a post office called Blackhall Sub Post Office, which is technically on a street called Marischal Place (but isn’t known as Marischal Post Office or anything similar). It is, after checking on the Parcel Force website, listed as number 11 on the list of nearest branches.

And so began our walk.

Thankfully it was a lovely day, and like most of Edinburgh the scenery was lovely. In fact, we were a bit spoiled by the views. After we’d crossed over the Waters of Leith, I decided to start taking photos.

 

Walking up Belford Road took us past the two Galleries of Modern Art, somewhat unimaginatively named “One” and “Two”.  Now, I’ll be the first to say that Alex and I aren’t the biggest fans of modern art (give me pre-1900s any day), but the buildings and grounds are stunning, and it was a beautiful day to walk past them. The buildings were both built in the later years of the Georgian Era (1825 and 1833), originally as orphanages, but repurposed in the 1980s and 1990s. Can’t really go past some good old neo-classical architecture if you ask me.

After a bit of a slug up the hill, we finally reached Queensferry Road. We’d driven down this very road only a few days before on our trip to Ikea, but it definitely felt longer on foot!

Just as we were ready to give up and have a sit, we finally reached the post office. Thankfully, the parcel was there waiting for us (I swear I would have cried if it hadn’t been there), so our 35 minute walk hadn’t been in vain.

The strip of Queensferry Road home to Blackhall Sub Post Office.

As a reward for our hike (we’d walked 4.5 miles/7.2km at this point), we were greeting with this rather unusual view of Edinburgh’s Old Town on our way back. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it made the whole exercise worth it, but it was nice.

So, finally, after 5.9miles/9.5km, a fair few hills, and a lot of confusion, we had the parcel. And I left my first ever google review, because that’s how unimpressed I was.

Our entire parcel-finding journey