Duddingston Loch & Samson's Ribs
Why is it significant?
From the slope above Duddingston Loch, look down on the largest stretch of water in the park, fringed with thick reed beds and willows. This is the only natural loch in Holyrood Park, a survivor of the lakes and marshes left behind by the melting ice.
Key Facts
| Place | Duddingston Loch & Samson's Ribs |
|---|---|
| Address | Duddingston Loch, Queen's Drive, Edinburgh EH15, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.94070, -3.15300 |
| Part of Walk | Climbing a Volcano: Arthur's Seat & Holyrood Park, Edinburgh |
| Generated | Generated |
From the slope above Duddingston Loch, look down on the largest stretch of water in the park, fringed with thick reed beds and willows. This is the only natural loch in Holyrood Park, a survivor of the lakes and marshes left behind by the melting ice. It has been a bird sanctuary since the 1920s, so keep your voice low.
Now look west along the hillside above the water and you will see a cliff that looks like a row of giant organ pipes. These are Samson's Ribs. They are columns of volcanic rock that formed when a thick mass of molten rock cooled slowly and cracked into many-sided pillars, the same process that made the Giant's Causeway in Ireland. Someone long ago thought they looked like the rib cage of the biblical strongman, and the name stuck.
In hard winters, when the loch froze solid, it became one of the great playgrounds of Scotland. Edinburgh skaters formed one of the earliest skating clubs in the world here in the eighteenth century, and curlers swept their stones across the ice. Perhaps the best-loved painting in Scotland shows a minister, the Reverend Robert Walker, gliding across this loch with his arms folded. It is known as the Skating Minister, usually attributed to Henry Raeburn, though some scholars have argued for a French artist instead.
The loch has also given up treasure. In 1778, men dredging it pulled out a hoard of Bronze Age weapons, swords and spearheads, perhaps placed in the water as an offering some three thousand years ago. To ancient people, lakes like this one may have been doorways to another world.
Today the reed beds shelter herons, grebes and, in winter, flocks of ducks from the north. Now follow the path down to the road and along the edge of the village to the old church on its little hill above the water. The walk ends there... conveniently close to a pub.