Hunter's Bog: The Hidden Valley of the Royal Hunt
Why is it significant?
Stop in the middle of Hunter's Bog and listen. The noise of the city has almost disappeared. You are in a hidden valley, walled in by the back of Salisbury Crags on one side and the steep slopes of Arthur's Seat on the other, and on a quiet morning you may hear nothing but birdsong and the wind…
Key Facts
| Place | Hunter's Bog: The Hidden Valley of the Royal Hunt |
|---|---|
| Address | Hunter's Bog, Holyrood Park, Edinburgh EH8, UK |
| Geo Coordinates | 55.94780, -3.16550 |
| Part of Walk | Climbing a Volcano: Arthur's Seat & Holyrood Park, Edinburgh |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in the middle of Hunter's Bog and listen. The noise of the city has almost disappeared. You are in a hidden valley, walled in by the back of Salisbury Crags on one side and the steep slopes of Arthur's Seat on the other, and on a quiet morning you may hear nothing but birdsong and the wind moving through the grass.
The name recalls the centuries when all of this was a royal hunting ground, and the most famous hunting story of all is a legend. In the twelfth century, the story goes, King David the First went hunting here on a holy day, against the advice of his confessor. A huge stag charged and threw him from his horse, and as its antlers came down on him, a glowing cross appeared between them. The stag fled. In thanks, the king founded an abbey at the foot of the hill and called it Holyrood, the Holy Cross.
The valley itself is a sculpture made by ice. During the last ice age, glaciers pushed across this land from the west, and they scraped out the softer rocks along this line more deeply than the hard dolerite and lava around them. When the ice melted, it left this hollow behind, badly drained and boggy at the bottom. Look at the western face of Arthur's Seat above you: the ice made it steep, while the sheltered eastern side slopes gently away.
Look up, too, at the long scar of scree slashing down the slope to your right. Locals gave it a wonderful Scots name, the Guttit Haddie, the gutted haddock, because that is exactly what its shape resembles. It is said to have been torn open by a cloudburst in the eighteenth century, when a single storm sent a torrent down the hillside.
The whole park is protected for its rocks and its wildlife, and its grassland and crags hold rare plants, among them the sticky catchfly, a small pink flower of sunny rocky slopes. Please keep to the paths. Now walk on to the northern end of the valley, past the dry hollow called the Dry Dam, and go down towards the water you can see glinting below: St Margaret's Loch.