Stops in Edinburgh

Halfway House pub Fleshmarket Close off Market St. Very handy for the train and train-themed. Real ales and a cosy feel, may or may not be food available, wasn't when we got there.

Seems to be for locals and tourists.

No 1 HIgh St, of that address on the Royal Mile and despite the address just off the very touristy end of town.  Reliable food, pub-style but seems freshly and locally done.  Haggis tower looks and tastes great.

Sandy's Bar Forrest Road, nr. George IV Bridge and Greyfriars.  Quickly crowded but an authentic feel and certainly the place for live acoustic and Scottish traditional music.  Traditional beers too.

Cafe No. 33 Stockbridge. Take a walk along the Leith and stop here for really good coffee and paninis, sounds hipsterish but isn't, just decent modern food and OK prices.

Clarinda's.  This is a must if you want an olf-fashioned tea-room theme with breakfast, lunch and tea and cake menus with friendly service.  Towards the Holyrood end of the Royal Mile and worth the walk if you're at the other end of town.

Coast

Something about ports in a post-coastal era where a few passing ships and otherwise tourist trade and newer but soon dated shopping mall, and noisy fun-fairs are left, something inevitably left aside, part closed-down and part run-down, grey walls with spots like rust or foxing on the inside of a title-page, tasty bite takeaway by the Chinese predecessor with the for sale sign in the window.  Bars and cigarettes and people off at work in the city heart a bus ride away. The mall's standardised walks and the disco-popped synthesised tannoy outside mainly for the family groups on an afternoon out or the pre-teens, the brief secluded sea enclosed around the corner with the moored ships being the evidence  of port or harbour.

Edinburgh contin.

Castle from Grassmarket.  

Edinburgh

Across towards's Arthur's Seat, above Edinburgh, beatiful day and people enjoying Easter Day in the sunshine.

Malvern Spring

Paraglider in action by the Malvern Hills (Worcester Beacon).

Live music in Brum

To show the offering Birmingham hs these days, I coulld have been at three quite different events and styles of music in the same evening.

As it happened, I still got  two.

Thanks to one of the excellent groups in www.meetup.com, I went first to see the regular very high-standard pub band at the popular Hare and Hounds in Kings Heath in South Birmingham - there most late Saturdayafternoons, I think - followed by a short trip on the famous number 50 bus to the also-popular if slightly more niche Ort Cafe in poorer Balsall Heath, where the Celebrating Sanctuary Festival featured a Congolese band playing gentle, rhythmic traditional music, and a young (more musicians are young these days ...) singer and guitarist manipulated Playback pedals effectively to layer his more contemporary sounds.

At the same time, others were listening to Bach's Magnificat in Birmingham's Anglican cathedral, St Philip's, in the city centre.

Wonderful variety and expertise on display.  

Free Raif Badawi campaign

The Amnesty International volunteer group I belong had what we call an action as a small part of a worldwide campaign for the remarkably brave Saudi Arabian Raif Badawi, imprisoned and beaten for expressing opinions mildly critical of the authorities and the influence of religious conservatism on the country's development.

Web campaign details via www.amnesty.org.uk or follow twitter at #FreeRaif and #FreeRaifBadawi .