It isn’t much of a photo, but the orange dots are Edinburgh and the blue dots are runners in light-suits in Speed of Light, the art performance held on Arthur’s Seat every night of the Festival. J. ran in it twice, after months of training, so I went along to see it for myself on Saturday, the final night, when another friend was running it for a fourth time. Even being in the audience was a minor workout, as it meant hiking up to the summit of Arthur’s Seat in the dark, using special walking sticks with softly glowing lights at the bottom and piezoelectric lights at the top that sparkled when the stick shook. From the top we had a perfect view of the runners coming together and fanning apart. We didn’t actually make it to the very top on our night, as the winds at the summit were 63 miles per hour, but we got near enough. The round trip took over two hours, but it was worth the hike; walking up Arthur’s Seat in the dark isn’t something I plan to do often.
6 September 2012