This community walking event took place on Sunday 22 February 2026
18 adults plus a baby in a buggy and 2 dogs met at Wardie Bay on the edge of Edinburgh for a Festival of Terminalia walk. We walked along the Lower Granton and West Shore roads to Granton ‘the brick’ Beach. We made a cairn of the stones we had collected at Wardie, to mark the boundary between sea and land. Retracing our footsteps, we returned to the starting point, approaching the same landscape from the opposite direction.
We picked up stones from Wardie Bay and made a cairn of them at Granton Beach
Terminalia is a festival of walking, space, place and psychogeography on and around 23rd Feburary. Terminalia was the festival of Terminus, Roman god of boundaries and landmarks! Events have been run on this day since 2011.
Statues by Art in Architecture, near The Depot music studios, Lower Granton Road, Edinburgh
As the theme of this year’s festival was ‘Rock’ we were searching for rocks, stones and related structures. We talked about the history of the area, social and archeological, and visited the back of the Depot music studios where rock music is recorded. The islands of Inchkeith and Cramond were clear from a distance. Made of volcanic / igneous rock, sandstone, shale, coal and limestone, sufferers of syphilis were banished there to live out their lives after the Grandgore Act was passed in 1497. Inchkeith on wikipedia.
Inchkeith Island through the Granton / Wardie sea wall
We went past the site of the long-gone Granton quarry and found out more about Granton Sea Quarry further along the coast near Granton Point, which supplied the stone for making Granton Harbour. The boulders (for delaying coastal erosion) which line the Silverknowes Path outside The Pitt are beautiful at the moment with their coverings of orange and green lichen.
Granton Beach rocks, General’s Rocks (named after the English Duke of Somerset who led the Rough Wooing), and rocks exposed at low tide Map handout made by, and copyright of, Tamsin Grainger
For upcoming walks and to find out about The Walk Club, Edinburgh, contact tamsinlgrainger@gmail.com
Please join us on a walk around Granton Harbour on Sunday 23rd February 2025 2.30-4pm to celebrate the Festival of Terminalia with history, art, nature, and community stories.
Explore the boundary of Granton Harbour: an urban walk on pavements and waste ground – past the old Gunpowder Store and site of the Ice House which served the fishing industries of Newhaven and Granton in 1950s, along the old railway lines and discover the original Granton Station, look out across the Firth of Forth and imagine the Esparto Grass boats coming in from the south of Spain and North Africa, check out the latest housing developments, and walk ‘The Wall‘.
Above: On the left -The Old Gunpowder Store (now Corinthian Yacht Club), middle – an old photo of the harbour from Lochinvar Drive, right – an old tram and the train which used to run along past Wardie Bay in days gone by.
Meet at 2.30pm at the corner of Lochinvar Drive and Lower Granton Road, outside the Corinthian Quay Apartments (EH5 1GL W3W phones.solo.groups) on Granton Square. Buggies, dogs and wheelchairs welcome. It is hoped that we can offer Polish and Arabic translations if required. It can be cold on the northern side of the harbour, so please wear warm clothes and sensible shoes. Bring water or a hot drink. Chocolate provided!
Sorry about the poor quality , but here is the meeting point
I am very pleased that my walking art videos are part of the film assemblages of Kel Portman
Solstice. Winter 2025
By Tamsin Gainger and Kristina Rothstein
And, below, as part of the whole alongside other artists who followed the same brief.
Equinox. Spring 2025
Terminalia 2025
Walking towards the Light / To the Sea to Celebrate the Morning Summer Solstice 2024
Terminalia 2024
Winter Solstice 2023 / The Walkers
Equinox (Autumn 2022)
Winter Solstice 2022
And I was a participant in Jenny Staff‘s walking art event which was part of the Walking Arts Encounters in Prespa 2023. It was documented by Kel Portman and can be seen here.
A community walk from the Granton:hub, Madelvic House w3w: wished.visit.silver
Captions for the images above: Left – The group, some from inside, some outside the Granton Boundary; Right – The group, checking out the wrapped-up Granton Gasholder, building site for new housing
At the edges of pavements, the walls of dilapidated buildings, the join between the land and the sea, and between homed and homeless, we wandered to mark the Festival of Terminalia on 23 February 2024.
Maps annotated by group members
We walked a route familiar to some and unfamiliar to others, according to a path previously visited 4 months earlier in order to make comparisons. Mapping as we went, we strayed off that path occasionally, moved across the boundary several times when the sea or a plant drew us, and noted changes wrought in the natural and urban landscape over such a short time.
Captions for above photos: Left – Electric Car Factory. Planning permission has been gained for housing. Middle – Where Granton Harbour meets the Brick (Granton or Royston) Beach at the Western Breakwater. Right – Sheila and Margaret.
Leaving the Granton:hub / Madelvic House, we started off through the wasteland area behind, past the old Electric Car Factory which was, unusually, open. We passed the travellers’ community who were building a big fire of tyres and other rubbish; the caravans housing the community which has found its way here in 1s and 2s over the last 5 years (maybe), surrounded by dismembered trees; a couple of renegade trailers where men were working – one a local barber who was known to one of our party so we stopped for a chat – between fences newly erected and ground scraped clear of its soil.
Nat pointed out the copse of silver birch which have been cordoned off for keeping, the result of our extensive lobbying of the developers. Here, an art repository is planned by the National Galleries of Scotland, way down the line. It was also the site of our community orchard (at the Tor), once upon a time.
Captions for above photos: Wasteland area behind Madelvic House where people and more-than-humans live, soon to be developed into an Arts Centre
We skirted ‘The Rabbit Run’ closely bordered by towering new blocks and also threatened to be raised to the ground, and turned down towards the sea along Waterfront Avenue – created, named and planned to be this wide, so we are told, to accommodate the trams, though there is, thankfully, no sign of them as yet.
Waterfront AvenueRabbit Run
Stories were told as we hovered at the corner: of the swift boxes often erected on lamp posts next to the Swift business sign (coincidence); of Jenny’s tenacity – spending an officially homeless year visiting the housing association and getting to know them until she was allocated an apartment in the community ahead of us; and of the day we planted the orchard (from up the road) on the grassy bank by more newbies to the area, The Pianodrome.
“With the dog, we went to the rabbit run, behind that Beech Hedge; I know it will all dramatically change very soon.”
Nat
Captions for above photos: Left – Swift poster, Middle – Where Jenny lives now (before the block was built). Right – The new orchard at The Pianodrome
Now we were on the far northern boundary of both Edinburgh as a whole and Granton, whose territory we were beating the bounds of. Many of us bemoaned the lack of access to the Brick Beach, but then a desire path was spotted which turned out to be a thoroughfare. Jubilation!
“for a while I’ve not been able to get through (the wasteland between West Shore Rd and the sea / brick beach) That’s been irritating, having that little cut through blocked off. That used to be on my route so I could get a seat and watch the sea for a while, undisturbed. Tonight we were able to walk through for the first time in ages.”
Kev
The day was at its evening cusp and it was darkling, so we continued along West Harbour Road which becomes West Shore Road, past the new-to-the-area Edinburgh Palette (what we hope will be new artist studios and home for a weekend Street festival), and turned left onto the Speirs Bruce Way (more stories of Antarctic adventures and explorers are linked to this place). We went hard by what’s left of Granton Castle where the Walled Garden is hidden (a citizen success story as it was saved from developers and now houses countless allotments, natural dye- and community soup-makers), with the Social Bite village opposite.
Captions for photos above: Two A-Z maps of Granton – 2004 on the left showing one gas holder, and 1999 on the right showing three as there used to be
I’m new to the area and walking is a way of feeling the local, recent history
Jenny
Uphill we traipsed, viewing the space for the new Granton Mural (end March 2024) and regaining the Gasholder. We stood in the rain to wonder why Caroline Park Avenue has become Waterfront Broadway, and returned to our starting point just as the fire engine arrived to douse the fire, now emitting acrid black smoke.
We’re from slightly outside the area. I’ve been down here a LOT walking the dogs so it’s very familiar, but it’s interesting to do it in a group because different people see different things. [Did you notice the changes?] Oh definitely.
Sheila
Toasting with a libation (warm apple juice), as is customary at this Festival, we swapped experiences, hopes and fears. Our discussion focused on the place where the inner landscape met the outer.
I used to like going there because of the nature around the gasworks. Because there was such a high fence and nobody could get in, it was undisturbed and there were wild orchids. To see it all demolished and a building site … it’s sad.
Maria
Along the bread line, the coast line, and the invisible lines between here and there, and us and other, we walked. It’s a time of great change in this area: trees taken down, blocks of flats going up, buildings repurposed and roads renamed (no-one knows why, though we suspect so-called ‘gentrification’).
The fire engine arrives just as we return to Madelvic House
A Community Walk was held on Friday February 23rd between 4-5.30pm, with drinks and discussion afterwards to chat about the walk and what we had seen and felt, at 5.30-6.30pm. Eventbrite was used for booking and everyone and their dogs were welcome!
The walk began and ended at the Granton:hub, Madelvic House, Granton Park Avenue, EH5 1HS.
I contributed words and images to a video assemblage, together with a host of other artists and Kel Portman, whose provocation this was. The link is here on the YouTube channel of Kel Arrowsmith. (My part is at 6:30 minutes.)
Introduction
A Granton Boundary walk was made in the Autumn of 2023, in advance of the opening of the Walking Like a Tortoise exhibition at the Granton:hub. It invited people to walk slowly together with a paper map, and annotate that map with places of interest (objects passed, thoughts thought, feelings felt, sites appreciated or not). We meandered, responding to participant’s interest, to their prior knowledge of the area, and to our whim. This might happen again! It was followed by a standing-up discussion and sharing of maps outside the building.
What happened on the walk
I proposed a (repeat) Midwinter walk around the same edgeland, as the evenings lightened, and I invited those who still had their maps to bring them and make comparisons. I brought the ones I was given after the original walk and handed them back for the purpose.
Tamsin
There was a brief introduction, then we walked together and had the opportunity to chat about borders and territories.
The remaining Granton Gasholder which is being built around, providing new housing and arts interventions
The immediate area around Madelvic House has changed considerably, as has the Gasholder (it was partially wrapped up) and the harbour, and therefore the new maps created will be likely to chart those changes, together with that of the seasons, and the alterations in us and the environment during the past quarter year.
Some of the group at the gasholder
This was an inclusive walk, paced for everyone, which was therefore on pavements.
Festival of Terminalia
This event was part of the Festival of Terminalia, an annual one-day celebration of walking, space, place and psychogeography.
Terminalia is a one day festival of walking, space, place and psychogeography on 23rd Feburary. Terminalia was the festival of Terminus, Roman god of boundaries and landmarks! Events have been run on this day since 2011.
Tim Waters tim@geothings.net
Tamsin is a wanderer and psychogeographer. She has nomadic habits and is very often found in the marginal areas around her Granton home. She is a qualified walk leader with Paths for All Scotland, and liked to perambulate with the Ageing Well group who belong to Victoria Park in Edinburgh. Her first art exhibition was Walking Like a Tortoise in 2023. She also writes and walks here .
Walking without a donkey 