Rock On!

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.

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

I am grateful to the wonderful Threadinburgh for posts such as Oxsters, Oxcares, and Oxcars, the thread about the names of the islands of the Forth.