Day 196 - Neighbourhood

 NEIGHBOURHOOD

Prompt - Neighbourhood : Write about your favourite place in your neighbourhood to visit and hang out at.

There are no doubts in my mind if asked to name my favourite spot in the locality.  Indeed my favourite place in all of the city.  The doubts arise when I consider why it should be so.  I think there are three main reasons.

The place itself is Newhaven Harbour.  Once a busy fishing port, and home to a big fish market, there's little gets landed any more.  Instead it's home to a substantial number of leisure boats, the Port O'Leith Motor Boat Club, and a jetty installed to take passengers from cruise liners to and from their 'home' on shuttle craft.  The structure of the old fish market remains, but is now home to a few restaurants, one of which has a thriving chippie takeaway section, and an excellent fishmonger.  There's an old lighthouse, some interesting old buildings on the other side of the road, but most of the other architecture is modern brutal or boring, notably the hideously bland Premier Inn.

I went down there today, to give me a reminder of some of the details of the place.  One of the hottest days of the year, so it was shimmering in sunshine under blue sky.  The coast of Fife was clear despite some haze, the Ochil Hills rolling behind.  To the west the spires of all three Forth Bridges made their importance known.  Benches were mostly taken, people sitting talking, eating, admiring, or just sun soaking.  Under the lighthouse a bunch of kids had been in swimming - a risky but exhilarating experience.  Tables outside the restaurants were full - it's a fabulous place to sit and have a meal.

All of which goes some way to explaining the attractions of the spot.  But not why I should consider it preferable to Queens Park or Blackford Hill or the Castle or Cramond.  There are so many spots of beauty and fascination across the city.  Yet this fairly unremarkable old harbour tops my chart.  In part that may be down to proximity.  When I first began my return to Edinburgh we had bought a small flat in Leith, down near the old docks.  Although there were many, many short visits over the decades, it had been almost thirty years since I'd last lived here, and back then I was out on the west side.  We had had family in Leith, and I went to primary school not far from Newhaven, but it wasn't an are I knew intimately.  I was certainly aware of the harbour, and can recall visiting the fish market more than once, but it wasn't a place I knew well.  By the time we had our new accommodation here I had discovered a personal reason to take an interest into the area, more of which in a moment.

Having our holiday flat in Leith meant a lot of exploring, both to ascertain where the best local places to shop and eat, but also simply to see.  We were very near to The Shore, so that was pleasant in itself.  But with close walking distances the most attractive places to have a sit down in the sun were leith Links to the east, and the harbour to the west.  It became a favourite spot to walk to, to take photos of, and to eat in, for by then the fish market element had been reduced to  a preparation plant for the fish shop, and a restaurant in the south end of the long, low red building.  Even though we now live a bit further away, it's still an easy enough walk, or a short bus hop away.

I mentioned taking lots of photos there, and that's another reason why I love the place.  Today was bright and sunny.  Tonight there might well be one of those gorgeous red-gold sunsets that light up the surface of the Firth and make the world feel special.  But those days are rare.  As are all the others, for the harbour has many faces.  Light, wind and, frequently, precipitation levels make this a place that changes daily, and still remains beautiful.  It might be a wave-lashed, salt bearing storm from Norway, but there's a still a beauty to it.  As there is when the haar descends and it's hard to even make out the lighthouse from the main road.  When the whole scene is soft and muffled and ghostly.  The photographic possibilities are endless.  That's also why you do see artists rendering the scene quite often.  

I said there were three reasons and my last is the personal one I mentioned earlier.  In the late nineties the old fish market building housed a small Newhaven Museum.  We went there with my parents one day, having eaten looking out across the harbour, over past Granton, to those bridges I talked about (except they were just a duo in those days).  Many of the photos showed Newhaven fishwives in their traditional striped and weirdly voluminous outfits, and my father surprised me by knowing who some of them were.  With even a distant relative in one.  Yet he said little about his connection to the area.  It was only after he died I found out that he'd been born on Main Street, the one that runs parallel to the main road the fronts to the harbour.  And that both his parents has worked in the fish market, his mother one of those who wore that stripey outfit.  

So when we first had a base here there was already a familial link in my mind to the harbour area.  I love being there because of all I've written about already.  But there's an emotional connection too.  Artificial in many ways, but that doesn't make it less real.  Time at the harbour brings many satisfactions.  And lovely fresh fish...