hours sailing away at the Gamebird’s top speed. It was smack in the middle of the Forth. We decided to head for Inchkeith island, even if couldn’t find somewhere to land on the Island, there may have been a safe mooring for the night.
Chapter Forty Nine
We headed off not long after. We’d been traveling for about an hour when the river started to narrow again as we approached Edinburgh. I felt closer to home than I had for a long time. Edinburgh was only forty five minutes on a train to where we lived. We used to go there Christmas shopping this time of year and had visited the zoo the summer before the outbreak; I wondered what had happened to the animals there. Did someone let them go and if so, were there penguins and panda bears in Scotland now? We passed under the Forth bridges which still amazed me every time I saw them; they truly were amazing feats of civil engineering.
We saw movement on the road bridge, but there was nothing to worry about, unless rotters had learned how to climb again! We hadn’t encountered any people with the exception of Edd since Dalmuir. We passed under them without any problems and the river immediately opened up again.
The weather wasn’t great, but we pushed on to Inchkeith Island. We arrived at early evening, just when it was starting to turn to dusk at that time of the year.
Luckily for us there was a small harbour where we were able to moor the boats and where we were able to get ashore. The Forth had been starting to swell quite badly and the Gamebird had been struggling. The last few miles had been quite nerve racking, especially for us aboard the Gamebird. However, the harbour did its job of sheltering our three small boats from the swell of the Forth. There were no other boats in the harbour and we could still see the Forth Bridges and Edinburgh in the distance.
There was no sign of life or rotters on the island so we decided to send a few of us out to explore the island further and make sure it was abandoned still like our map had indicated.
Becky, Amy, John, Lia and I set off as usual. There was an old gun emplacement just above the harbour which we had made our way up to. I guessed it must have been left over from World War two. When we got to the gun emplacement we could see an old fort to the west, so we went to explore that too. The fort too had long since been abandoned, but you were still able to climb to the top of it by means of an external steel staircase.
From the top of the fort we were able to look across the whole island, the view was spectacular even in the fading light, but more importantly we had been able to see the highest point of the island on which sat a lighthouse. There was another gun emplacement next to the fort which looked up the river towards the Forth Bridges, that Island had certainly been well fortified at some point in its recent past.
From the fort we made our way to the centre of the island and the lighthouse which we had seen from the fort. As we reached the top of the hill we were met by a number of old houses. The houses were in fairly bad condition, probably abandoned since the war, the same as the gun emplacements.
The wooden roof frames were still in place along with the window frames, but the glass had long since gone. We went cautiously inside, only to find that they had long since been abandoned too and weren’t harbouring any stray rotters. The insides weren’t in too bad shape, with fire places still in tack. We left the houses behind and continued up the hill to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse looked in good order; it had no doubt been automated in the eighties like most lighthouses across the United Kingdom. The good thing for us though was although they were automated, they were still routinely maintained and hence the good condition of the Inchkeith light house. The light house had long since stopped working; it no doubt ran off a generator which would have run out of fuel long ago. There was an inscription on the
Chapter Forty Nine
We headed off not long after. We’d been traveling for about an hour when the river started to narrow again as we approached Edinburgh. I felt closer to home than I had for a long time. Edinburgh was only forty five minutes on a train to where we lived. We used to go there Christmas shopping this time of year and had visited the zoo the summer before the outbreak; I wondered what had happened to the animals there. Did someone let them go and if so, were there penguins and panda bears in Scotland now? We passed under the Forth bridges which still amazed me every time I saw them; they truly were amazing feats of civil engineering.
We saw movement on the road bridge, but there was nothing to worry about, unless rotters had learned how to climb again! We hadn’t encountered any people with the exception of Edd since Dalmuir. We passed under them without any problems and the river immediately opened up again.
The weather wasn’t great, but we pushed on to Inchkeith Island. We arrived at early evening, just when it was starting to turn to dusk at that time of the year.
Luckily for us there was a small harbour where we were able to moor the boats and where we were able to get ashore. The Forth had been starting to swell quite badly and the Gamebird had been struggling. The last few miles had been quite nerve racking, especially for us aboard the Gamebird. However, the harbour did its job of sheltering our three small boats from the swell of the Forth. There were no other boats in the harbour and we could still see the Forth Bridges and Edinburgh in the distance.
There was no sign of life or rotters on the island so we decided to send a few of us out to explore the island further and make sure it was abandoned still like our map had indicated.
Becky, Amy, John, Lia and I set off as usual. There was an old gun emplacement just above the harbour which we had made our way up to. I guessed it must have been left over from World War two. When we got to the gun emplacement we could see an old fort to the west, so we went to explore that too. The fort too had long since been abandoned, but you were still able to climb to the top of it by means of an external steel staircase.
From the top of the fort we were able to look across the whole island, the view was spectacular even in the fading light, but more importantly we had been able to see the highest point of the island on which sat a lighthouse. There was another gun emplacement next to the fort which looked up the river towards the Forth Bridges, that Island had certainly been well fortified at some point in its recent past.
From the fort we made our way to the centre of the island and the lighthouse which we had seen from the fort. As we reached the top of the hill we were met by a number of old houses. The houses were in fairly bad condition, probably abandoned since the war, the same as the gun emplacements.
The wooden roof frames were still in place along with the window frames, but the glass had long since gone. We went cautiously inside, only to find that they had long since been abandoned too and weren’t harbouring any stray rotters. The insides weren’t in too bad shape, with fire places still in tack. We left the houses behind and continued up the hill to the lighthouse.
The lighthouse looked in good order; it had no doubt been automated in the eighties like most lighthouses across the United Kingdom. The good thing for us though was although they were automated, they were still routinely maintained and hence the good condition of the Inchkeith light house. The light house had long since stopped working; it no doubt ran off a generator which would have run out of fuel long ago. There was an inscription on the