Holyrood Park frames two ascents that connect different stages of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew’s lives. First, Emma and Dexter set out together with picnic supplies; later, Dexter returns with his daughter Jasmine, who climbs ahead of him. The park’s paths and heights make it a setting for both shared beginnings and changed family roles.

Setting and Approach

On their earlier visit, Emma and Dexter shop for a picnic at the supermarket on Nicolson Street, then double back towards Holyrood Park and start up along the base of the escarpment. Sharing a shopping basket feels strangely domestic, and they second-guess their choices: whether olives are too fancy, Irn Bru funny, or champagne ostentatious. Their supplies go into Emma’s army-surplus rucksack, her choices jokey and Dexter’s intended to seem sophisticated.

The climb exposes a mismatch between Dexter’s self-image and his condition. In his suit and slippery shoes, with a cigarette between his lips and his head thumping from red wine and morning coffee, he follows behind Emma. Though aware of the view, he is distracted by her as she moves ahead. The park’s steep ground turns their picnic outing into an early contrast between Emma’s nimbleness and Dexter’s less capable performance.

The Climb with Jasmine

On a later visit, Dexter brings his seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Jasmine, to Holyrood Park and proposes climbing towards Arthur’s Seat. She clambers up the path with far more energy than her father, stopping now and then to laugh back at him as he wheezes and sweats below. Dexter blames his lack of grip on his shoes, but the excuse does not change their positions: Jasmine leads, and he struggles to follow.

They leave the main path and scramble over rocks before reaching the scrubby, rust-coloured plateau at the top of Arthur’s Seat. There, a stone column marks the highest point. Dexter examines the names and messages scratched into it, including declarations of love and a misspelled political slogan, half hoping to find his own initials among them. The summit is not presented as an untouched wilderness: other visitors have left their marks, and the column becomes a small record of people who have climbed before them.

Family and Narrative Significance

At the summit, Dexter lifts Jasmine onto the column, holds her around the waist, and points out landmarks: the castle, the station, the Firth of Forth and the North Sea, Leith, the New Town where he used to live, and Calton Hill. His brief account of the city joins the visible landscape to his own past; he tells Jasmine that he lived in the New Town twenty years earlier, placing his childhood or young adulthood within the view he is sharing with her. He also offers another climb, this time to Calton Hill.

The two visits give Holyrood Park a recurring role without making the climbs identical. In the earlier outing, Emma sets the pace while Dexter trails after her; in the later one, Jasmine takes the lead and Dexter becomes the breathless follower. The park preserves a recognizable physical challenge while the relationships moving through it change, turning an ascent into a measure of shifting intimacy, age, and family responsibility.