Now then everybody welcome to the beautiful countryside of East Lothian, and what an amazing
beautiful day it is today, the sun's out, the sky's blue, it's actually quite warm,
it feels like spring is here finally, so I'm out and about and today I'm going to climb
to the top of that hill behind me, and visit the Hopetoun Monument, that's the tower you
can see on the top of the hill, I believe there are about 183 steps to the top but the
views from the top are meant to be spectacular, so fancy joining me on this little adventure
welcome to RogVLOG
as always at these East Lothian locations, there is a very handy map and information
board and here we can see the routes to the summit,
it's quite a steep climb up here and for once I've actually remembered my walking boots,
it's only a brief but vigorous hike up this steep hill but there in front of me is Hopetoun
Monument,
these final few hundred yards are very rocky and if it wasn't as dry as it is today I think
it'd be pretty treacherous,
it literally just looks like a gigantic chimney on the top of a hill,
wow the views from up here are absolutely amazing, I can see all the way over there
towards North Berwick, and if I follow the coastline around eventually we would get to
see Edinburgh, now it's a little bit hazy today, so the details are a little bit fuzzy,
if it was a clearer day we'd probably be able to see all the way to Edinburgh and beyond,
in fact I can believe and I've been told that on a really clear day you can see the Cairngorms
from here,
I love this dedication plaque here, this monument was erected to the memory of the great and
good John, Fourth Earl of Hopetoun, by the affectionate and grateful tenancy in East
Lothian,
and this was built in 1824,
and
what is it that I always say feel the power of history,
do you know I wasn't actually expecting the gate to the tower to be open today, I've seen
on the internet recently that the gate has been closed stopping people from climbing
to the top, but where there's an open gate is an open invitation to climb those steep
spiral stairs right to the very top of the tower, shall we go up there, I think we should
this is quite scary, there's no handrail and there's quite a lot of debris and it's quite
dark too, so I need to focus more on climbing than I do on filming,
wow nearly there finally I'd describe that as quite treacherous and I've still got to
go down but hopefully, the views from up here are going to be incredible oh here we are,
oh oh my goodness,
as you walk around the perimeter of the tower,
there are all of these really helpful boards with monuments on and landmarks that you can
follow,
and that's a complete circuit,
here's a closer look at one of those boards now, it's saying North Berwick Law and Bass
Rock, which we've seen recently on this vlog, but as you can see it's quite hazy, so I can
just about make out the outline of North Berwick Law over there, but it is really hazy today
what a shame,
well now for the even scarier bit, I've got to go back down those steps now coming up
was hard enough, but going down they're very steep no handrail, let's just hope for the
best,
here we go then,
oh my goodness me look how steep those steps are,
it's a good job there are a few of these little windows every 20 feet or so otherwise it really
would be pitch dart climbing down these steps,
oh,
goodness gracious me, coming down those stairs was so hard, it was really hard on the knees,
but because there was no handrail, you were having to sort of, I was having to jam myself
against the walls and the sort of central spine of the stairs, when I got to the bottom,
I was literally shaking, and I had to crash out on the grass and get my breath back for
10 minutes, but the views from the top are absolutely spectacular so if you've got some
time when you're in East Lothian, it's well worth coming and having a look at the Hopetoun
Monument,
if you enjoyed this episode of RogVLOG please do subscribe to my YouTube channel, in the
meantime until the next video remember there's always something to see so get out there and
find it
I love this dedication I love these dedication wordings here this monument was erected to
the memory of the great and goodJohn First, First - he's not the first.
He's the fourth!