Blue-sky thinking: Scotland’s new tourist attraction?
A DRAMATIC aerial walkway offering breathtaking views of Edinburgh is being considered as a way of boosting tourism – and preventing injuries on a historic path.
The Radical Road, which runs beneath Salisbury Crags in the capital’s Holyrood Park, has been closed for more than three years after a rockfall sparked safety concerns.
Now the body which runs the park has prepared a report looking at options that include reopening the path at users’ own risk, installing wire mesh, or even closing it to visitors permanently.
However, consultants for Historic Environment Scotland (HES) also suggested closing the path and redirecting visitors to ‘a new cantilevered structure’. The report adds that a cantilever walkway would provide a ‘different vista experience’. It illustrates the suggestion with a picture of the glass-floored Columbia Icefield Skywalk in Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, which protrudes from a mountainside in a horseshoe shape and offers stunning views of the surroundings peaks.
The Radical Road – named in the aftermath of the Radical War, or Scottish Insurrection, of 1820 – was closed in 2018 after 50 tons of rock fell from cliffs onto the path.
HES said yesterday various options were being considered, although no final decision had been made.
Ramblers Scotland and Edinburgh heritage watchdog the Cockburn Association have called for the path to be reopened.
The Cockburn Association said the plan for a sky walkway was ‘excessive and inappropriate’.