Coffee table wood & Edinburgh's 'green belt'

For those of you who read our Blips regularly, you will know that Ann's nephew, Jack, made her a very lovely coffee table out of horse chestnut wood. Haven't a clue what type of wood this is, but I'm pretty sure it would be suitable for loads of coffee tables. Lol! It's just a pity that all this wood is in Edinburgh and Jack is in South Yorkshire?!!!

All this wood had been cut down on the 'secret path'. The secret path used to be secret but since lock down, a lot of people have discovered the secret path, so it is secret no longer. I've not been there for ages but it's a really good place to go chasing pesky little squirrels.

The secret path ends at Mortonhall Garden Centre so after that, Ann said that we would go for a wander through all the new housing estates that have popped up between there and the City By-pass.

OMG?! It took us more than an hour to walk from Mortonhall Garden Centre to Gilmerton and all of that time was taken up walking through streets and streets and streets of 'new builds'. We haven't got a clue how many thousands of people live in all this new housing that has popped up. And apart from one new primary school (Frogston Road Primary which is actually no where near the majority of the new housing) there doesn't seem to be any other sort of infrastructure in place. Where are the doctors, the dentists, secondary schools, the shops, the public transport links, the pubs, the restaurants, the fitness clubs??????????? To be honest, it was like walking through a ghost town.................. Most of the houses had cars parked outside. Does that mean everyone is working from home? We were walking there between 3-4.20pm, which in a normal street in the city, would see us trying to avoid all the kids going home from school. In more than an hour we didn't see any kids. In fact, come to think of it........................ (apart from one guy walking a Collie dog) we didn't see anyone. Weird?!!!'

…..............And the other thing....................... how have all these houses even been given permission to be built? When my human was at school in the 1970s, she distinctly remembers her geography teacher telling her that all cities had a 'green belt'. At the time, Edinburgh's 'Green Belt' was the area in between the 'City By-pass' (which was in the process of being built) and the current residential areas which were at least half a mile from it.

Fast forward 50 years on, and my human doesn't even know if the term 'green belt' exists any more????????? She's going to do a bit of googling. Lol!!!