Walking The Maroon Mile

 The Maroon Mile stretches from Tynecastle Stadium to the Haymarket War Memorial. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Hearts Football Club, the mile has been punctuated with information boards highlighting local history and the history of the football club itself. I'm not a football fan at all, but we do live very close to the route of the Maroon Mile and North Merchiston Cemetery (where I'm a member of the Friends Group) has connections with Hearts, so the other day, we decided to walk from the war memorial to the stadium and read all the information boards. I'll give a very brief outline here (with photos). 

The Maroon Mile starts at the Haymarket War Memorial which commemorates the members and supporters of Hearts Football Team who fell in the two world wars.  

 The next information post is found near the Co-op, next to this sculpture marking the brewing and distilling history of the area

Further down Dalry Road, near Lidl is an information board about Dalry Primary School which opened in 1878 (and is found on the opposite side of the road, with no good space for erecting an information board next to the school itself). 
 

The next information board is outside the church of St Martin and Tours, which was originally built in 1883 as a Baptist church but which is now a Scottish Episcopalian Church

Moving onto Gorgie Road, Gorgie Farm, the much loved city farm, is marked with an information board. The farm is currently on hiatus as its future is being discussed, with the farm allotments being used for growing vegetables, but the site not currently open to the public and no animals currently live on site. Hopefully the farm will become fully operational again soon. I have many happy memories of the farm.
 

 

 From here, the next stop is Tynecastle Stadium itself, the home of Hearts Football Club

 A slight detour is required to then move onto North Merchiston Cemetery, where several people with connections to Hearts have been buried. The cemetery has two information boards, which you can see on this post on my Crafty Green Poet blog. 

After walking the Maroon Mile, it seems appropriate to have a pie and a pint in the Athletic Arms (aka The Diggers), which recently won Whisky Bar of the Year in the 2025 Scottish Bar and Pub Awards, which is a great achievement. I don't drink whisky, but the pub also offers a good range of beers and the best pub pies in Edinburgh. 

Time to close my Etsy shop?

My Crafty Green Magpie Shop has been open on Etsy for nine years now. I also for a while had a separate Crafty Green Poet shop (for handmade items only) at which time the Crafty Green Magpie sold only vintage and craft supplies. More recently I amalgamated the two shops. Over the years I've sold a fair amount of things, though it's never been hugely busy. Now though, the listing fees barely make it worthwhile, given that sales are becoming rarer. (I haven't helped this by recently limiting my sales to the UK, due to various customs issues with various overseas markets, but then the UK was always my largest market). 

So, at the moment I'm thinking of only keeping the shop open until the current listings have all run their natural course. I may change my mind but it's looking likely that this is the end. You can have a final look around here.  

Update: I've decided to keep the shop open for another year and will probably then close it.