Why the Radical Road in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park needs to reopen now after being shut for nearly six years

Walkers on the Radical Road in Edinburgh's Holyrood Park before the closure. PIC: Ian Rutherford / The Scotsman

The other day, as I was going through some old photos, I came across one from a ski trip to Utah in 2013. It was taken at the boundary rope at the edge of the Canyons ski resort – the point at which local backcountry ski guide Kevin Langlois and I were about to leave the relative safety of the ski-patrolled, regularly avalanche-blasted ski area and head out into the pristine, untracked powder paradise beyond.

The folks running the resort had clearly accepted that a significant proportion of their customers were going to cross over the boundary rope at this point – indeed, they had left a little gap between two posts, enabling us to do just that. However, in order to ensure that nobody could claim to have left the ski area in this way without being fully cognisant of the risks involved, the team at Canyons had also installed some very unambiguous signage.

The first sign, situated right beside the gap in the rope so you couldn’t possibly miss it, was about two feet high and four feet wide, and the first thing that struck you about it was the large picture of a skull and crossbones – nothing like a good ol’ death’s head for grabbing the attention. Beside that, there was a notice in large letters which read: “You are leaving the ski resort, YOU CAN DIE, this is your decision.”

Some unambiguous signage beside the boundary rope at the Canyons ski resort, Utah PIC: Roger Cox / The Scotsman

Once you’d passed through the gate, there was a second sign on the other side headed “Warning” – a little less in-your-face than the first one, but still impossible to miss – which gave you a quick rundown of the various potential pitfalls waiting to ensnare inexperienced backcountry travellers.

This all struck me as a bit over-the-top at the time, but I reasoned that – in a country as famously litigious as America – it was probably a sensible precaution. No intermediate skier could possibly pass through that gate seeking fresh tracks, get caught in an avalanche on the other side, then successfully sue the ski resort on the grounds that they hadn't received sufficient warning. Surely all the lawyers for Canyons would need to do in any court case would be to show a picture of the very ample signage the resort had provided and it would be case closed.

As Kevin and I crossed the boundary rope and prepared to explore the powder stashes hidden in the steep glades beyond, I remember thinking that, in a country like Scotland, where people tend not to sue each other so much and are generally trusted to assess risks for themselves, OTT signage like this would never be necessary. Well, how wrong I was.

Fast-forward to the present day, and the Radical Road footpath, which runs around Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh, offering majestic views of the city and the countryside beyond, has now been closed for almost six years. The reason given by Historic Environment Scotland, which operates the site: “high risk of rockfall.” To be clear, this isn't simply a case of HES putting signs up saying “footpath closed” – they have gone one better, erecting enormous metal cages at either end, making it all-but impossible for walkers to access the path. (I say “all but” because it’s still possible to bypass the cages and scramble up to the path via the steep slopes below. Technically, then, I suppose the path is now inaccessible to walkers but still accessible to scramblers.)

I’ve written previously about the Radical Road’s importance as a recreational resource for locals, but beyond that very obvious argument for reopening it, what kind of message does its closure send out to the wider world?

If this was some out-of-the-way trail in the Highlands, only visited by a handful of people each year, then it wouldn’t be a PR issue. However, the Radical Road is very much on the tourist trail – just across the road from the Scottish Parliament and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, no less. It also features in tourist guidebooks. How many thousands of people from overseas visit Edinburgh each year, stroll past the Parliament, then try to access the Radical Road – perhaps hoping to visit the famous “Hutton’s Section” of the crags where James Hutton made major advances in geology during the Enlightenment – only to be confronted by those cages?

And what do these people think when they find their way blocked? That Scotland is a place where the powers-that-be don’t feel able to trust the general public to make basic safety decisions? The Austrians, French, Swiss and Italians all have many miles of roads running through steep-sided, rockfall-prone canyons in the Alps, but the traffic there is protected by acres of steel netting bolted to the rock faces above. What must these people think when they visit Scotland and discover that this once-great engineering nation can’t even make a few hundred metres of footpath safe for pedestrians?

Enough already. This is getting beyond embarrassing. If the law of the land really does give HES no option but to keep this footpath closed (and HES have suggested that the Scottish Outdoor Access Code doesn’t apply to Holyrood Park) then, frankly, the law needs to change. It should surely be enough to use the Canyons solution here, and simply put up signs saying “You are entering an area where rockfalls may take place, YOU CAN DIE, this is your decision.” Maybe we could do without the skull and crossbones graphics, though. Best leave the drama to the Americans.