Undiscovered Scotland

 

The Edinburgh Festivals' Cavalcade was an excellent free event that until 2010 took place each year on a Sunday afternoon in early August. It brought together performers from many strands of the Edinburgh Festival taking place in the city at the time, including the Fringe and the Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo. The event did not take place in 2011, which deprived the Edinburgh Festival of a starting celebration: it was replaced in 2012 by an Edinburgh Festival Parade which took place through the centre of the city.

The Cavalcade was also open to a wide range of other bands, local community groups and pretty much anyone else who would add to the highly impressive and entertaining spectacle. The images on this page were taken at the 2010 Edinburgh Festivals' Cavalcade which took place in Holyrood Park.

The Cavalcade traditionally adopted a route that took it through the heart of the city centre along Princes Street. It relocated to Holyrood Park in 2009 because of tram works along Princes Street, and remained there in 2010. Holyrood Park provided an ideal setting in which over 100,000 spectators (in 2010) could comfortably view proceedings without becoming entangled with the already crowded city centre.

The 2010 Cavalcade started near the Commonwealth Pool entrance to the park and took a gently descending route which followed the road skirting the base of Salisbury Crags for a little over a mile to an end point on the north side of the park. An August which until then had offered little but grey skies and rain relented to give the large crowds a mixture of sunshine and cloud: and a degree of warmth that must have been uncomfortable for participants wearing full military or highland dress, but was ideal for spectators.

Crowds began to gather well over an hour before the 2pm start time for the Cavalcade. The northern end of the route, near Holyrood Palace, was the most popular area. Here visitors could enjoy the catering and other facilities, or simply spread themselves out over the lower slopes of Salisbury Crags to gain a bird's eye view of proceedings.

Also popular was the assembly area at the start of the route, where some 3,000 participants gathered to wait for the Cavalcade to begin. Meanwhile other spectators spread themselves out along the length of the route. A great benefit of Holyrood Park as a venue is that despite the very large numbers of spectators, a good viewing location can readily be found by anyone.

The scale of the 2010 Cavalcade can best be understood by noting that it took rather more than an hour to pass a given spot along the route. As a spectacle it was superb and highly entertaining, offering, to reuse an old cliche, something for everyone.

The Cavalcade was led by around 100 large motorcycles and trikes, followed by a number of supercars. Then what seemed to be almost the whole cast of the Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo marched past, with the bands carefully spaced to (mostly) avoid musical interference with one another. This section of the Cavalcade included the Band of the Coldstream Guards and the New Zealand Army Band, plus of course, lots of bagpipes and tartan.

A series of floats interspersed by marching bands and groups then carried Edinburgh Festival participants such as the Ladyboys of Bangkok and Calamity Jane. Community and spiritual groups and charities also took part, along with bands from the Scouts and the Boys' Brigade. For us the star of the show was a huge green caterpillar propelled by a person walking inside each of its six legs.