New gym concept hits the streets

Gary Vallance and Jim Mee of the Urban Gym

By Cara Sulieman

THE STREETS of a Scots city will soon be filled with people jumping, running and skipping over the pavements in a bid to get fit.

A new workout using the city furniture as a gym launched today (Mon), using the winding streets and cobbled closes of Edinburgh to make exercise interesting.

The Urban Gym was inspired by the popular Urban Rat Race that takes place in cities across the UK every year.

It takes what could be a boring three kilometre (two mile) jog around the city and intersperses it with “Rat Stops”, where participants use the landscape instead of gym equipment to tone their muscles.

Penguins at Edinburgh Zoo become webcam sensation

By Cara Sulieman

A PILOT trial of a webcam watching penguins at Edinburgh Zoo has been such a hit that it is to be made a permanent fixture.

It was set up in June to capture the Gentoo penguins nesting and bringing up their young and has been attracting 9000 visitors a month so far.

There was even a massive Twitter campaign to get it back up and running after technical hitches saw the camera go down briefly.

Bosses admit they never expected the scheme to be as popular as it has been and are now looking at rolling out the idea to other animal enclosures.