I am glad we stayed in the Old Town of Edinburgh, among all those tall sandstone tenement buildings, just steps away from the Royal Mile. So this Royal Mile, what exactly is it? Well it is a long stretch of connected streets that slope downwards from Edinburgh Castle, sitting at the top of a 300 million year old volcano, all the way down towards Holyrood Palace (the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland), as well as the area where now the Scottish Parliament can be found. It was likely part of what was left over by a retreating ice sheet thousands of years ago. Along the way, if you can see past all the cashmere shops and whisky tasting shops and stores selling little Nessies with tartan hats on, are storybooks full of history both bloody and noble, pubs spilling out music and English stag parties, upon cobblestones haunted by the ghosts of so many dead Fringe plays that got bad reviews in The Scotsman. I walked one morning round to a building we really loved the look of, the Tolbooth Tavern. I never went into this tavern, but I knew I wanted to draw it. I got a can of Irn Bru (Tropical Irn Bru to be precise, it had a flamingo on the can), stood outside a shop selling tartan scarves or little wooden cows or something, and had to turn my landscape sketchbook very much into portrait mode to fit it all in. Edinburgh is tall and it’s worth getting the tops of these buildings. I didn’t feel like painting the whole thing, but added just enough that you can imagine the rest of the brickwork. This building was once the Canongate Tolbooth, originally dating from from 1591. It’s probably haunted, because why not, everywhere else is.

One of my absolutely favourite memories form our trip to Edinburgh was getting jacket potatoes from Tempting Tattie. This was about a block away from us on Jeffrey Street, and even thinking about it makes me feel hungry from some delicious buttery jacket spuds. Tempting Tatties had some fantastic toppings – I got a huge one with loads of cheese and baked beans on it, pure comfort food for not very much money. My wife got the one topped with Coronation Chicken, that was delicious. I got another next day topped with Chicken Tikka Masala, also very tasty. If I lived in Edinburgh I would need to be climbing up Arthurs Seat every day to burn of all the calories from the jacket potatoes I’d be eating (all washed down with Irn Bru naturally – though it was the Irn Bru Xtra, the zero-sugar one, that I drank mostly – the tropical version was nice, though I did try an Ice Cream flavour Irn Bru which went very much into the bin, yeuch). I must have visited this Tempting Tatties when we came here in 1999, what with it being close to the place where we put on those shows, but I don’t remember, I mostly ate greasy bags of chips.

One evening following a lot of touristing, my wife and son rested at the hotel while I went out to put some more sketches into my book while the light was good. The John Knox House, just a couple of minutes from our flat, was another of our favourite buildings from along the Royal Mile, and dating from the 1480s is one of the oldest surviving medieval buildings on John Knox was the founder of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, leading the Scottish Protestant Reformation back in the 16th century. The ground floor of this building is home to the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which we had a little look around – there were some interesting performances they were hosting that we unfortunately would miss. I’d definitely take a look there before any future trip to Auld Reekie. The little cafe in there also served haggis both meaty and vegetarian. I drew on this light evening (it was after 9pm, still so much daylight) but it started to rain a little, so I sheltered in the covered close directly opposite.

When I was all done, I popped into a pub on the corner – called “No. 1 High Street”, right opposite the busier World’s End where I couldn’t find a table to sit at (they were setting up for some live music in the corner, which I presumed would be one of those traditional Scottish folk nights that Rick Steves and all the guidebooks said I had to experience), and rested my very weary feet. I hadn’t filled in the details on many of those windows yet (repetitive actions like that are often a “do-later” job) so I got to work on that over a nice pint of something cold and Scottish, but of course I can’t stop and always need to draw something new, so I sketched the bar instead. It wasn’t very busy; there was an American couple in, sat next to a couple of young lads from Northern Ireland (with strong and amazing accents), who were there for some farmworkers conference. The young lady at the bar was from the north of England and very conversational with them, and even had a look through my sketchbook, being an artist herself. The Americans I think were from Texas, apparently they met on a TV show, and one of the young lads asked if they have cowboys in Texas. Nearby an older Scottish man chatted with the owner, it was a friendly little place. It didn’t get dark until about 11pm. I walked back to the flat as they were closing, pretty tired, but at least I finally got a Scottish bar sketch from the inside. Walking past the World’s End, the music being played wasn’t quite folk music, more of the generic singer-songwriter variety, so I’m glad I didn’t stand to wait for it, though it sounded nice enough. At least it wasn’t bagpipes. I know it’s an odd thing to admit when I’m touristing around Scotland, but I don’t really like the sound of bagpipes much…