Walk this way
Mary Wakefield n a warm evening last summer, at about 11 p.m., I sat down on a stone step in Edinburgh's Grassmarket and gave my gloom, which had been gathering all day, the go-ahead to spread. Edinburgh had changed in the decade since I'd been at university there — not drastically, but enough. The skyline still looked dreamy, the smell of hops still hung in the air, but the ancient pubs where once an English `yah' could bray happily into a venomous Scottish silence had gone. No more tattooed men drinking McEwans 80; in their place, bars full of blondes knocking back Red Bull and vodka. Neon lights in Cowgate, bouncers on Candlemaker Row, a hint of Ibiza in the air — it was all horribly clear. Edinburgh had been invaded by stag parties.
At midnight, women with bare mottled legs and red plastic devil's horns began to order chips in the kebab shop opposite, then tottered, scoffing, off. As I walked home down Princes Street, the hens and stags stood puking in the recessed doorways of the House of Fraser. I decided not to come again.
But nothing tempts fate like a resolution. Within a month or so I was back at Waverley station, lured upstream like a salmon by the faint whiff of romance; and within five months, though my relationship was foundering, my love of Edinburgh had flooded back. The key to reclaiming the city, I discovered, was to avoid the tourist traps altogether, steer clear of the Royal Mile and prowl around the periphery, where hens fear to tread.
The first and best Edinburgh walk is up Arthur's Seat, the wild, heathery hill to the east of the city, which was once a volcano system, 350 million years ago, and it begins outside Pollock Halls, the Soviet-style block of housing units for first-year university students. Don't visit Pollock — happiness does not live there — instead turn left into the housing estate in front of you and begin your walk through a long, frightening tunnel. You'll see its mouth as you walk through the estate, you'll feel a spasm of panic midway, and real relief as it spits you out the other side. Once the tunnel is behind you, begin to climb the big hill to your left: up a grassy slope, then on to Salisbury Crags — the basalt cliffs popular with climbers and suicides. From May until September, there'll be bunnies everywhere, flopping around in the sandy soil, and the scent of coconut tanning oil drifting out from yellow gorse. Pause for a sniff, then on up via a set of stone steps to the very top, where a stone cairn marks the summit. If the air is clear, you'll see the great Forth road bridge in the distance, suspended over the glittering sea. You're also perfectly placed to appreciate Edinburgh's geographic schizophrenia. To the north, there's the toytown grid of New Town, all Georgian streets and elegant gardens to which only the wealthy residents have a key. To the south, there are the hectic spires and canyons of old Edinburgh, part gothic romance, part poundshopper.
By now a thin, needling sleet will have begun to fall, so scramble down the far side of the hill and before long you'll be at Edinburgh's oldest pub, The Sheep's Heid in Duddingston village, drinking 10-yearold Laphroaig beside a wood fire.
Two other walks are worth a mention. One begins in Stockbridge, a trendy, arty part of town on the edge of New Town. Stockbridge does a tasty breakfast — though it likes to play you jazz at the same time — and it's many miles from the feeding grounds of the hungover hens, so it's well worth a visit. After breakfast walk west, upstream along the Waters of Leith. The treelined path takes you past a curious temple, beside rhododendron gardens, under bridges and over rickety walkways, while the river rushes past you down to the docks. After half an hour or so you'll see a sign to the Modern Art gallery, and a set of stairs on the opposite bank. The Scottish colourists are worth a look, and there's an Otto Dix nude that will revisit you in nightmares. After tea and cake in the gallery café, it's a short amble back to town past St Mary's Cathedral.
The third walk begins at about 5 p.m., after you've bought a bottle of Scotch in the off-licence on Nicholson Street. Glance up the Royal Mile and you'll see several tiredlooking men dressed as Dracula, off to give 'ghost tours' of the city from outside St Giles' Cathedral. No, don't follow them. Go south over George IV bridge, pausing to take in the moon rising over Waverley and the sinister silhouette of the Sir Walter Scott memorial. Once on Princes Street, walk east into the gloaming and, after 100 feet or so, go through an iron gate on your left. It looks alarming but not to worry; everyone else inside is either drunk or dead. You're in Canongate graveyard, the last resting place of Rabbie Burns and Adam Smith, so knock back a dram in their honour.
Your next whisky stop is just across the road, up a steep flight of steps, on top of Carlton Hill, Robert Louis Stevenson's favourite spot. There's a mock-gothic observatory and 'Edinburgh's disgrace', a monument for the dead of the Napoleonic wars designed to look like the Parthenon. Most nights of the year you'll be alone in the dark, wiping the whisky from your chin and resolving not to fall for a Scot again. On 1 May you'll bump into Beltane, which means a hill full of 1,000 lunatics: jugglers, firebreathers, boys in gold with homemade wings, white-faced women in wedding dresses possessed by the spirit of Kate Bush, and Scots men bodypainted bloodred, quivering with amphetamines. Sit cross-legged on the grass with a good grip on your bottle and know that there's not a hen or a stag night in sight.
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