A SHORT WALK IN THE OLD TOWN

Submitted by Editor on Mon, 27/05/2019 - 19:08

Spurtle took the opportunity of a rare day-off to visit foreign parts this afternoon.

A meander through the Old Town is recorded here in a short series of photographs.

We provide explanatory captions for those unaccustomed to life in the capital’s Deep South.

It's not a complete assessment of Edinburgh's historic heart, so if you’d like to add images and impressions of your own, please do.

We begin with the New Waverley Square area, which is rapidly taking shape. So far, we like it.

No. 264 on the High Street has appeal.

A densely populated Byre’s Close.

Scottish fashion leads the world on Hunter's Square …

as does our cuisine at the Café Keno.

Canongate residents are just regular folk, like us …

for whom love knows no bounds on the New Steps.

Many of them are multilingual in more than one language.

At St Giles’s Cathedral, we find God and Mammon, not necessarily in that order.

The Royal Mile boasts two miles of public footpath, not all of it for all members of the general public.

This is a rather sad and unused bench on Parliament Square. Perhaps, like underperforming parts of our own dear Greenside, it should be turned into a lovely mega-bar.

Before the onset of summer, Spurtle is still mostly charmed by the Old Town. Like this head at Melrose Court, it is damaged but defiant.

However, we find certain commodified aspects of it an affront. So do other people, it seems. We suspect an invisible hand has been at work.