Arthur's Seat at dawn, the Old Town, and a dram on the West Bow
13 playbooks shared · added to 31 trips
- 8:30 am1Arthur's Seat from the Palace car parkEdinburgh
251m, free, no ticket and no gate, and about forty minutes up if you are moving. Three things people get wrong. The Radical Road under Salisbury Crags has been closed since a 2018 rockfall and is still fenced — do not plan a route through it. The Gutted Haddie, the eroded gully straight up the west face, is a scramble that turns to mud and is where the ankle injuries come from; take the made path from the Palace car park or the Queen's Drive. And if the forecast is bad, drive round to Dunsapie Loch, which cuts the climb to twenty minutes from a car park most visitors never find. It is a marked hold because the summit is genuinely dangerous in a Forth gale — the wind is roughly double what it is at the bottom.
15 min walk · 1.2 km - 10:05 am2Coffee and a bacon roll before the Royal Mile wakes upEdinburgh
The lower Royal Mile below the World's End is the quiet half and stays that way until about eleven. Walk up rather than taking a bus: the Canongate closes and kirkyard are where the Old Town is still a place people live rather than a souvenir corridor.
18 min walk · 1.4 km - 10:45 am3Edinburgh Castle, mid-morning timed slotEdinburgh
Timed entry, booked online in advance, and cheaper online than at the gate — the gate queue on the esplanade can be forty minutes in summer for the privilege of paying more. Go straight up to the Crown Room and St Margaret's Chapel first and work back down; everyone else does the sequence in the printed order and bunches at the top by noon. The One O'Clock Gun is fired every day except Sunday, Good Friday and Christmas Day, and if you want it you need to still be here at 13:00, which this day is not. Verified 2026-09-06: open daily from 09:30 (closed 25–26 December); April to September it closes at 18:00 with last admission 17:00, October to March it closes at 17:00 with last admission 16:00. Entry is in 30-minute timed slots and once the online allocation has gone there are no tickets at the gate at all — this is a book-ahead, not a turn-up-and-queue. The Crown Room, closed in January 2026 for refurbishment and a new display case, reopened in May 2026, so the Honours are back on show.
5 min walk · 400 m - 12:30 pm4A hog roast roll from Oink on Victoria StreetEdinburgh
A whole pig in the window and three decisions: roll size, haggis or not, and apple sauce or chilli. Six quid and five minutes, which is the point on a day with a booked slot at 13:30. Take it down the curve of Victoria Street and eat it in the Grassmarket looking back up at the castle rock.
4 min walk · 300 m - 1:30 pm5The Real Mary King's CloseEdinburgh
A genuine 17th-century street sealed under the City Chambers, and the only one of the Old Town underground attractions that is the real thing rather than a vault repurposed for a ghost act. Timed tours in small groups, booked ahead, and they do sell out. It is cold and low — you will duck. The costumed guiding is hammier than it needs to be; the archaeology under it is not. Verified 2026-09-06: tours run from 10:00, hourly-ish every 20–30 minutes, with the last tour at 21:00 from 1 April to 31 October and at 17:00 Sunday to Thursday off-peak. It sells out; book online, where it is also a couple of pounds cheaper than the door.
4 min walk · 300 m - 3 pm6The Bow Bar, and a shelf you have not triedEdinburgh
Several hundred bottles behind the bar, no music, no television and no cocktails — the room is built for conversation and the staff will talk you through a region for as long as you like if you are not in a hurry. Ask for something you cannot buy at home rather than the name you already know; the independent bottlings on the top shelves are the reason to be here. Order a half measure and water on the side. If it is full, Kay's Bar off Jamaica Street in the New Town is fifteen minutes downhill and is the other answer to the same question.
17 min walk · 1.3 km - 7 pm7Dinner at The Cottage at Royal TerraceEdinburgh
CORRECTED 2026-09-06 — the stop as written was impossible: The Gardener's Cottage closed for good in December 2024, and guides that still list it are out of date. The same cottage in the Royal Terrace gardens has been taken on by new owners and reopened as The Cottage at Royal Terrace, taking bookings from 1 May 2026 and opening four days a week to begin with — find out which four before you build an evening on it, because the old place was shut Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and a successor operating four days will be shut most of the week too. The room is the draw either way: a gardener's cottage behind Calton Hill, long tables, a short seasonal menu, and about thirty covers. It is a twenty-minute walk from the Old Town round the back of the hill, which is the pleasant way to end up where the morning started. Book before you travel; if it is shut on your night, Broughton Street ten minutes away is the fallback.