Festival city of the North

By KEVIN BARRY

There is a precise point near the top of The Mound in Edinburgh, past Deacon Brodie's Bar and along from the Bank of Scotland, where you can pause, swivel and view a rolling sequence of the city's charms, like on an old-time diorama machine.

Behind you squats the ridge-backed huddle of the Old Town, with its dank lanes and mysterious closes, its jumbled tenements that nudge and jostle at each other and twisting alleyways that dip and rise to open out sudden views and then lose them just as quickly. The tendency in the medieval Old Town was to look east, and in the curve of a rooftop, or in the jut of an ancient portal, you'll see the impetus of design is often Dutch, Germanic - or Baltic even.

Still swivelling, your gaze takes in Edinburgh Castle, a magnet for the retina even after a billion postcard pictures and calender shots. And beyond the summer foliage of the Princes Street Gardens there's the bustle of the West End with its teeming shoppers, and the more disreputable traffic heading along the Lothian Rd and Tollcross, where you can drink cheap, walk the pitbull and try to win £100 in one of the amateur poledancing competitions; staged nightly, 12 till 3, "all welcome".

Spread out beneath your feet, falling slowly to the estuarial waters of the Firth of Forth, is the tremendous Georgian spread of the New Town. This is the bit that really gets the guidebook scribes flushed and fluttering. All is understated elegance, with perfect parks and terraces, squares and circuses laid out in a simple grid pattern that hides here and there some unexpected nooks, with everything done in glorious brownstone to make an austere, restrained kind of idyll.

Turning east, everything lurches towards melodrama. On Calton Hill the gentlemen of the Scottish Enlightenment took a turn for the grandiose, reckoned the place was the Athens of the North and erected a park-load of neo-Grecian monuments and statues. Further east again broods Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano that counterweights the Castle and dominates Holyrood Park, 280ha of moorland, lakes and genuine wilderness that act as the city's backyard. Beyond this on a clear day you'll see the strands of Portobello and Musselburgh and in the distance a thin swathe of the North Sea sufficient to raise a shiver.

When one mentions Edinburgh, the word "festival" springs to mind. And when people say "the Edinburgh Festival", they are referring to six festivals that run in August.

The Festival Fringe is from August 3 to 25 - that's the one with the starving comedians and the little theatre companies piled into Hiace vans. Out to try their luck for exposure to the big time. The International Festival (August 10 to 30) is a more restrained affair, with a highbrow tilt, while the excellent International Film Festival (August 13 to 24) does what it can to maintain a radical agenda. A highlight for many is the Book Festival (August 9 to 25) which has great readings and public interviews. Those with a taste for weird martial ritual will fancy the Edinburgh Tattoo (August 1 to 23).

Festival or not, during summer the Royal Mile of the Old Town, running from the Castle down to Holyrood Palace, is awash with tartan and bagpipes, shortbread and whisky, and more digital cameras a square metre than any other street on the planet.

If you've got children in tow, one of the numerous ghost tours of the Old Town should prove a hoot. Edinburgh likes to call itself Europe's most haunted metropolis and tradition insists that a lost city lies buried beneath its cobbled streets. A slight exaggeration, but there is certainly an expanse of macabre vaults, tunnels and chambers once roamed by medieval ne'er-do-wells.

Home to snivel-nosed urchins, ladies of bawdy repute and grave-robbers, it was the scene nightly of drunkenness, hefty opiate abuse and dead-eyed copulation, a murky netherworld devoted to hedonism and treachery.

Full of briney bustle, shady deals and questionable morals, Leith was once a docklands worthy of the description. But in the past 10 years or so it has been subject of a spectacular gentrification. The fishy old cobbles have been tastefully buffed up, there are heritage displays documenting the history, and snappy dressers in sports cars shimmer past the piers to their expensive warehouse conversions.

You can pine for the bad old days from a stylish room with a view at the boutique Malmaison Hotel on Tower Place, before waddling off to the Shore bar for some seared tuna loin washed down withsparkling wine.



Starting from the Leith shore, you could trek the Water of Leith walkway. It follows Edinburgh's lone and snaking river to its source 29km across the north side of town and makes for a fine diversion from the throng of the summer streets.

There are swathes of woodland gaudy with wild flowers, waterfalls almost too cute to be true, photogenic bridges, the excellent Gallery of Modern Art near Dean Village, where old mills and 16th-century tenements shadow the water, and past Murrayfield stadium and the village of Colinton with its spectacular forest.

Keep the eyes peeled for gannets, foxes, deer and other small, furry critters. Step off the walkway anywhere and you'll quickly find a bus or a cab back to the city centre.

With a population of around half a million, Edinburgh is small enough to navigate by foot but big enough to have some cosmopolitan neighbourhoods of distinctive character. These are particularly useful to bolt to in August, when the Old Town and the Princes St drag are chocka with bad comics, strolling players and festival chancers.

Bruntsfield and Stockbridge are both lively and vaguely artsy, the former a 15-minute stroll south of the Royal Mile, the latter 15 minutes north. Each has restaurants and bars, bookshops and galleries, delis and clothes stores.

Try St Stephens St in Stockbridge for antiques, or play par-3 golf for free on Bruntsfield Links, allegedly the second-oldest course in the world.

Getting there:

Flight Centre is among those selling tickets to the Military Tattoo for $120 or $135 a person.

Packages to Edinburgh start at $2738 a person including return airfares from Auckland to Edinburgh and three nights accommodation. Package is valid for travel next month and sales to July 31. Return airfares to Edinburgh next month start at $2099 a person. Other packages available.

When to go:

May to October are the best months. Winter time there can be pretty chilly. But if you're prepared to wrap up warm there are lower prices to be had. But expect to pay a premium during Christmas and New Year.

Where to stay:

The Ibis Hotel at Hunter Square offers bog-standard rooms at a bargain flat rate of £60. Nothing special but an unbeatable location. Ph: (0044 131 240 7000)

Where to eat:

The Witchery at Castlehill near the top of the Royal Mile. French cooking in a magically churchy, gothic space. Game and fish, butter and cream, a wine list thick as the Old Testament. Booking essential. Ph: 0044 131 225 5613.

For splendid fish 'n' chips rustled up by emotional Italians try l'Alba d'Oro on Henderson Row. No ordinary chipper this: it serves champagne and gets written about in the New York Times.

Thirsty? Try The Cumberland on Cumberland Street, a gorgeous old pub, with dickie-bowed barmen and a cracking selection of Scottish ales.


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