The Royal Mile

When the Viscount died a few years later in I706, she vowed never to remarry, but was forced to save her reputation by marrying the Earl of Stair, who had contrived to appear half-naked at her prayer~window on the High Street. Only slightly less brutal than her first husband, the Earl thumped her hard enough to draw blood but then renounced any drink that was not offered him by her fair hand.

Lady Stair's House was heavily restored in the late I 9th century, and is now the Writers' Museum {open June-Sept Mon-Sat 10-6; Oct-MayMon-Sat 10-5; during the Festival also Sun 2-51, celebrating the lives and works of Scott, Stevenson and Burns.

Leave the courtyard by the entrance on the left-hand side, which takes you back on to the Lawnmarket opposite Brodie's Close.

In the late I770s Deacon Brodie was a respected town councillor. The O. J. Simpson of his day, no one could believe that someone quite so famous could be quite so criminal, and the way people still talk about him today, you might be forgiven for thinking he had been a murderer, not merely a thief. Something about his outer veneer of polished respectability and his inner delight in dodging the law has made him a local hero.

He was famously the model for Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. Now you can have a respectable cup of tea in his old house and admire his expansive kitchen. Appropriately enough, a popular pub named after him now stands directly opposite the High Court of Justiciary, or criminal courts. There are several shops along this stretch of the Royal Mlle where you could buy a tartan souvenir, a woolly jumper to keep out the Edinburgh weather, or even a pair of made-to-measure hand-knitted tartan socks.

Carry on down the Royal Mile (crossing over Walk 11/, to the imposing statue of David Hume.

This very vague likeness, with its empty tablet and ironic classical pose, was commissioned by the Saltire Society and unveiled in 1997. Apparently the sculptor-Alexander Stoddart-originally proposed a Mount Rushmore-like sculpture carved out of Salisbury Crags. This prime positron is more appropriate to the philosopher's whole-hearted engagement with human affairs, for this is where the High Street begins.

This popular photo opportunity has narrow steepness giving on to wide views of the New Town below. Just next door are the offices of the Old Town Renewal Trust, with displays on the problems facing the conservation of the area.

Continue just beyond Hume, to Advocate's Close, on the left.

Cross the street to Parliament Square, set in solemn splendour around St Giles. Before going into the church, pause at the heartshaped set of stones in the pavement just beyond the statue of the 5th Duke of Buccleuch.

This is all that remains to mark the site of the 'Heart of Midlothian', Walter Scott's nickname for the old Tolbooth, the forbidding building that served as council chambers, police station and town jail for several hundred years before being demolished in 1817. These stones are now the only place in Edinburgh where you're allowed to spit; in fact it's meant to be positively lucky to do so.