Edinburgh City
Few trips to Scotland could really be considered complete without Edinburgh. The Scottish capital is frequently regarded as one of the UK’s most charismatic cities and famed for the castle that overlooks the city, as well as being an arts, entertainment and hospitality centre. Prince’s Street is the main shopping thoroughfare.
The city has two personalities. The ‘new town’ is classical, leafy and open. Whereas the ‘old town’ is dark, tight, atmospheric and gothic. It’s quite a contrast and they both work well. You could fall in love with either and not feel any guilt of betrayal to the other
Edinburgh New Town
The idea of building a New Town was first suggested in the late 17th century, so its perhaps not too surprising to see Georgian architectural influences very much in evidence today. Wide roads, straight angular lines, lighter stone, and lattice road networks on mostly flat land, plus copious provisions of public spaces characterise the New Town
The city’s fathers had grown concerned that the Old Town was at its limits and wished to build something new and fresh to its north. They went in search of influences as they sought to make a statement and settled on Greece. Edinburgh is occasionally referred to as the ‘Athens of the North’. Neo classical influences such as columns, or buildings set on a plinth (a Mound in Edinburgh’s case) were adopted.
Another major decision was to drain Nor Loch so as to create Prince’s Street Gardens.
Today the New Town is also where you’ll find the botanical gardens and national gallery, as well as many of the city’s commercial buildings
Edinburgh Old Town
Edinburgh’s Old Town is the complete opposite to the New Town. It’s roads are narrow and tight, with some using cobbled stone. It’s buildings are much darker, and soot blackened in some cases. The architecture is much more gothic with twisted points and elaborate decoration, whilst the topography is much more hilly. The Old Town is probably built around the Royal Mile, an arterial straight road stretching from the Castle down to Holyrood Palace. It’s quite a contrast to the flat and broader Prince’s Street in the New Town.
Prominent buildings include The National Museum of Scotland, St Giles Cathedral and the University of Edinburgh. It’s equally true to say however that the Old Town has sections which are perhaps performing more in line with the idea of city ‘quarters’, which might be drawing a little from the Royal Mile as places such as the redeveloped plaza in the Grassmarket begin to establish their own identities
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh castle is the city’s most famous and popular visitor attraction. It stands on a volcanic plug, a stub of hardened basalt that withstood Europe’s ice sheets. The ice flow divided around it, abraiding the edges and depositing debris in its wake. When the ice withdrew it left a flat area to the north with a crag (the castle rock) and a tail (today’s ‘Royal Mile’). The summit of the Castle Rock is 130 metres (430 ft) above sea level, with rocky cliffs to the south, west and north, rising to a height of 80 metres (260 ft) above the surrounding landscape. The only readily accessible route to the castle lies to the east, where the ridge slopes more gently, but where any approach can be seen for miles and where a defence could be concentrated. Climate and geology had combined to create a natural defensive position.
The Castle is worth ‘doing’ but don’t get too hung up on it. Edinburgh is a city that happens to have a castle. Treat it as being part of a day rather than it’s primary focus
The Royal Mile
The Royal Mile runs between Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace, downhill west to east. It comprises the Castle Esplanade, Castlehill, the Lawnmarket, the High Street, the Canongate and Abbey Strand. The Royal Mile is the busiest tourist street in the Old Town and is something of a spine that runs along the crest of a ridge, feeding lots of narrow allies with steep steps (called ‘wynds’ in Scottish), that drop down below to secluded areas of interest
The Royal Mile contains shops, restaurants, public houses, and visitor attractions. During the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the High Street becomes crowded with tourists, entertainers, and buskers. Indeed, even outside the festival there are usually people trying to earn a few pennies on the Royal Mile performing acts of varying degrees of sanity!
Any visitor could do a lot worse than walk down the Royal Mile at their own pace and then pick up one of the tour buses at the bottom to loop back around
Greyfriars 'Bobby' & 'Voldermort'
Greyfriars Kirk is a cemetery with two claims to fame.
The story of a loyal dog called ‘Bobby’ who would come down to the kirk every night to stand guard over the grave of his dead master captured the imagination of Hollywood sufficiently for them to make a film about it (struggling to imagine what the plot line can have been though?).
More recently however, it was somewhere that JK Rowling would visit seeking inspiration before writing Harry Potter at the nearby Elephant House coffee shop. Amongst the headstones we’ll find some familiar names that she took into the book. McConagall, Scrymgeour, Cruickshank, Moodie and Tom Riddell (who was actually an Edinburgh lawyer) are all buried in Greyfriars as are a Potter family (no Harry) and someone with a name close enough to Sirius Black to ask the question (unfortunately Black is a common enough surname to make this one a little more contested)
The Elephant House
Once upon a young author with little money to her name sat in an innocuous coffee shop writing a book whilst seeking heating, coffee, and toast. The books were published, and as their popularity exploded it started to become impossible for her to continue working from the ‘Elephant House’. Word had got out, and fans besieged the coffee shop hoping for a meeting. The first three ‘Harry Potter’ books were (and always will be) written here. It wouldn’t be Scotland though if a disaster wasn’t far from around the corner
A fire in a restaurant below the coffee shop, took hold. The flames flared up and set the Elephant House on fire too. Although much of the Potter memorabilia was saved, the building is currently something of a burned out shell stuck in the middle of a very messy insurance claim. It’s almost poetic actually.
The original Elephant House continues to attract visitors (although until its rebuilt we’ll need to manage expectations) A new version of it has relocated to nearby Victoria Street
Holyrood Palace
Edinburgh’s Holyroodhouse, commonly referred to as Holyrood Palace, is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. Located at the bottom of the Royal Mile, at the opposite end to Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace has served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scots since the 16th century. The current King Charles spends one week in residence at Holyrood Palace at the beginning of each summer.
The 16th century apartments of Mary, Queen of Scots and the State Apartments, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public throughout the year, except when members of the Royal Family are in residence.
Prince's Street
Princes Street is traditionally the main shopping thoroughfare in Edinburgh. It is the southernmost street of Edinburgh’s New Town, and stretches for a mile with Calton Hill overlooking it to the east. The street has few buildings on the south side, and overlooks the Princes Street Gardens affording panoramic views towards the Old Town, and Edinburgh Castle.
One particularly striking landmark is the Scott Monument (known locally as Thunderbird 3 due to its uncanny likeness). This gothic tower can be climbed to offer superb views across the cityscape of Edinburgh. In recent years adjacent George Street has begun to eclipse Prince’s Street a little bit for quality retail and perhaps the two should now be viewed together
Victoria Street
Victoria Street is an eclectic curved shopping street with various curios and eateries that links the plaza of Grassmarket with the Royal Mile as it arcs its way around the gradient leading up the Castle. It’s brightly coloured frontages and cafes on the terraces above make it increasingly popular and buzzy thoroughfare. It’s been suggested that Victoria Street is the inspiration for Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley? It seems plausible.
JK Rowling wrote the first three books in the Elephant House coffee shop (which has now relocated to Victoria Street) but was otherwise only a very short walk away. Victoria Street certainly has a magical quality about it in places as it enchants with its colour and character, it’s the sort of street where you can stumble into some slightly eccentric shops and find ‘strange things’ on sale. It’s possibly the Old Town’s response to the clean lines and formality of Prince’s Street
Culture Vultures
The National Gallery of Scotland is located on ‘The Mound’, close to Princes Street. The gallery is a neoclassical design and first opened to the public in 1859. At the heart of the collection is a group of paintings which includes masterpieces by Jacopo Bassano, Van Dyck and Giambattista Tiepolo.
The main ground floor rooms host a number of large-scale canvases such as Benjamin West’s Alexander III of Scotland Rescued from the Fury of a Stag, Rubens’s The Feast of Herod, and a pair of paintings by Titian. The gallery has a notable collection of works by Scottish artists, including several landscapes by Alexander Nasmyth, and Sir Henry Raeburn, including the celebrated, ‘The Skating Minister’. The gallery also holds a collection of works by English painters, such as Constable’s ‘The Vale of Dedham’, a sizeable collection of water colours by Turner and ‘The Monarch of the Glen’, by Sir Edwin Landseer, considered to be iconic of Scottish culture
The Scotch Whisky Experience
Faraway Fairways are struck by the number of times we get asked for a distillery tour by visitors to the St Andrews and Edinburgh area. Unfortunately, whereas the request needn’t impossible (there is a small modern distillery at Kingsbarns for St Andrews, and Johnnie Walker’s Glenkninchie distillery is about 1o miles south east of Edinburgh) this part of Scotland isn’t really a whisky producing region. What Edinburgh does have however is a strong supply of bottle collections and tutored tasting experiences, and none more so than ‘the Scotch Whisky Experience’ which sits about 50 yds from the gatehouse to the Castle at the top of the Royal Mile and is probably the most feared building in the capital these days!
Contexts'
Edinburgh is hilly, and a car needn’t be a help to us if it means dotting between expensive car parks. One of the best ways of getting around is to use a rover bus ticket which is for unlimited travel on any of the city’s three open top tour buses, City Sightseeing (red) Edinburgh Tours (green) or Regal Tours (blue)
The red and green buses follow clockwise and anti clockwise simultaneously and run every 10 mins in a loop. The blue bus takes longer as it goes out to Leith for the Royal Yacht and the Botanical Gardens of the New Town
A rover ticket lasts 24 or 48 hrs dependent on the duration we purchased. It’s simple hop on and hop off service. We can use the ticket inter-changeably across the three operators
Edinburgh’s shopping offer is strong
Prince’s Street is the traditional shopping street, but since it lost Jenners (its primary department store) it’s gone into a bit of a decline even if the address is still the most prestigious in Scotland. George Street runs adjacent to Prince’s Street and it might be sensible to treat them as a pair now
The Old Town is more eclectic and eccentric. Victoria Street and the Royal Mile have a series of quality craft shops and higher end merchandise as well as their fair share of stuff pitched at souvenir hunters
Edinburgh has a buzzy and vibrant hospitality sector, as indeed you would expect of most capital cities with global influences. The best thing to do is conduct your research in line with your own tastes since its beyond the scope of this website to act as a guide to Edinburgh’s bars and restaurants, but we can reassure you to the effect that we don’t think you’ll encounter any difficulty
Both Glasgow and Stirling are easily accessible by train from Edinburgh
If a non golfer wishes to visit either, we’d certainly advise that Glasgow should be done so by train. There are over 100 trains a day running between Scotland’s two biggest cities, and complete the journey in 60 mins. The respective stations (Queen Street in Glasgow and Waverley in Edinburgh) are right in the heart of the cities
Stirling is also doable at 45 mins, but if we wanted to visit the Wallace Monument or Bannockburn we’d likely need transport to do so. They’re about 2 miles north and south of the city centre respectively.
Testimonial
From BB Canada
“I told Alun the courses I was interested in playing and he prepared a stay and play package with 14 days of outstanding golf, but also tremendous site seeing opportunities for my wife.”
From JC Illinois
“His attention to detail is amazing--I think our travel plan booklet ran to forty-eight pages, with gorgeous descriptions of cities and sights, plus maps showing where to go to catch trains, or walk from trains to hotels, sights and golf courses, etc.”
From DF Alabama
“I will cherish the memories for a long time- especially the wonderful times spent on and off the golf course with two of my brothers and brother-in-law. None of the memories and golf would have been possible or enjoyed without your tremendous planning and logistical support.”
AS from Colorado
“Alun and Faraway Fairways created possibly the most memorable golf trip we have ever experienced. EPIC is the only word that comes to mind.”
AC, From Florida/ New York, 2025
“We were hopeful to secure a 4 ball at St. Andrews while avoiding the massive expense other operators had quoted. He was very clear about the plan for achieving a tee time at the Old Course through the ballot, including detailed instruction on how it could be done, and what our odds were. He suggested mid- to late April as the best chance of success and advised that this is also the least rainy part of the year. We took his advice and trusted the process. Well, he was right on all counts!”
From SB, Minnesota
“We wholeheartedly recommend Alun and Faraway Fairways if you’re looking for a golf trip that is effortless, enjoyable, and truly unforgettable—even for a non-golfer in the mix! My husband and I will be daydreaming about this trip for years to come. 5.5 stars!”
From JB, California
“The best part was that the service was surprisingly affordable. They were thousands of dollars below other quotes that I received, in fact the prices were very similar to what I would have paid if I would have booked everything on my own.”
From JCA, Maryland
“I would and will highly recommend your company to anyone looking to plan an unforgettable golf trip. Thank You for putting together a fantastic trip for J.C. and me”
From WF Connecticut
“I think all eight of us would agree that Alun at Faraway Fairways did an absolutely wonderful job of putting this “golf vacation of a lifetime” together for us. His focus on the details was extraordinary from the choice of courses and the timing of the tee times, the amazingly beautiful accommodations along with some excellent meal selections, and the transportation options he provided to get us from place to place.”
From DR South Carolina
“You are about to tee it up in your Major. Seek wisdom, integrity and professionalism. Alun Davies and Faraway Fairways will not disappoint you. They cannot assure a calm sunny day with temperatures in the 70’s on the Old Course.”
From MM, California
“One fantastic trip you organized, and more importantly took ownership of in terms of daily communication and stewardship during our 2+ weeks in Scotland and Ireland. The logistics were spotless…100% of the transports were on time and excellent, the lodging choices spectacular and the golf was off the charts in terms of quality and arrangements made”
DH from California
“You cannot go wrong with the support Faraway Fairways offered. I did this trip solo and all last minute but I have already begun to plan the next trip which will include my best golfing buddies.”
Enquiry
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