Edinburgh By Heart eBook
Most people see Edinburgh from the Royal Mile, in the rain, holding a flyer they didn't ask for.
They climb Arthur's Seat with four hundred other people and only realise at the top that you can't actually see the castle from up there. They pay seven pounds for a pint because they assume that's what a city costs. They lose an entire day to sea fog because nobody told them what haar is or what to do when it lands.
Then they go home and say Edinburgh was lovely, and they mean it, and they never saw it.
This is the version I wish somebody had handed me.
Three years ago I moved here alone in my mid forties for a job that lasted eight months. The job went. I stayed. I got most of my first year wrong, and I learned the rest from an 81-year-old neighbour who has lived off Easter Road since 1971 and has never once been impressed by me.
What's inside:
The hill with the real skyline. The view that's actually on the postcards isn't where you think it is. Exact route, exact timing, and why the obvious climb sends you home with the wrong photograph.
Gardens nobody walks into. Including a walled garden thirty seconds off the Royal Mile that stays near empty in the busiest fortnight of the year. Full directions to every one.
The rules that stop you wasting days. The haar rule, the wind rule, the tide rule for Cramond Island that gets people cut off every summer, and how to read a Scottish morning before you commit to it.
August without losing your mind or your wages. How to work four thousand shows, where the good stuff hides outside the centre, the mistake that has you jogging up the Bridges all week, and how to eat well within a ten minute walk of the crowds.
The city in the other eleven months. What it's actually like in November, which is when you find out whether you love it.
An honest area-by-area guide for movers. Where people genuinely live, what each part costs you in commute and in character, and the bits nobody puts in the brochure. Written straight, not sold.
Pubs, chippies and cafés worth the walk. Including the one I'll argue about with anyone.
Plus: free updates for life. Edinburgh changes. When something closes, moves or changes its rules, you get the new edition at no cost, forever.
Instant download. Read it on your phone on the plane, or print the bits you want and stuff them in a pocket.
If you're coming for the Fringe, coming in winter, or quietly wondering whether you could live here, this is the city as the people in it actually use it.