Postcard from Edinburgh - Wynds and chips

It’s ironic that in a city that has been blessed with so many pubs, clubs, bars and drinking dens there are just so many alleys, alleyways, closes, wynds and passages. These offer a test of navigation at the best of times in broad daylight and stone cold sober but at night, after a few pints, they become about as easy to negotiate as a treetop confidence course.


With the twists, turns, crooks and bends you’d be forgiven for thinking that the city planners drew on MC Escher as their inspiration.

The odd thing is though that they really do work. They save you having to walk all the way round a block of grand buildings to get to where you are going to. You cut from one street to another with the sort of speed you’d normally associate with some sort of dimensional fold in space, or teleportation, rather than a short cobbled alley. This does shave time off of your journey and leave give you a few precious minutes for a sneaky pint. (Although why wait; the delightfully named ‘Fleshmarket Close’ comes with its own pub, the Half Way House, either half way up, or down, the close).


In some sort of weird twist of evolution, Edinburgh’s cuisine has adapted to try aand soak up the booze and so prevent the city’s drinking population from maiming themselves. Any kind of alcohol, from sherry to the stuff they preserve weird specimens in down the lab, has met its match when it comes to a pie supper or a fish supper. That’s to say nothing of the fabled delicacy that is the deep fried mars bar.