There are some fine pubs in the city of Edinburgh and a few hours on an afternoon can't do them justice. But nonetheless, I recently called in to half a dozen of the best ones in the centre on my first visit north of the border for several years. Here's how the afternoon unfurled.... I arrived in Edinburgh, aka Auld Reekie, just after midday. I had caught the train here from Berwick, where I was staying for a couple of days, with the journey to the Scottish capital taking around 45 minutes. The train terminated at Waverley Station a few minutes after we'd passed Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano which looks down on the city from a height of 250 metres/822ft and provides the citizens with a lovely area of open space right on their doorstep. Waverley covers a large area and is Scotland's second busiest railway station. It it is located between and below the Royal Mile and the Old Town on one side and Princess Street and the New Town, where I was heading to first, on t...
I have just returned to the Yorkshire fishing port and tourist attraction of Whitby for the first time in years With an increased number of drinking establishments in the town since I last was here, our visit only took in a small proportion of them. Read on to see how it all went.... The weather forecast was not good for the weekend, with high winds and heavy showers courtesy of Storm Boelo due to land early on Saturday evening. With its position on the north east coast of Yorkshire, Whitby was expected to be very much in the firing line. Not deterred, 7 of us were going over for the weekend to help one of the guys, Karl, celebrate his upcoming birthday. We left Brighouse at around 9.30 on Saturday morning, with Suggs driving us over via minibus. Aussie Tony and myself were getting picked up at the Dusty Miller in Hove Edge where we are all regulars, and having already collected Pete and Tony, after picking up Alex and Karl himself before leaving Brighouse, we were on our way. Kar...