The walking tour was arranged by City Explorers and our guide for the morning was a young lady named Emma who was from upper New York! Armed with a degree in Scottish History, she had relocated to Edinburgh and has been here long enough to have a soft Scottish burr.

She was very good, with a great line of patter, an engaging delivery, and the usual collection of anti-English lines

Unfortunately for me, after 40 minutes my stomach was feeling increasingly unsettled and in an excess of caution I made my apologies to Emma and headed back to the hotel.

We didn’t get far in the tour in terms of distance as the first twenty minutes had been patter and scene setting, but we did get to the statue of Sylvester Stallone