The flooring guys arrived at 8am before I had even finished my coffee and decided what I was going to do in the next 11 hours. The first imperative was to get the caffeine fix from a local cafe. Everything else (galleries, libraries, shops I might have wanted to go) were all still shut, most not opening until 10am and some (Till’s bookshop near the University, McNaughton’s in Leith Walk and the Arts Club do not open until 11am. So I decided just to start walking and walked all the way down to Leith. By this time the rather dreich start to the day had improved and the sun came out over some brightly coloured ships in the Port.

and this lovely building dating from 1600.

I decided to walk back up the Water of Leith path and the ducks and moorhens were feeding in the better weather.

At Inverleith I hopped off the path to visit the Botanic Gardens and after a coffee spent some time in glasshouses with my macro lens. Aside from this fern, I took some other shots to use as the base for some abstract painting.

There are a couple of antiquarian bookshops at the bottom end of Inverleith Row but I did not find anything that grabbed me there so I returned to the Water of Leith to Stockbridge, passing the colonies were we almost bought a flat several years ago. After a quick lunch and browse in the shops there, I walked up to the West End and had been planning to go to the Arts Club but a bout of neuralgia left me feeling less sociable so it was a bus to Morningside to get some things done in the library.