Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1
including a school, clock tower and communal drying green. High above Dean Village,
Dean Bridge , a bravura feat of 1830s engineering by homas Telford, carries the main
road over 100ft above the river.
Stockbridge
Bus #24, #29 or #42 from Princes St
Between the New Town and the Botanic Gardens, the busy suburb of Stockbridge
grew up around the Water of Leith ford (and its seventeenth-century bridge) over
which cattle were driven to market in Edinburgh. he hamlet was essentially gobbled
up in the expansion of the New Town, but a few charming buildings and an
independent character prevail in the district today. he area is a popular quarter for
young professionals who can't afford the property prices in the New Town proper,
and as a result there's a good crop of bars, boutiques and places to eat along both
Raeburn Place, the main road, and St Stephen's Street, long one of Edinburgh's more
offbeat side streets.
Stockbridge Market
Kerr St • June-Sept Sun 10am-5pm & Thurs noon-7.30pm; Oct-May Sun 10am-5pm only • T 0131 5515633,
W stockbridgemarket.com
New on the scene, trendy Stockbridge Market offers a vast array of artisan produce to
gobble on the hoof or take away. It's a compact affair, sited under a grove of leaning
sorbus trees by the banks of the Water of Leith, where the tightly packed stallholders
supply an exciting array of native and global items. he chocolatier's crackling
gramophone sets the tone, and tremendous coffee is served out the back of a VW
Camper - if you'd like a cake to go with it, don't miss the German konditorei stall
selling exquisite pastries and gateaux.
The Royal Botanic Garden
Arboretum Place • Daily: March-Sept 10am-6pm; Feb & Oct 10am-5pm; Nov-Jan 10am-4pm (note that glasshouses close 30min before
garden) • Garden free ; glasshouses £4.50; guided tours £5 (tours last 1hr and leave from the John Hope Gateway at 11am and 2pm April-
Oct) • T 0131 248 2909, W rbge.org.uk • Take bus #23, #27 or #28 from The Mound
Just beyond the northern boundaries of the New Town is the seventy-acre site of the
Royal Botanic Garden . Filled with mature trees and a huge variety of native and exotic
plants and flowers, the “Botanics” (as they're commonly called) are most popular
simply as a place to stroll and lounge around on the grass. he main entrance is the
West Gate on Arboretum Place, through the contemporary, eco-designed John Hope
Gateway, where you'll find interpretation areas, information, exhibitions, a shop and
restaurant. Towards the eastern side of the gardens, a series of ten glasshouses ,
including a soaring 1850s Palm House , shows off a steamy array of palms, ferns,
orchids, cycads and aquatic plants, including some huge circular water lilies.
Elsewhere, different themes are highlighted: the large Chinese-style garden, for
example, has a bubbling waterfall and the world's biggest collection of Asian wild
plants outside China, while in the northwest corner there's a Scottish native
woodland which very effectively evokes the wild unkemptness of parts of the Scottish
Highlands and west coast. Art is also a strong theme within the Botanics, with a
gallery showing changing contemporary exhibitions in the attractive eighteenth-
century Inverleith House at the centre of the gardens. Scattered all around are a
number of outdoor sculptures, including a giant pine cone by landscape artist Andy
Goldsworthy and the striking stainless-steel east gate, designed in the form of stylized
rhododendrons. Parts of the garden are also notable for their great vistas: the lawns
near Inverleith House offer one of the city's best views of the Castle and Old Town's
steeples and monuments.
 
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