Edinburgh

: The Grand Account :

Edinburgh is built on drama: a castle on a volcanic crag, a medieval Old Town tumbling down the Royal Mile, and below it the New Town's Georgian order, the Enlightenment written in stone. This was the city of Hume and Adam Smith, of surgeons and bankers and printers, and it retains a capital's self-possession without a capital's noise. Royalty has kept residence at Holyroodhouse for five centuries; in August the festivals make it briefly the centre of the cultural world. The discerning go in other months, when the haar rolls in off the Forth and the city returns to its own austere magnificence.

This is the grand tour of our repertoire: four hundred miles, best taken as a day of deliberate travel or broken overnight. We leave London early on the A1(M), pause for luncheon within York's walls, ninety minutes well spent, then take the A1 north along the Northumberland coast, past Alnwick and the distant silhouette of Lindisfarne, crossing into Scotland at Berwick as the light goes long. The Rolls-Royce Cullinan was conceived for exactly this: eight hours of road that feel like four. Your chauffeur manages fuel, weather and timing invisibly; you read, rest, and watch England become Scotland through the glass.

Stay at The Balmoral above Waverley, its clock famously set three minutes fast so no traveller misses a train. Climb to the castle for the half past nine opening, before the Esplanade fills; the Honours of Scotland reward the effort. Walk the Royal Mile down to Holyroodhouse, then cross to the New Town for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Dinner at The Witchery by the Castle, candlelit and theatrical, or at Number One at The Balmoral. If the legs allow, Arthur's Seat at dawn gives the whole city at a glance. August brings the Festival's electricity; November, the connoisseur's silence. Both are worth the miles.