ANCIENT AND MODERN

ANCIENT AND MODERN
With its steep streets, dark tenements and narrow wynds (alleys), the Old Town is Edinburgh’s historic heart. Ever since the 7th century, when Celtic kings first settled on the area in which the city’s famous castle at Castlehill (0131 225 9846; open 9.30am-6pm; entrance £9.50 adults, £2 children) now stands, this has been Scotland’s ruling centre (if not technically becoming its capital until 1633).Now sliced neatly in two by the shop-filled Royal Mile, the Old Town still lays claim to some of the city’s most historic features, including the castle, the bar-and tenement-clogged Cowgate and brooding St Giles cathedral. Out to the east is Calton Hill, with its jumbled collection of Athenian monuments and ancient burial grounds; while to the north, over the grassy dip of Princes Street Gardens and Waverley station, is the New Town. Here the graceful cobbled streets and Georgian buildings first planned out by 21-year-old James Craig in 1766 are now home to art galleries, restaurants and Edinburgh’s answer to Fifth Avenue: George Street.The city’s dramatic split-level topography means that one of the best ways to approach the city is from the lofty comfort of a rooftop perch: the “Forth floor” terrace bar of Harvey Nichols at 30-34 St Andrew Square (0131 524 8388), the stylish open-air patio of Oloroso restaurant at 33 Castle Street (0131 226 7614) or the more traditional viewpoint of the 287th soot-darkened step of the Scott Monument at East Princes Street Gardens (0131 529 4068; open 10am-6pm, entrance £2.50). “Auld Reekie” also has an approachably modern side, however, with late-opening pubs and, especially during August’s Edinburgh Festival, a thriving cultural scene.OLD-SCHOOL COMFORT OR URBAN COOL?The Scotsman Hotel at 20 North Bridge (0131 556 5565; ), which opened a few years ago in the old, marble-filled offices of the newspaper, remains one of the best hotels in the city. If you’ve got the next-door farm to Glastonbury – and a drinks licence and room for a few hundred caravans – well, do the maths Put some nice toilets in Get some sponsorship. Ours is nice and compact, easy to manoeuvre, but big enough to fit our family and a trolley-load of shopping.I’m a farmer, and I got to thinking about the profits at Glastonbury I manage to net about £50 an acre a year for my land.

Probably, in fairness, it suits the punters as well, but the word “festival” is often cunningly used to inject some hip retro-chic into what are basically stadium rock concerts. If you called it a stadium gig, nobody would want to go, but if you call it a festival and put some balloons up… bingo.We were whacked by the time we arrived at our camp site at the rather cheeky Winding Lake Farm, the next-door farm to Glastonbury. The owners don’t have any problem with everything being sponsored: you get a free rain mac from O2 and a free lift in a Toyota.

There were a lot of festival types and a lot of Sony people staying in very large Winnebagoes. I don’t understand why you’d want one of those big ones, unless you want to go on holiday with your neighbours. Good weather? Good chance of a shag? Goodbye life for the weekend? Maybe we just have to express some primal locust-swarming instinct Maybe it’s just a laugh. But one thing’s for sure: the festival phenomenon is an ancient and global licence to print money.It suits the record companies and the agents and the media and the promoters to put everything together into a huge package.