A gateway to Edinburgh..

.... and certainly more romantic than Edinburgh Airport or the M8 !

Waverley Station is in a steep, narrow valley between the medieval Old Town and the 18th century New Town. Princes Street, the premier shopping street, runs along one side. In the days when the citizens of Edinburgh huddled together on the ridge that ran from the Palace in the Valley to the Castle on the Hill, this was the site of the Nor Loch - a swampy, unhealthy place

But when the city got ambitious and decided to move north to build a magnificent Georgian New Town, the loch was drained. This made space for the building of the second largest station in the UK (only London Waterloo covers more area).

All of this has nothing to do with anything. What I wanted to say is that the station takes its name from Sir Walter Scott's first novel - Waverley - 1814. The novel is about the 1745 Rebellion, and a young soldier called Edmund Waverley.

This week I would like to do a series of blips about Sir Walter. Here's a taster from today's reading about Scott.

Edinburgh is a highly antiquarian city and few men are so apt to be antiquarian as elderly Writers to the Signet. Ian Jack. British Writers 1981.

So I'll see what the city can provide as Scott blips.