One local restaurant I'm always happy to recommend to visitors to Edinburgh is Wedgwood the Restaurant on the Royal Mile.

Established by Paul and Lisa Wedgwood in 2007, the restaurant focuses on local, seasonal produce, and  its regularly changing lunch and dinner menus often feature wild food ingredients foraged from across the local area.

And each summer Paul runs foraging courses to take visitors in search of the vast array of plants which provide a stunning variety of flavours and textures that are then incorporated into a special tasting menu. It's simply a food lover's dream!

From the restaurant in the heart of the Old Town, foragers are taken out to a location in East Lothian, a short drive from the city centre. Here, on a walk through four separate and distinct biomes - including woodland, salt marsh and tidal rock pools - Paul reveals the botanical treasures that can be found hidden in plain sight, and gives detailed descriptions of each plant's qualities, properties, flavours and potential uses in the kitchen.

Nettles, for example - everyone knows that nettles can be turned into soup, or fermented into beer. But did you know that nettles can also be used as an alternative form of rennet for making cheese, imparting a vibrant and zingy flavour to the creamy texture of the cheese itself? And did you know the weed often known in Scotland as 'sticky willy' is not just delicious infused as a refreshing drink, but also has cleansing properties for the liver?

Or that wood sorrel, sharp with acidic tanginess, pairs brilliantly with the rich texture of venison...?

Or that the young buds of greater plantain, a common plant which grows in hedgerows, lawns and on roadsides, have a robust, earthy, mushroom-like flavour?

​Or that pineapple weed, one of the chamomile family, has bright yellow buds with the sweet, sharp flavour reminiscent of (the clue is in the name!) pineapple, of all things...?!

​Whether it's seed pods which can be dried and ground up to add flavour as a spice mix, or leaves fried in a tempura batter, or seaweed used as a wrap, or flowers utilised to bring colour and piquancy to a dish, or aromatic fronds used to create infusions.... there is so much variety available to an adventurous forager.

One of the revelations for me was samphire, something which frequently features in fine dining menus but which I had always thought of as fairly tasteless, included more as a garnish for its bright green tendrils.

​Paul explained that much of the samphire that gets used in restaurants is imported from outside the UK, but on the side of the channels which run through the salt marsh coastal areas of East Lothian we could see it growing in abundance, and on picking it I was astonished to discover it has an incredible sweet and salty flavour!

Not everything in nature is a tasty treat, however, and we were shown the distinctions between (for example) sweet cicely and its highly poisonous neighbour hemlock - look for the purple spattering on the stems of the latter plant, which marks it out as something you definitely don't want to serve your guests...

After a couple of hours in nature, discovering the plants and sampling their flavours (pre-foraged selections are provided for anyone squeamish about eating straight from the ground) Paul took us back into the city where the staff at Wedgwood the Restaurant welcomed us into their relaxed and comfortable dining space. 

There we sat and watched the early summer crowds passing on the Royal Mile, dodging between rain showers - we'd been fortunate to have survived the forage itself without a single drop of rain! - as we were presented with a specially crafted tasting menu showcasing the very flavours and plants that we'd spent the morning discovering.

From a gazpacho of sweet cicely and cucumber, to a sorbet of rosehip and blood orange, and from venison with the acidic wood sorrel, to salmon cured with an infusion of Douglas fir - each course was packed with flavour and presented in a way which appealed to the eye. And not a sprig of hemlock to be seen!

By the time you've spent a couple of hours at the table enjoying a succession of foraged courses, all presented with a reminder of the specific plants you've seen (and tasted) in the wild, you can stagger back out into the feverish busyness of Edinburgh's tourist heartland feeling nourished, informed, amazed and inspired to find the flavours lurking much closer to home. 

Dates for Paul Wedgwood's wild foraging experience days in spring and early summer can be booked online, and the restaurant is open for fine dining all year round. 

Get more recommendations for Edinburgh's amazing local restaurants and eateries when you book a private walking tour of the city!

Continuing my occasional series looking at some of the particular features of Edinburgh's graveyards and burial grounds (part I, part II, part III) - this entry focuses on one grave in particular. It's known locally as the grave of the three Roberts - but I'm going to make the case for why I think that's numerically inaccurate, and why at least one more Robert should be associated with it...

The grave is in the Canongate Kirkyard, one of the five major burial grounds within Edinburgh's UNESCO World Heritage Site. You'll find it to the left hand side of the Canongate kirk, under a cherry tree, and with roses growing in front of it.

Here's the story of its three (or more) Roberts...

THE FIRST ROBERT
The first Robert associated with the grave is the one actually buried in it. Robert Fergusson was a young poet, born in Edinburgh on 5 September 1750. He was educated at St Andrews University and by 1768, at the age of 18, was back in Edinburgh and responsible for looking after his mother, following the death of his father. 

Mixing with the social classes of Edinburgh at that time, Fergusson found favour with actor and theatre manager William Woods who gave him regular access to the Edinburgh's theatres, and the attendant community of writers and poets who plied their trade in the Old Town.

Fergusson began contributing satirical poems to the Weekly Review, and acquired a reputation for his use of Scots, the language of Scotland which had fallen out of favour during the middle of the eighteenth century. By 1773 he had published his first collection, in an edition of 500 copies which rapidly sold out.

After Fergusson's death Burns was always keen to ensure that people knew he was only a poet because of Fergusson's influence. He never tried to deny the impact Fergusson's writing had had on his own, and modern scholars have even suggested that Fergusson may have developed into a better poet even than Burns - what Fergusson was writing in his twenties was at least as good as what Burns was writing by the time he died.

​So if he had lived, today we might have been celebrating Robert Fergusson as Scotland's national poet, instead of Robert Burns...

Thirteen years after Fergusson's death Burns commissioned a stone to mark the site of Fergusson's burial, which had originally been an unmarked grave in the Canongate kirkyard, and he wrote the four line epitaph on the grave stone itself.

THE THIRD ROBERT
The third Robert associated with the grave is Robert Louis Stevenson, another writer who was born in Edinburgh and used the city as inspiration for much of his own writing. 

​Born in 1850, a full century after Fergusson, Stevenson grew up in the New Town and would have been reading Fergusson's poems with the hindsight of knowing about the full panoply of writers and artists who had been influenced by Fergusson's use of Scots language. 

Stevenson especially felt kinship with Fergusson's experiences of physical and mental illness, and in a letter sent in April 1891 he wrote: 

However, at least two other Roberts linked to the grave deserve mention, too!

​THE FOURTH ROBERT
The fourth Robert is the architect Robert Burn (father of William Burn), who was commissioned by Robert Burns to create the original grave stone for Fergusson's burial site.

At that time, Robert Burn was starting out as an architect, and it's not clear why Burns chose him over the many other stonemasons and artisan builders in the city at that time - nor is it apparent why it took Burn two years to produce the grave stones that Burns had commissioned!

Later Burn would produce the Nelson Monument at the top of Calton Hill, visible from Fergusson's grave, and possibly he considered producing a few stones for a dead poet to be a bit beneath him. 

Regardless, when Robert Burns received the bill for it he sat on it for two years, before writing a letter suggesting that as it had taken two years for Burn to produce the stones, and as he had spent two years withholding payment for the work, perhaps they could consider the matter settled...!

THE FIFTH ROBERT
Yet another Robert has a link to Fergusson's grave. Because the stone which stands today is not the original stone - it is a replacement which was installed in 1850.

The renovation of the original stone was organised by a local man named Robert Gilfillan. Like Burns he was also a member of the Freemasons, and was a songwriter, as well as contributing various writings to local magazines like Blackwoods.

Gilfillan led the collection of public funds to pay for the replacement stone on Fergusson's grave, and died just a few months after the work was undertaken, in December 1850. (It's worth noting that the stone from 1850 records Robert Fergusson's date of birth incorrectly - he was born in 1750, not 1751 as the stone indicates.)

So there you have it! Edinburgh's grave of the three Roberts, which actually has at least five Roberts associated with it...

Discover more of the city's history with my private Edinburgh walking tours...

Not technically an Edinburgh church at all, perhaps - given that Canongate lay outside the city walls and was a separate town until 1856 - but the Canongate Kirk is a rather attractive and culturally significant church on the Royal Mile, best known for its connections to the British royal family.

​The church is still formally associated with both the Palace of Holyroodhouse and Edinburgh Castle, as well as remaining actively used as a community house of worship for local people. 

The building itself - with its distinctive Dutch-style gable - was designed by the architect James Smith, who was a significant figure in seventeenth-century architecture. Smith also designed Cockenzie House, just outside of Edinburgh, as well as the mausoleum of George 'Bluidy' Mackenzie in Edinburgh's Greyfriars Kirkyard, and he was commissioned to create a new centre of worship for the congregation of Canongate in 1688. The church was completed and in active use by 1691.

The royal connections extend to both the inside and outside of the church itself. The flowering cherry tree to the left of the gates as you enter the church was planted by Queen Elizabeth II on the first morning of her first official visit to Edinburgh as queen, in 1952. She would often attend services here during her visits to Holyrood Palace, and the pew at the front of the church bears the crown emblem to indicate its use by the royal family.

The marriage of the queen's granddaughter, Zara Phillips, to Mike Tindall took place at the Canongate Kirk in 2011. Since 1937 the church has received a Christmas tree from the Balmoral estate each winter.

The church also had connections with the incorporated trades of Edinburgh, and as a gesture of thanks for their support during its construction the guilds of the city were given the right to nominate Canongate's minister - from 1784 their choice was Robert Walker, the churchman immortalised by Henry Raeburn in the iconic painting known as The Skating Minister.

​Into the twentieth century the minister at Canongate was formally lodged across the road in Acheson House, one of the historic properties accessed via Bakehouse Close.

As well as its royal connections, Canongate Kirk is also the parish church associated with Edinburgh Castle, and is the regimental chapel of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Just as the monarch has a royal pew, the parallel space across the aisle is dedicated for military use. 

The interior space of the church is cruciform in layout, with a Romanesque basilica style that is not typical of Scottish churches post-Reformation (when most Catholic traditions were roundly rejected in favour of the Protestant presbyterianism). It is also painted with an unusual pale blue paint, and the decor as a whole seems in contrast with most people's expectations of a royal church - the space feels relatively low-key and modestly decorated, without much in the way of grand statuary or stained glass or paintings. 

The church had an organ installed in 1874, becoming one of the first organs to be introduced into Church of Scotland premises. The current organ was installed in 1998, and was the 1000th organ to be produced by the Frobenius organ maker in Denmark. 

Visitors can access the Canongate Kirk and its graveyard, where the graves of figures such as Adam Smith and Robert Fergusson can be discovered.

​The Canongate kirkyard features on my Beyond the World's End fixed-route walking tour, or can be included in a customised tour tour by arrangement. 

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Located in the former Canongate tolbooth on the Royal Mile - a building dating from the late sixteenth century - the People's Story is one of the free museums which offers a brief glimpse of what life in Edinburgh has been like across the years.

​Focusing on the lives of the people in the city, the museums showcases a variety of aspects of Edinburgh life, with atmospheric soundbites based on the actual testimony of city residents.

It's not as large as the Museum of Edinburgh, which is directly across the road, and the exhibitions have a decidedly old-fashioned feel to them - I'd go as far as to say suggest that much of the information hasn't been updated since the 1980s, when the museum first opened... The displays are also fairly text heavy - take your reading glasses if you need them!

But there are some intriguing details revealed, and it offers quite an insightful perspective on what life in Edinburgh has been like in the past.

It is the people of Edinburgh who take centre stage here, and as such there are costumed models through the museum giving a visual sense of the figures who have lived and worked in the city, and whose stories are being told.

From law and order - the Canongate tolbooth served as a prison, at a time when this area was still separate from Edinburgh and operating as an independent town - to the traditional trades and guilds of the city, to a peek into workplaces of the past, with domestic tableaux showing how people lived at home, there is a wealth of information to be uncovered. 

One exhibit shows two ladies enjoying afternoon tea at a tearoom on Princes Street, back to back with a display of their husbands enjoying a drink in a local pub before heading to the local derby between rival football teams, Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian.

Stand for a moment and listen as the conversation between the women is cut with the conversation between the men, highlighting how life was different for husbands and wives, and the variety of concerns they discuss. For the women there's a discussion of temperance and their fears for their children, while the men joke about which of their teams will be victorious at the match...

There's much more sobering content, too. One scene shows a mother and her four children sleeping under the eaves of the room on Blackfriars Street in which she lives in the middle of the 19th century, while the display at the side details what life was like for the more than 1,000 people who lived on the lane. Look closely and you'll notice the woman is shown with tears rolling down her face...

Certainly the museum shows, without gloss, how conditions in Edinburgh were pretty pitiful for many people for many years. And unlike much of the focus of popular histories, which fixate on kings and queens and the high status figures of society, the People's Story is very specifically focused on showing the history of ordinary working people. 

Find out about the public washrooms - the steamies - which were the heart of the community, and the housing available to single men who couldn't afford their own accommodation, and spent their days (and nights) in what were described as chicken coops.

From the rise of industry to the rise of socialism, there's a fair amount of political detail to the way Edinburgh's history has unfolded. 

The museum won't take more than thirty minutes of your time, perhaps, but it is charming in a municipal, old-fashioned way - and for anyone with an interest in social history there's guaranteed to be something to discover.

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