Edinburgh tour guide Gareth Davies
Gareth Davies is a tour guide in Edinburgh, taking in the main sites and the lesser known.
Gareth moved to Edinburgh for university in 1998, but fell in love with the city and stayed.
“Oone of the things I love about being a guide is that I sort of see the city vicariously through other people's eyes.
So even though I've lived here as long as I have, I'm always seeing the city with people who are discovering it new or fresh or seeing it for the first time.
One of the things that people remark on in Dean Village, and the New Town in general is that it was not what they were expecting.
And that's exactly the response I like, because that's exactly why I take people there, and why I recommend people go and look at it because the imagery of Edinburgh that is used to sell the city is so kind of geared towards the castle and the Royal Mile, that it's easy to forget that there are actually some really different spaces.
One of the great things about Edinburgh is that each of the suburbs, because they were sort of separate towns originally, they had their own identities, they had their own cultures.
You can get a very different experience of Edinburgh by going to each of these different little suburb areas and they've all got their own character.
And so Dean Village is one of the little places that it has the benefit of being historic and very picturesque but people sort of say, well, you know, I didn't realize this was here.
There's a lovely little river that runs through it and you can, I always say, you can feel like you're sort of miles from the city centre walking through Dean Village, and then you turn a corner and sort of five minutes, ten minutes, you're back in the centre of the city.
You sort of feel like you're in this very remote, sort of rural, kind of peaceful idyll and actually you're right in the middle of the town. It's an amazing sort of sense of contrast.”
Gareth’s perfect day:
Where: Dean Village, Sandwood Bay, Royal Mile (especially Advocates’ Close), Harris
Food and drink: Square sausage morning roll, Cullen Skink, dinner at Prestonfield House (venison Wellington and a Rusty Nail)
Music: Roddy Frame, Amy McDonald
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