Edinburgh festivals: Essential travel advice to survive the streets – Alastair Dalton

Plan your route through the city centre to avoid the gridlocked crowds

We’ve reached the half way stage of the Edinburgh Festival – so how are you feeling?

Buzzing, delirious or jaded from the experience? Or finding it a good excuse to avoid the capital in August?

Writing this from Glasgow, I can be entirely objective about the spectacle. But I do know that a key factor for both festival goers and those just trying to survive the city this month is how to get about.

The Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Festival. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA)

Your approach will perhaps depend on whether you’re there to take maximum advantage of what’s on offer – or simply attempting to continue life as normal in spite of it. That is if you haven’t already rented out your flat on Airbnb for a tidy sum and are holidaying somewhere exotic on the proceeds.

If you’re in the former category, it may just be a case of shifting down your walking pace to a lower gear and being carried along by the crowds. There may be no alternative to that on certain streets anyway, such as much of the Royal Mile.

However, for the latter group, a little planning is required. In the past, I’ve not been alone in advocating Greenways on pavements for speedier walkers and locals. However, these don’t take account of the very dawdlers that pay no attention to anyone around them, and there are many of these at festival time.

You know who I mean – those people who abruptly stop to take a photo, change direction, or just walk straight across you. Painting such lanes would be lost on such folk – they’d never notice them.

The southern part of East Princes Street Gardens shortly after 5pm on Friday August 11. (Photo by Alastair Dalton/The Scotsman)

Instead, it’s a case of avoiding them completely, and this is possible if you know the bypass routes to take, which, if you’re new to the game, may require a little trial and error. A pedestrian congestion indicator on Google Maps would help.

On Friday, on my first foray into the festival city this year, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that hardly anyone had cottoned onto the idea of traversing the city centre via the lesser known southern half of Princes Street Gardens.

But my plan to continue to a meeting at the Scottish Parliament via the virtually empty Calton Road, which runs parallel to the Royal Mile, was dashed by a foolish decision to try to walk past – not even through – Waverley Station. Having to negotiate my way past the melee spilling out of its entrances proved as bad a move as almost tripping over bagpipers’ collecting boxes on Princes Street.

My nightmare bus and train journeys with the fellow passengers from hell – Alastair Dalton

One further word of advice when you’ve had your fill of the festival or are just trying to escape. Don’t try and drive. That’s a nonsense option in most circumstances.

The train is often your best bet, which is faster than the bus to get out of the city. But don’t just board the first carriage you get to.

While you might find yourself fighting for a seat at that end of the train, try walking to the front instead and you may find it blissfully spacious and quiet – especially on the main line to Glasgow. I know I’m going to regret sharing that.