A day out in Portobello on the beach

Caron Lindsay will be proud as well as slightly annoyed, sitting there going, told you so.

I am on three days annual leave starting today, but true to form, I started by going into the office for 90 minutes to finish some bits off that needed to be done and I have answered a few emails during the day.

Once I had finished I walked back to Princes Street via a few shops and then decided to catch the first bus that came to the nearest bus stop and see where that took me.

So, a 26 bus was first so I hopped on and read the Metro and decided to jump off at Portobello, somewhere I have never been to in my 3 years in Edinburgh (yes, 3 years on Tuesday next week).

To the right of the post in the water, in the centre of the picture is a blob in the water, that is in fact a man swimming in the freezing water.

Portobello is a beach resort located three miles to the east of the city centre of Edinburgh, along the coast of the Firth of Forth.

The area was originally known as Figgate Muir, an expanse of moorland through which the Figgate Burn flowed from Duddingston Loch to the sea, with a broad sandy beach on the Firth of Forth.

The name Figgate was thought to come from the Saxon term for "cow's ditch", and the land was used as pasture by the monks of Holyrood Abbey. In 1296 William Wallace mustered forces on the moor in a campaign that led to the Battle of Dunbar, and in 1650 the moor was the supposed scene of a secret meeting between Oliver Cromwell and Scottish leaders.

A report from 1661 describes a race in which twelve browster-wives ran from the Burn (recorded as the Thicket Burn) to the top of Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh.