Duddingston is a village that the city forgot to swallow: a single curving street under Arthur's Seat, a medieval kirk, a loch full of birds, and a pub that claims to be the oldest in Scotland. It sits inside Edinburgh and behaves like it's a hundred miles away.
Start on the Causeway, the low village street, and look in at the Sheep Heid Inn — a licence traced back to 1360 and a skittle alley out the back — before you walk, saving the pint for the end. Up the lane is Duddingston Kirk, twelfth-century, with a Norman door and the old iron jougs still hanging at the gate. Step into the kirkyard for the view down to the water.
Behind the kirk, find Dr Neil's Garden, a physic garden two doctors carved out of the hillside, running down to the loch and almost always empty. Then walk the shore of Duddingston Loch, a reedy bird reserve where Raeburn painted his skating minister. Climb onto the park road for the long view back over the loch to the crags — the postcard angle — then come down the Causeway to the Sheep Heid, and that pint you saved.
