Swanston is where Edinburgh runs out and the Pentlands begin — a thatched village at the foot of the hills, so neat it looks invented, and the reason Robert Louis Stevenson kept writing about these slopes from the far side of the world. The walk is half village, half hill, and the join is the pleasure of it.
Five kilometres, best on a clear morning before the hill haze sets in. Start among the whitewashed cottages of the conservation village — no shop, no pub, just the green and the quiet. Past Swanston Cottage, where Stevenson summered from 1867, skirt the golf course as the path climbs and the city falls away behind you.
Up beside the plantation the locals call the T Wood, the city walk turns into a hill walk: above the trees the open flank of Caerketton rises. You don't have to summit — the shoulder gives Edinburgh, the Forth and Fife in one sweep. Turn there, come down by the old Bow Bridge and the burn, and let the city rise to meet you. Bus 4 from Hunters Tryst home.
