There is a particular kind of Edinburgh weather — half mist, half drizzle — that locals call dreich. It is the opposite of welcoming and yet, paradoxically, the best mood in which to meet the city.

The Old Town's stones turn black with the wet, the gas lamps along Victoria Street begin their long evening, and the entire skyline reorganises itself into a Walter Scott novel. The tourists thin out. The pubs fill up.

We spent a Tuesday last March doing precisely nothing of note: the National Portrait Gallery for two hours, a long lunch at Hawksmoor, an hour in Topping & Company, and a single dram at Bow Bar before catching the last sleeper south.

Edinburgh in sunshine is a film set. Edinburgh in dreich is a place.