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I met up with the East Linton children’s book group, seven members in all, librarian Carol Hastie, her two daughters and we set off with great excitement, catching the train to Edinburgh from Drem railway station.

Having read various books mentioned in Reading Round Edinburgh we were keen find the streets and some of the objects described in stories such as The Sign of the Black Dagger by Joan Lingard, Fleshmarket by Nicola Morgan, The Chaos Clock by Jill Arbuthnot and my own retelling of Greyfriars Bobby.

We began by walking down the Royal Mile to the palace of Holyrood where we saw the three bronze letters, – S -for sanctuary, embedded in the road. I read a short passage from The Black Dagger and we imagined what it would have been like for someone running to cross the line to safety. We crossed over to look at the Parliament building that Hamish McHaggis and friends pass in the tour bus, as they look for Angus in The Edinburgh Adventure.

Here we are reading the poetry and famous sayings carved into the stone of the parliament building.

We walked up the Royal Mile and our next stop was the Storytelling Centre where we looked at the story wall and then sat in the amazing large carved wooden chairs. while I read part of the Greyfriars Bobby story. Next we went to find Fleshmarket close and standing at the top of the narrow close we all imagined what it would have been like years ago as I read out the description from Nicola Morgan’s book Fleshmarket.

There was a freezing cold wind blowing and we were glad to move on to find Advocat’s Close where the children from the Sign of the Black Dagger lived.

Coming out opposite St Giles Cathedral we looked for the heart shape made of cobbles that is the Heart of Midlothian before going for some well earned refreshments. Duly fortified with hot chocolate and cakes we arrived at the statue to Greyfriars Bobby

It was still light enough for a quick look in Greyfriars Kirkyard to find wee Bobby’s gravestone and also the graves of his master John Gray and Bobby’s good friend James Brown.

It was getting late by the time we finally arrived at the Museum in Chamber Street and unfortunately we only had a few minutes there before it closed. We had a quick look at the Millenium clock which was the inspiration for the Chaos Clock.

There was just time to walk back to the station to catch our train home and to think about the other things we would like to come and see the next time we are in Edinburgh. It had been a great day all round!

I am very excited to be able to announce that my teenage novel ‘Spider’ has just been accepted for publication and will be out sometime next year! More about this soon.

I had thought last month that I would make more frequent entries here but I realise that it has been almost three weeks already.

I was due to do some CPD sessions on creative writing ideas with primary school teachers in North Ayrshire but this has been re sheduled for the spring which has allowed me to spend more time writing in my shed this week to catch up after I spent the rest of last week looking for wedding venues with my daughter who got engaged recently.

One of the things I love about my work is that I am asked to do so many different things. at the end of next week I will be going into Edinburgh with the East Linton library after school club to visit some of the locations mentioned in children’s books, taking the lead from the Reading Round Edinburgh book (see it in the New Books section). I will be reading extracts from some of the books such as Nicola Morgan’s Fleshmarket; Gill Arburthnot’s The Chaos Clock; Joan Lingard’s The Sign of the Black Dagger and my book, Greyfriars Bobby. It should be fun but I do hope the weather hold fine for us.

I was running a workshop for nursery and early years teachers at the Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh when they ran their Zest for Life day recently. It was all about how to use book as a jumping off point to telling stories and I was delighted by the wonderful storytelling skills shown by some of the groups when I gave them a starting off point and asked them to create their own story ideas and tell them to the rest of us. There was much laughter during the session so I hope they all enjoyed it as much as I did.