Looks can be deceiving

From the office it looked like a balmy spring day, but once I got out, the wind was blowing a gale and it was pretty chilly too! However, I still had a nice lunchtime walk and blipped looking up through London Road Gardens to Royal Terrace.

Royal Terrace with its fine views over the Firth of Forth was known affectionately in the 19th-century as Whisky Row. This is said to be a reference to the amount of Spirit merchants, who bought the new properties, and for their supposed abilities to see their ships return from trading trips.

Another explanation is that it was so named because of the large number of wine merchants who used to live there. Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême (the elder son of Charles X of France, last of the Bourbon kings) and his wife Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, (the daughter of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette), moved into what is now 22 (then 21) Regent Terrace in 1830. Caroline Ferdinande Louise the Duchesse de Berri, sister in law of the Duc d'Angoulême, also lived at what is now 12 (then 11) Regent Terrace at that time. Her young son, Henri, the Comte de Chambord, is said to have wept bitterly when his family left for Austria in 1932 as he had become very attached to Scotland.

The painter Francis Cadell one of the Scottish Colourists lived in 30 Regent Terrace from 1930-1935.