The area around the outlet of the Figgate Burn was rough grazing owned by Holyrood Abbey until the mid-eighteenth century. After the sailor's cottage came clay - the discovery of usable beds led to the manufacture of bricks, tiles, and pottery. By the early nineteenth century, sea-bathing was fashionable, and Portobello acquired the Victorian seafront infrastructure of every British resort: promenade, lido, amusement arcades, ice-cream parlours. The lido is gone. The promenade remains, running along a sandy beach on the Firth of Forth. The grains of coal that mingle with Portobello's sand are natural pollution - coal deposits outcrop on the sea bed, and stormy weather casts black fragments ashore. Today the High Street holds the ghosts of a busier era and the current life of a working seaside neighbourhood: Twelve Triangles bakery, Smith and Gertrude wine bar at 254, Vault City Brewery's taproom at 243 making unusual sour beers.

On the eastern flank of Arthur's Seat, the hamlet of Duddingston sits beside a small freshwater loch. The village was first recorded as Treverlen, part of a tract of land owned by Kelso monastery. In 1124 the monks feu'd it to Dodin de Berwic, who built the church and renamed the village for himself. The Sheep Heid Inn still serves drinkers in eighteenth-century surroundings. The church watchtower, a stubby stone structure in the graveyard, was once staffed for three weeks after each burial to protect the dead from body-snatchers. The loch beside the village is famous beyond its size. A prehistoric crannog - an artificial island dwelling - was found within it, along with a hoard of smashed-up Bronze Age weapons from around 1000 BC, now in the National Museum of Scotland. The loch is the setting for Henry Raeburn's painting The Skating Minister, now in the National Gallery of Scotland. The painting depicts the Reverend Robert Walker, minister of Canongate, gliding across Duddingston Loch in clerical black. Walker had grown up in the Netherlands where canals froze hard in winter; he was a member of the Edinburgh Skating Club, the world's first figure-skating society. The loch was also home to a curling society which codified the rules of that sport at the start of the nineteenth century, standardising on round stones.

The Innocent Railway is now a cycle path running from the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Newington, emerging from a tunnel to head toward the main line near Portobello. It was built in 1831 to bring coal into the city, then quickly became a popular passenger route. The name was supposedly because it never had an accident. This was not entirely true. A train driver was killed, two children were killed, and there were countless minor injuries as passengers stumbled out of horse-drawn carriages. The name seems to have been a marketing ploy - emphasising the slow-but-sure horse-drawn service in contrast to competitors' frighteningly novel steam engines. The Victorian railway was selling reassurance, not speed. The tunnel still runs beneath Arthur's Seat, now lit and cycled through by commuters and tourists, the trains long gone and the horses longer.

Edinburgh's eastern districts are a mix of residential and industrial - a sprawl bounded by Holyrood Park, the former port of Leith, the coast, and the separate town of Musselburgh. Most visitors see only Portobello and Duddingston. The rest is a working city: bus 26 every fifteen minutes from Princes Street out past Meadowbank to Joppa, the Borders Railway running every half hour to Newcraighall's Park and Ride. Newcraighall costs 50p to park for 24 hours; you pay the train fare into town. Fort Kinnaird is a large multi-purpose retail and entertainment facility two miles east of the city centre on the A1 London Road - home to Edinburgh City FC, who play in Scottish League Two. Beyond Newcraighall the A1 dwindles to single carriageway through Brunstane, and the coast becomes a series of villages running east toward North Berwick. From the Portobello promenade, on a clear day, you can see the Fife coast across the firth and, far to the east, the volcanic plug of North Berwick Law.

Edinburgh East centres on Portobello at roughly 55.95 degrees north, 3.10 degrees west, with Duddingston tucked under the eastern slopes of Arthur's Seat at 55.94 degrees north. The most distinctive visual from above is the contrast between Arthur's Seat - the green volcanic hill of Holyrood Park - and the urban grid pressing against it on the east and south. Portobello's sandy beach runs roughly east-west along the Firth of Forth shore, with the Edinburgh suburb behind it. Duddingston Loch is a small dark oval immediately east of Arthur's Seat. Best viewed from 2,000 to 3,500 feet. Nearest ICAO airport: Edinburgh (EGPH) ~8 nm west. The A1 trunk road runs along the southern edge of the area. Fife is visible across the firth to the north; the Pentland Hills rise to the south-west. Musselburgh lies immediately east beyond the boundary.