Why it's no wonder that Edinburgh's Circus Lane draws so many tourists

Most of us, I’m sure, have a little more sympathy for residents who find themselves colliding with Instagram influencers while popping out for milk, or accidentally photo-bombing a wedding shoot while taking the bins out.

It’s a shame to consider that anyone might refrain from making their immediate surroundings as lovely as possible, just in case they “create a monster”, as one resident put it, and become a magnet for posers.

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It’s a free country, of course, and if it was a crime to take photographs outside the delightful homes of total strangers then as a persistent offender I would be writing these words from a prison cell. But there have to be limits – surely? Limits to what is acceptable to do, and to the extent to which private residences are promoted as tourist attractions. When does admiring a building come too close to casing the joint, and when does taking social media snaps effectively amount to a commercial photoshoot?

It’s easy to mock and deride those who flock to any given site simply, it seems, because everyone else is doing so. But isn’t that what travel and tourism are often about? Too often these can seem like an exercise in box-ticking, with people visiting castles, palaces, galleries and museums despite having little real interest in such places and sometimes learning nothing little or nothing about their history or contents in the process (but taking the obligatory snaps, to prove they were there).

It’s perhaps little wonder that young people, in particular, are being drawn towards idyllic (and expensive) city dwellings instead of – or as well as – grander, more traditional tourist attractions. Who would seek to deny them the opportunity to imagine – just for five minutes or so – what it might be like to live there?

For someone in a flat-share struggling to save enough for a deposit on the smallest of properties in a city like Edinburgh, a terraced mews house on a pretty cobbled lane is a far-off dream. A few photos for the ‘gram isn’t much of a consolation prize, really.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, anyone with access to Google Maps can take a virtual tour of Circus Lane from the comfort (or otherwise) of their own home, and even “bump into” some fellow visitors who Google’s cameras appear to have snapped in the process checking how their phone photos have turned out. It’s easy to see why the faux-flower-bedecked bar on the street’s corner – the St Vincent – is popular for a pic, even if freeloading visitors do not always pop in for an accompanying pint.

All this is not to say that the residents of Circus Lane, or other “Instagrammable” streets, should tolerate people taking liberties just because society is unequal and they’re among the fortunate ones. There is a difference between taking personal snaps and “content creation”, although these days it’s often very difficult to determine where the line can be drawn.

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There are plenty of lovely cobbled streets in the capital that make suitable backdrops for wedding photos, so it takes a bit of a brass neck to schedule shots in a residential lane without even having knocked a door in advance. Perhaps these photographers bank on the belief that no resident would wish to dull the shine of a bride and groom’s big day by raising an objection.

Bodies like VisitScotland have been playing tourism trend catch-up ever since the explosion of Instagram and TikTok, where creators can monetise their recommendations of “hidden gems” – many of which are in fact well-known destinations, but not set up for the volume of visitors a well-edited reel or video might inspire to visit en masse.

There was a touch of defensiveness to VisitScotland’s response when we asked about it hopping onto the trend of promoting Circus Lane as a tourist destination, via the sharing of social media snaps and information about a Dean Village walking tour mentioning the popular search term. There’s a fine balance to be struck between promoting the beauty of the city and protecting the privacy and security of its residents.

One solution to the problem faced by those living in Circus Lane is simply to make everywhere in Scotland as beautiful as it can possibly be. If every other residential street was glorious in its own way, visitors would be spoiled for choice and quite naturally disperse, or at least migrate throughout the year, like birds, to different trendy areas.

Yes, beautiful architecture will always appeal, but so will abundant flower boxes and blossom trees; twinkling solar-powered light displays; restored or reimagined tiling; colourful harling, not just at the seaside; magical murals or mosaics. Maybe Instagram and TikTok could be tapped for some funding, to help make other streets just as joyful to look at.