Royal Mile

This guide to the Royal Mile in Edinburgh follows Peter Williamson, a man kidnapped as a boy and sold into servitude in Philadelphia, who survived captivity, war, and the loss of his wife before walking home to Scotland and reinventing himself as a tavern keeper known as Indian Peter. It traces how, from a rented Luckenbooth stall on this street in 1774, he built an idea into Britain's first penny post, a service that ran for decades along this very route. Look down as you walk: brass strips are still set into the cobbles marking exactly where his stall once stood.