Edinburgh taxis want you to walk.

Arriving at Edinburgh Waverley Station on the evening of 30 December, we pushed our way through the thronging crowds on the pavement in the blustering wind and rain, and lugged our suitcases towards the taxi rank. 

What taxi rank? 

With 23m passengers per year passing through the station you would have thought they could have provided a taxi rank. The doorman at a nearby hotel suggested that we walk the hundred or so yards to Waverley Bridge and we would find taxis there.

We did eventually find a taxi there. The driver, on hearing our destination said, 'You can walk that. Just go back up there, turn right at the top then turn left, walk up through the square and turn right at the end and the hotel is along there on the left.'
He was right. We could walk it. Just as we could have walked the 450 miles to Edinburgh had we wanted, but we had not. We wanted a taxi but he would not provide it so we carried our baggage in the pouring rain and wind for the ten minute walk to our hotel.

Welcome to Edinburgh.

On the following evening we tried to buck the system by telephoning for a taxi to pick us up from the hotel. The taxi telephonist, upon hearing the destination, said, 'That's only about two miles. You can walk that.'

Is there some anomaly in the Scots mind which confuses ability with desire? 

And what do taxi drivers live on?