Where to Get Laid in Edinburgh, Month by Month

The women in Edinburgh on Scottish Slappers know that rhythm better than anyone. So here's how to get laid in Edinburgh season by season: when the city's wide awake, when it's quietly yours, how you get home, and why discretion goes a long way in a city this size.

January: the city belongs to its residents again

The bells have rung, the last visitors have wheeled their cases down to Waverley, and Edinburgh exhales. The Royal Mile's yours again, and the early dark makes staying in feel like the whole point.

It's when the site feels most like a neighbourhood. Women in Leith, Stockbridge, Bruntsfield and Portobello with routines and a very clear idea of how a cold weeknight should end. Plenty of them want a regular: the same man on the same evening, a teasing message the afternoon before, the door closing behind you before the coats are off. NSA Edinburgh arrangements come into their own in winter, and our page on NSA arrangements covers keeping one easy for you both.

Burns Night brings suppers on the 25th, then the Six Nations brings match days to Murrayfield in February and March. On a match weekend the west of the city is packed, so a quiet Tuesday across town is the smarter invitation.

Spring: Beltane fires and evenings that stretch

Spring arrives with a bonfire. On the last night of April the Beltane Fire Festival takes over Calton Hill, as it has since 1988: torches lit from a need-fire, the May Queen leading her procession under the Fire Arch, and a bonfire to welcome the summer. A crowd glowing in firelight on a hill above the city is about as flirtatious as Edinburgh gets outside August.

The light starts doing you favours too. There's time for a walk before a drink now, and the Water of Leith Walkway was made for it, following the river through Dean Village and Stockbridge on its way to the sea. Start under Telford's Dean Bridge, finish on the Shore in Leith, and you've had a long stretch of easy talk and accidental brushes of the hand before anyone's ordered a thing. By the water you'll both know whether the night's heading back to hers.

Midsummer: daylight until after ten

At midsummer the sun's up before half past four and doesn't set until after ten, so a first drink at eight happens in broad daylight and the walk back to hers happens in a long, slow dusk. You'll glance at your phone, find it's nearly midnight, and neither of you will want to stop.

Portobello comes into its own. Three miles east of the centre, its two-mile promenade runs along a wide sandy beach facing the Forth. Or climb Arthur's Seat, a mile from the castle and around 250 metres up, for a view over the whole city as the light softens. Sit close enough on the way down and the rest of the plan writes itself.

Nobody's racing the dark, and some of the best sex in Edinburgh happens in June with the sky still light at ten and the window wide open. If long, light evenings sound like your kind of foreplay, join, set your area to the capital and see who's around this week.

August: the whole city stays up late

Then the festivals arrive and Edinburgh becomes another place. The Fringe, the world's largest performing arts festival, takes over the Old Town and Southside for most of the month, open to anyone with a show. The International Festival brings opera, orchestras and dance for the last three weeks, and every weekday evening the Tattoo fills the Castle Esplanade and ends with fireworks.

Suddenly the city's full of performers, crews and visitors, far from home and running on adrenaline. Plenty of them want something that burns bright and ends when August does. A one night stand Edinburgh-style in festival season comes with built-in honesty, because there's no next month to worry about. If you want to get laid in Edinburgh in August, say what you're after early and the deadline becomes part of the thrill.

After the last show

Picture a Thursday near the end of August. She's a stage manager in town for the Fringe, and you've been messaging between her get-ins and get-outs all week, the banter getting steadily less polite. The Tattoo's fireworks have long since cracked over the castle when her message lands at twenty to midnight: "Curtain's down. I'm starving and wide awake. Where are you?"

You find each other at the top of the Mound, the castle lit up beside you. A kiss in a stone close off the Royal Mile that makes you both forget where you were going, then down Victoria Street and across the Grassmarket under the castle rock, her arm through yours. Her rented flat's in Bruntsfield, a short walk south, and neither of you remembers much about getting there.

She's back at the venue by noon, so there's no awkward morning, only a grin, a coffee and a message that afternoon: are you around after the late show? It won't always run like that, but August makes it likelier than any other month.

Autumn: the locals take their city back

In September the stages come down, the crowds head for Waverley and the airport tram, and a city that's been performing all summer goes back to being a place where people live. The site shifts with it: fewer flings with an expiry date, more women who'd like a little staying power, at least until morning.

Autumn is personals season. The woman who spent August working round the crowds finally has time to read a profile properly, so write yours the way the best Edinburgh personals read: short, specific and with a glint of mischief. Mention the Sunday farmers' market in Stockbridge or a dusk walk round Calton Hill, and she'll know you actually live here. By late November the Christmas market lights up East Princes Street Gardens beside Waverley, and mulled wine and a turn on the big wheel make an easy first meet.

Hogmanay: the bells, the castle and the way home

Edinburgh's Hogmanay runs over several days: the torchlight procession a couple of nights before, then on the 31st the Street Party along Princes Street and a concert in the Gardens below the castle. At midnight a cannon fires from the castle and the sky over the Old Town fills with fireworks. You don't need a ticket to watch; Calton Hill, Inverleith Park and Salisbury Crags all give you the view, and a kiss at the bells on a hillside above the city is hard to beat.

The real question is the way home. The night buses run from around midnight until half four every night of the week, across the city and out into the Lothians, so whoever lives nearer a route usually wins the argument about whose place. Settle it early and you'll spend the bells thinking about her door.

And if you're both brave, or still giddy, on New Year's Day the Loony Dook sends swimmers plunging into the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry. It's certainly one way to wake up together.

Visitors' Edinburgh, residents' Edinburgh, and paths that cross

There are two cities here. Visitors' Edinburgh is the Royal Mile, the castle and the Fringe's busiest corners; residents' Edinburgh is the tenements of Bruntsfield, the village feel of Stockbridge, Leith's waterfront and the promenade at Portobello. It's a small capital, and the woman you spent Saturday night with might pass you on George Street on Monday with a look only the two of you understand.

So discretion here is local common sense. Have the first drink away from your own patch: if you're a Leith man, meet her in Bruntsfield; if she lives on the south side, try the Shore. The tram makes that painless, running from the airport through Haymarket, Princes Street and St Andrew Square, then down Leith Walk to the Shore and Newhaven. The last trams leave around midnight from Newhaven and earlier from the airport, so check before you go and let the getting-home plan decide whose place it is.

If your paths cross later, she makes the call on whether you've ever met. A discreet Edinburgh hook up is one she'll happily repeat, and our guide to meeting up safely shows how women here like that first hour to go.

Any month, any end of the tram line

So here's the honest answer. There's no street where the right woman's waiting, just a right season for whatever you're after: an August fling with a deadline, a June evening that refuses to get dark, a January regular who knows exactly how she likes a winter night to end. The casual sex Edinburgh women enjoy most starts with a man who knows his city and keeps his secrets.

Edinburgh hookups don't stop at the city boundary, either. Waverley sends trains to Glasgow, Fife, Dundee, Stirling and the Borders, and if she's across the Forth or out in the Lothians, hookups beyond the capital covers the rest of the country.

Join tonight and message the woman whose photo made you stop scrolling, or catch her in the live chat room. It's a mobile website, so it opens in your browser the moment you sign up. Whatever the month, that's how you get laid in Edinburgh: invited, wanted, and very glad you live here.