Water of Leith - Roseburn to Stockbridge

Yesterday we went on a lovely walk along the Water of Leith from Roseburn to Stockbridge. 

This is a pretty stretch of the river, though it gets very crowded around Dean Village and Stockbridge, two areas of Edinburgh (and the river) that are very popular with tourists. 

Otters are quite often seen in the Water of Leith, but just up from Dean Village, there is the one spot in the city where you can actually guarantee seeing an otter:

This otterly adorable statue has been there for years, but not many people know about it! 

There's quite a lot of River Water Crowfoot in the river at the moment. This is a beautiful plant when in flower, though very easy to overlook otherwise. 

We were surprised to find patches of River Water Crowfoot growing in the weir at Dean Village. You'd expect the water here to be flowing too fast for the plant to establish itself 

but there are several patches here, and they seem to be well rooted in the rocks above the weir

Plenty of other plants are currently in bloom along the river, including Hairy Willowherb

We were lucky to get our walk in when we did, because it started raining as we were eating lunch and rained on and off for the rest of the day.