Letters in brief

Letter: Briefly

Edinburgh was known affectionately as "Auld Reekie" because of its numerous smoking chimneys. The name had nothing to do with the city's "past sewage problems". ("A Short Stay in ... Edinburgh", Travel, 28 December).

Jean Lindsay

Bangor, Gwynedd

THANKS for beginning your 1998 predictions with "Are house prices going to collapse?", thus saving us having to wade through columns of current affairs and geopolitics to find the thing we really care about ("Your questions answered, Section 2, 28 December).

James Norton, London W2

lYOUR article "Go West this winter - by bike" (Travel, 28 December) contained errors. The Tarka Trail does not run south of Dartmoor but north; the Camel Trail in Cornwall runs from Bodmin to Padstow, and St Austell is in south Cornwall, not north.

Jeremy Lawford

Exeter, Devon