Nostalgia: All smiles in the sunshine

Hot on the heels of this week's warm weather we look back at summers past.

CHILDREN squealed with delight as they waded into the shallow pool outside the Scottish Parliament for a game of Frisbee in the cooling water.

Queues built at the ice cream van in Holyrood Park and colourful kites flew high in the clear blue skies overhead.

Pink flesh, sunglasses and the distinctive smell of sun cream were everywhere this week as Edinburgh residents made the most of the warm weather.

The heat got so much there were even reports of topless sunbathers being spotted in secluded parts of the Royal Botanic Garden. It seems a long time since we've witnessed such Continental-style weather in notoriously chilly Auld Reekie.

Yet, once upon a time, youngsters bathed in the Water of Leith at Saughton and went for dips in the now demolished paddling pool beside St Margaret's Loch in Holyrood Park.

Crowds flocked to Portobello's open-air pool, complete with wave machine, which enjoyed its heyday from May 1936 to the 1950s.

The pool was heated by steam from the adjoining power station and on a single day in its opening year there were 18,000 admissions – just 4000 fewer than the number for the whole of the pool's final summer in 1978.

Princes Street Gardens, with its ice cream kiosk, has long been a favourite haunt of those looking to lie out in the city centre.

The gardens once boasted The Piazza, an open-air cafe, where shelter from the blazing sun could be had under a fringed parasol.

Many stopped off in West Princes Street Gardens to admire the world's oldest floral clock, which dates from 1903, while men would knot their handkerchiefs around their heads to spare their bald patches from the ravages of the sun's rays.

Soaring temperatures during the legendary 1976 heatwave saw young men strip to the waist and cross Princes Street barefoot.

That long, hot summer saw the temperature during June and early July rise with each passing day. It reached a point where the Government even appointed a Minister for Drought.

Ice cream sales doubled, while at Edinburgh Zoo the penguins had to be sprayed with iced water to prevent them overheating.

We fried again in summer 2003 when the mercury rose to a melting 30C, and in 2006 we had the hottest July ever recorded in Scotland.

Sadly, warm spells tend not to last for very long, but at least our memories of sunny days gone by can linger on.