In the chapter called "Gathering Storms at The Castle" in Blackhope Scaur Finn, Hadley, and Finn's family take a tour of Edinburgh Castle. If you ever get the chance to visit Edinburgh I highly recommend that you take such a tour. It is impressive enough from the outside 
but when you get inside it truly feels like a whole little ancient village with cobbled streets and strange buildings.
Finn enjoys pretending to be firing one of the cannons on the Argyll Battery launching a cannon all the way across Princes Street Gardens to hit the monument that stands on Princes Street in honor of Sir Walter Scott. Here is the view Finn got sighting along the barrel. 
Both Hadley and Finn get a fright when the One-O'clock Gun is fired. That really does still happen every day at 1 p.m. and can be heard all over the city.
The gun that fires at one-o'clock is fairly modern, as you can see, but they really do have the ancient siege-gun that was built in the 1440s. It could hurl a metal cannon weighing almost a ton for over two miles and was used to smash castle walls. Here is a picture of a modern-day tourist leaning against it with a pile of cannons sitting nearby. Each of these cannons is about the same size and shape as Big Tek in the story. 
There really is a Crown Square and the Palace that holds the Scottish crown jewels. I hope you can imagine a helicopter landing in Crown Square and an unpleasant French woman in a long black coat and high heeled boots struggling across the square with a suitcase. 
It is easy to let your imagination go wild when you are touring Edinburgh Castle. Take a look at the tourists walking across Crown Square and try to imagine which of them are really spies, murderers or aliens in disguise...
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