Within minutes, entrance gates were being opened, tickets were being checked and the early arrivals were pouring seeking out vantage points, fast food, drinks, funfair rides and various forms of musical entertainment.
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By 8.30pm, I was in the midst of a merry throng watching a pipe band perform on the steps of the 200-year-old Royal Scottish Academy building.
Wandering around the street party arena and Princes Street Gardens over the next hour, I experienced what could only be described as something of an assault on the senses.
Hogmanay revellers took part in ceilidh dances on Castle Street during the street party. (Image: Cameron Brisbane)
Flamboyant street performers, pipers and drummers, pounding dance music, a ceilidh dance band, laser effects, light projections and the first fireworks of the night were a heady cocktail to consume but not an unenjoyable one.
The night was still young when the realisation suddenly struck me that my first Hogmanay street party in Edinburgh was 30 years ago.
Around 50,000 revellers descended on Edinburgh city centre for the Hogmanay celebrations. (Image: Steve Welsh/PA Wire)
At the time, the festival was still a fledgling event, which had exploded in popularity after being staged for the first time in 1993.
Within four years, tickets for the main street party had to be introduced in response after hundreds of people were injured due to dangerous overcrowding on Princes Street.
Fireworks exploded over Edinburgh Castle during the city’s Hogmanay party. (Image: Martin Grimes/Getty Images)
The difference between that event and the current incarnation is night and day, and not just because the street party capacity is limited to 40,000, with around 10,000 other ticket-holders attending events in Princes Street Gardens, the Assembly Rooms and St Giles’ Cathedral.
Although traditionally busy spots at the foot of The Mound, Frederick Street and Castle Street were still thronged due to the vantage points they offer of Edinburgh Castle, the crowds I encountered were entirely good-natured at the street party, which was officially declared a sell-out shortly before 9pm.
It was no surprise that the majority of those I spoke throughout the day and into the night were international visitors, many drawn to Edinburgh for the first time by images or video footage they had seen of previous celebrations in the city.
The crowds were at their most animated where there was the most entertainment on offer, particularly at the Tartan Zone on Castle Street, where Bella McNab’s Ceilidh Band, The Poozies and Valtos drew a huge crowd, and Waverley Bridge, which was turned into a mass open-air nightclub by dance music legends 2manysjs, nearby to a mass silent disco, which generated an even more surreal atmosphere.
In West Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh singer-songwriter Hamish Hawk, one of the city’s fastest-rising music stars of recent years, gave a heroic performance before his biggest ever home-town audience.
The Concert in the Gardens crowd seemed to have thinned out significantly by the time comic Susie McCabe, who has become Edinburgh’s regular Hogmanay host in recent years, introduced headliners indie-rockers Wet Leg, whose set was something of a damp squib in comparison with Hawk.
In hindsight, Hebridean rockers Peat & Diesel, who had pulled a much bigger crowd for their Night Afore Concert in the gardens, would have been provided a more fitting finale than the Isle of Wight outfit given the effort the Stornoway band had put into creating a party to remember.
Thankfully, the main event in Edinburgh, on this and every other Hogmanay for more than 30 years now, did not disappoint.
Last year’s bad weather wipe-out at Hogmanay, the demise of the summer festival fireworks concert and the scaling back of pyrotechnics during the Tattoo have left the city starved of the once regular spectacular displays above the castle.
But all that was swiftly forgotten in a six and a half minute display that was really felt like a blast from the past and was greeted by a vast collective roar from the watching crowds after a thundering climax accompanied by a soundtrack of Auld Lang Syne.
This time last year, Edinburgh was making Hogmanay headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons after being forced to scrap three days out outdoor events in the face of prolonged heavy winds. At the time, there were serious doubts expressed about the city’s appetite to attempt other series of events on the same scale, and whether they would have the same appeal around the world.
Edinburgh’s ability to hold its nerve and bounce back has been tested before by previous cancellations, including the pulling of the plug days before the festivities were due to begin three years ago due to a new wave of Covid cases.
I paused for a few minutes on North Bridge on the way home to take in the dazzling scene across the city centre as Edinburgh’s party entered its final few minutes.
It was a moment to appreciate the good fortune of living in a city which can not only throw a party on such an incredible scale, but also the vast collective effort to revive the city’s celebrations and ensure its crown as the “home of Hogmanay” is still firmly intact.