I’m wearing a fetching lilac rain poncho which deftly covers most of me and my wheelchair as it starts to drizzle. There are four more emergency ponchos in my backpack. I’m very grumpy – but it’s not because of the weather. It’s more that I’m cross with myself, on my sixth visit to Scotland’s capital for the parallel universe that is Edinburgh festival and fringe, that I have allowed myself to forget that the place is about as unfriendly in terms of terrain as you can find for a wheelchair user.

I was chuffed to bits when my publisher secured me a slot to discuss my memoir, First in the World Somewhere (to be published next month), at the Edinburgh international book festival. The venue inside Charlotte Square Gardens is a model of accessibility, from the spacious toilets to the matting, which covers the ground throughout, creating a network of pathways with protecting canopies. This makes navigation to all the theatre spaces and shops smooth, and lessens slip hazards, though naturally the rain in this town likes to blow horizontal.

I was a big kid, full of stifled squeals in the authors’ yurt: fully accessible, with ornate rugs smoothing out the ground, it was a true haven – and warm – with food and hot drinks served regularly. There were even mini canapes. There had been no compromise necessary for my reading – I took to the small stage via an appropriate ramp.

Penny Pepper on the Royal Mile cobbles. Photograph: Penny Pepper

But it was the terrain outside the festival itself that got me. There’s one accessible entrance into the square, over cobbles, which is used by all. Yet at one point the path around the square builds up to several steps that drop down to the road. Not an easy thing to solve and certainly no chance of a dropped kerb. I thanked goodness for those ponchos as I wound my way in drizzle back to my faraway car.

I ventured to a few other venues at the beating heart of the fringe. I met some friends, including another wheelchair user and a visually impaired person, who were overall impressed with the access, which is detailed on the main fringe website.

The apartment I’d booked looked promising on paper, with little sign of cobbles or hills. Silly me. Even the car park had cobbles and Google maps doesn’t yet compute access, so it promptly directed me to a flight of steps as the means of arriving at my destination. I became grizzly and self-pitying. The dubious surfaces and steeps took ages to negotiate. I scraped into a few shows, missed several and made the most of outdoor performances in the Royal Mile, always good for the unexpected, be it a young magician or some ballet. The Assembly Gardens was full of happy folk eating ice-cream on a rare sunny day, albeit on another sequence of slopes, although sturdy fake grass stopped me sinking into any unsavoury mire.

It’s not just Edinburgh. Festivals are generally daunting, starting with unreliable terrain and access levels, depending on where they are sited. The city of Edinburgh becomes a great sprawl of venues during the festival, whereas others – such as the Cambridge folk festival – are contained in one place. This has its positives and negatives. Everything might be in one locale, but an accessible Portaloo can be a thing of nightmares. I’ve never attempted that grandmummy of them all, Glastonbury, as I am not tough enough for camping, but according to James Coke, it is well set up for wheelchair users. However, it wouldn’t be manageable for me, unless supplemented by a huge budget for myself and my PA. I have however enjoyed Womad on several occasions – at least when it was in Reading – as it was easy to find cheap accommodation that wasn’t a tent. Yes, there was mud. And sometimes I got very stuck. Power chairs are heavy and liable to sink in anything squidgy, but the peaceful, friendly atmosphere and superb music made up for it.

For many years I’ve attended the Jack in the Green Festival in Hastings, East Sussex. Having started small as a revival of old folk customs in the 1980s, it grows and grows. If the sun comes out you can guarantee thousands will appear – and even if it doesn’t the streets are literally gridlocked with human beings, many dressed in appropriate May Day garb. Hastings has its own share of cobbles and steep inclines, so I do at least get practice.

Sometimes the biggest barriers to access at festivals are the people. Usually, a small minority thankfully – but there are many who couldn’t give a toss that the woman behind them is in a chair or that someone on sticks beside them can’t see, and no, why should they let you come through?

Edinburgh meanwhile seems to have citizens who are nothing but friendly. A local told me this is the magic of festival time. Whatever, this city is irresistible, history emanating from its great dour stone houses and accosting you from endless damp alleyways. As is the case with many festivals, it’s magical to be sharing a space with so much creativity in so many forms, be it music, literature, theatre or dance. The increasing willingness to make things work access-wise means the festival-going experience for disabled people continues to improve.

• Penny Pepper is a writer and disability rights activist. Her memoir First in the World Somewhere is published in September 2017