planning resources

Knol - free online community giving guidance and advice on all sorts of subjects, including many aspects of photography. Particularly useful is the growing collection of guides to locations. Nothing on Edinburgh yet, so maybe you could write one?
http://freephotoguidesukscotland.blogspot.com/



You probably won't need to worry about avalanches just yet, but the Scottish Avalanche Info Service has an avalanche map, which you can also use to scroll through maps of the country. If you do continue into winter mountain landscape photography, then the SAIS is essential.
http://www.sais.gov.uk/avalanche_map.asp


Map reading and navigation is useful, obviously, to avoid getting lost. Photographers do sometimes get to out of the way places at unusual times of day, so good accurate navigation becomes important. It is also useful to be able to visualise from the map the nature of the terrain to help you to select good viewpoints and to predict what you might actually see. In Scotland it is quite common to see nothing at all in poor weather, which makes photography tricky. On those types of days, it is still good to go out, practice some map work and use the day for reconnaisance of locations and gathering visual ideas.
The Mountaineering Council of Scotland gives 12 essential skills for navigation. Contour interpretation is especially useful:


http://www.mcofs.org.uk/navigators-dozen.asp


Mountain weather information service:
http://www.mwis.org.uk/index.php



Met office forecasts. It's worth getting familiar with the synoptic charts too, not just for the weather, but to predict and previsualise the type of light and cloud that you might experience. This way you can plan the type and style of photographs that you are likely to be able to achieve.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/loutdoor/mountainsafety/index.html





And on the subject of clouds, here's the Cloud Appreciation Society:
http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/


Magic Seaweed gives sea tide and swell information. I have seen lots of photographs of coastal scenes with the tide out, making the foreground look quite sludgy and muddy. Why not go when the tide is in, and you can make use of the textures, reflections, movement, light, colour and fluidity of the water?
http://magicseaweed.com/


The Photographer's Ephemeris gives you access to free software enabling you to select your location and predict the angle of the sun. Choosing your location for a dawn or dusk shoot can be quite difficult, and this information can take some of the guesswork out of it.
http://photoephemeris.com/