Two hours through the Royal Mile and the closes behind it, private to your party, with a guide who lives in the city.
The Royal Mile is a mile of shops selling tartan to people walking past the interesting part. The interesting part is the closes: the narrow passages running off it on both sides, down into the valley the city was built on, where most of medieval Edinburgh actually lived.
This is a two-hour private walk with one of our Edinburgh guides. Not a flag held above a group of forty, not a headset. Your party only, at your pace, with the questions answered as you ask them.
It is also the walk we include on day 2 of our Scotland in a week self-drive tour. Booked on its own, it is £190 for your whole party.
We start high, with the geology: a volcanic plug, a glacier, and a town that had nowhere to grow but up. The esplanade gives you the shape of the whole city in one turn, and explains why the Old Town looks like nowhere else in Britain.
The part most visitors walk past. Narrow passages dropping away on either side, some of them still carrying the name of the merchant who owned the land in 1600. This is where the eleven-storey tenements stood, and where the plague story everyone half-remembers actually happened.
The crown spire of St Giles', the stone heart set in the cobbles where the Tolbooth prison stood, and the local habit of spitting on it. The Reformation, John Knox and why Scotland's church looks nothing like England's, in about ten minutes.
Down the Victoria Street curve into the Grassmarket, under the castle rock: markets, executions and a pub called The Last Drop that means exactly what you think. Then Greyfriars Kirkyard, the Covenanters' prison, and the gravestones a certain author borrowed names from.
This is a walk, so there is no van and no pick-up. We agree a meeting point in the Old Town when you book, usually a two-minute walk from where you are staying, and your guide is there at the time you chose.
Morning or afternoon both work. If you are off a cruise at Leith or South Queensferry and want the walk fitted around a shuttle, tell us the times and we will build around them.
You get a WhatsApp message the evening before with the exact meeting point, a photo of it, and your guide's name.
All year, every day. The Old Town in November drizzle is closer to what the place has always looked like than the Old Town in August sun, and your guide knows which closes give shelter.
August is the exception worth planning around: during the Festival the Royal Mile is impassable in the middle of the day, so we take the walk early or push it to the evening.
£190 for the whole party, one to eight travellers. The price does not change with the size of your group: the same £190 whether you are two or eight. No entry fees are included because the walk is outdoors throughout. All prices in GBP.
Two hours and about 2 km, 1.2 miles, almost all of it on cobbles. The Old Town is built on a ridge, so there are steps and slopes, including the drop into the Grassmarket. Tell us about mobility at booking and your guide picks a flatter line.
No. We start at the esplanade and explain the castle from outside; going in is a separate ticket and takes a couple of hours on its own. Your guide will tell you the best time of day to go and which entrance queue moves.
Yes, from about seven upwards. Two hours is the right length for that age, the closes are good for a ghost story or two, and your guide adjusts the balance between history and anecdote. Tell us the ages when you book.
We walk. Edinburgh gets rain most weeks of the year and the Old Town is built for it: your guide uses the covered closes and the arcades, and knows where to stop for ten minutes until it passes. Free cancellation on your side applies up to 7 days before the date, under section 12.4 of our Booking Terms and Conditions.
Full day
Day tour
Staff pick
Stirling · Doune · Aberfoyle · Loch Katrine · Luss
Two castles, a steamship on Loch Katrine, then Luss on Loch Lomond.
Flat rate £650 1 to 8 travellers
Full day
Day tour
Midhope · Linlithgow · Blackness · Culross · Falkland · Doune
Lallybroch, Castle Leoch and Outlander's Inverness in one day from Edinburgh.
Flat rate £650 1 to 8 travellers
8 days
Self-drive
Entry price
Edinburgh · Stirling · Trossachs · Perthshire · St Andrews
A private Old Town walk in Edinburgh, then a gentle week inland.
From £2,000 per person