Private tours
Seven routes.
One guide. Your group only.
Prices below are from-prices for one person and cover everything on the walk. Every tour runs at ten o’clock or two o’clock, and every one of them can be bent around what you actually want to see.
Most booked · 3 hours · from £90
The New & Old Towns
The whole city in one walk. Both of Edinburgh’s UNESCO World Heritage towns, the important corners of each, Calton Hill and the Royal Mile.
Three hours gives us room to go properly deep on whatever grabs you, which is why it is the one most people take. Tell Robert what you are interested in beforehand and he will build the route around it.
From £85
Old Edinburgh
The Old Town, and the characters who have run it, robbed it and rebuilt it since 1437.
A brilliant first walk if this is your first time in the city, and still full of things locals have never heard. Famous names, infamous ones, and a lot of people in between whose stories only survive in the records.
From £85
The Royal Mile
Palace of Holyroodhouse to the Castle esplanade, taking the closes and wynds nearly everybody walks straight past.
The prominent Scots who lived, worked and died along this street, and the ordinary ones stacked ten storeys above them. Most of the tour happens off the main drag.
1.5 hours · from £70
Greyfriars Kirkyard
Bodysnatchers, murderers, Covenanters, and wee Greyfriars Bobby too.
One kirkyard, ninety minutes, and a remarkable density of stories. Some of them are Robert’s own family’s, which is not something another guide can offer you.
From £85
Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Edinburgh
1745, and a capital city that changed hands.
Made for Outlander viewers, for anyone who reads about the Jacobites and the Hanoverians, and for locals who reckon they already know the place. The archive portraits come out of the bag on this one.
From £85
Slum Life in Victorian Edinburgh
The other side of the Victorian story, a few streets from the postcard.
The injustices and hardships faced by our nineteenth-century ancestors, and a very different Edinburgh from the one on the shortbread tin. Sobering, and the one people talk about afterwards.
Bespoke & large groups
Or tell me what you want, and I’ll write it.
Societies, work trips, university groups, families over from abroad, anniversaries. Your area of interest, your start and finish points, your timing.
Because Robert writes and resources the tours himself, a new one is a matter of research rather than a matter of asking permission. Give him what you are after and he will come back with a route and a price.
Also available
Virtual tours, wherever you are.
Old Edinburgh, Jacobite Edinburgh and Victorian Edinburgh all run as online experiences for groups who cannot get here.