Description: We saw an advertisement for the Literary Pub Tour while we were walking around Edinburgh and decided it would be great entertainment for the evening. We weren't wrong. We showed up at the Beehive Pub around 7:15pm—the tour starts at 7:30 every night in the summer—and bought tickets from a girl out front. She suggested we grab a pint and wait upstairs in a meeting room where our "hosts" would collect our group. This was good advice. We would spend a comfortable half hour or so at the Beehive and, well, this
is a pub crawl as well as a literary adventure.
Basically, a guy showed up at the right time and started an introduction to literature in Edinburgh and how the sometimes bawdy soul of the city influenced Scottish writers. Eventually another guy we
thought was part of the group interrupts and challenges our host on some of his premises. It's a really delightful back-and-forth that promises lots of laughter and a bit of history thrown in.
We left the Beehive and moved along the tour, stopping at a couple of places outside so that we could continue to hear the "debate." A lightweight myself, I didn't order drinks at every stopping place though a girl in her twenties who looked a lot like a Welsh version of Lindsey Lohan amused us all by trying to keep up with that pace. Fortunately, she stopped at "tipsy" rather than "obnoxious."
One place where we gathered wasn't a pub at all but out in front of the Edinburgh Writer's Museum. It was closed for the evening, but we made a point of circling back to it the next day. It's a free museum, and it's well worth a visit. I think we all enjoyed the exhibits here a lot more because we had gotten an introduction to the writers from the literary tour!
While I would not suggest this walk to anyone who has a mobility issue, there was only really one hard climb on the tour. We moved at a leisurely enough pace and ended the tour at a pub (of course!) after about two hours.
A definite highlight in Edinburgh worth the £8 per ticket.
For more information, you can visit www.edinburghliterarypubtour.co.uk or email the company at info@scot-lit-tour.co.uk.
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