Edinburgh

Literary Edinburgh – Libraries, a Museum and Scott's Monument

A day on foot, from Waverley Station to the Oxford Bar.

The route

In 2004 Edinburgh became the world's first UNESCO City of Literature, and a day on foot shows you why.

Scotland's writers are everywhere in the Old Town and the New. There's a library given over to poetry, a museum that keeps Burns's desk and Stevenson's boots, and a kirkyard stone one poet paid for in memory of another. Even the station you arrive at, Waverley, is named after Scott's novels. It's nearly four miles of cobbles and steps, and almost all of it is free.

The day

Edinburgh

A day of books and the people who wrote them, walked from the quiet foot of the Canongate to the small New Town pub where Ian Rankin's detective Rebus drinks. Most of it is spent indoors among shelves and manuscripts, with a short walk between one door and the next.

Scottish Poetry Library
An attraction
From Waverley it's a 13-minute walk down to the foot of the Canongate and into Crichton's Close, where the Scottish Poetry Library opens at 10am. Its light, modern building has been the library's home since 1999, and it's free to walk in, browse shelves of poetry in English, Scots and Gaelic, or sit and read. It opens only from Monday to Thursday, 10am to 3pm, which is why the day starts here. Give it half an hour, and look in at the shop.
More about Scottish Poetry Library
3 min on foot
Canongate Kirkyard
It's a 3-minute walk back up the Canongate to Canongate Kirkyard. The poet Robert Fergusson, whose poems in Scots set Robert Burns on his way, died in 1774 aged 24 and was buried here without a stone. Burns paid for one himself in 1787, and the lines on it are his. Go in by the gate beside Fergusson's statue and find the stone on the west side of the kirkyard. A quarter of an hour is enough.
6 min on foot
The Scottish Storytelling Centre
An attraction
Walk 6 minutes on up the Canongate and into the High Street to the Scottish Storytelling Centre, which calls itself the world's first purpose-built centre for live storytelling. It's free to walk in, and its programme runs from told stories to music, theatre and exhibitions, so see what's on this week. Next door, John Knox House dates back to about 1470 and holds an exhibition on the Scottish Reformation. Give the Centre twenty minutes or so.
More about The Scottish Storytelling Centre
6 min on foot
The Heart of Midlothian
An attraction
It's a 6-minute walk up the High Street to St Giles' Cathedral, where a heart of coloured granite setts is laid into the cobbles near the west door. It marks the doorway of the Old Tolbooth, the town's prison, pulled down in 1817, and the next year Scott made it the setting of his novel The Heart of Midlothian, the story of a girl wrongly imprisoned inside. Spitting on it is said to bring good luck, so step round it. Five minutes is plenty.
More about The Heart of Midlothian
2 min on foot
Writers' Museum
An attraction
Walk 2 minutes up the Lawnmarket to an arch on the right and Lady Stair's Close, where a 17th-century house is now the Writers' Museum, free and open every day. Inside are Burns's writing desk, Scott's rocking horse and Stevenson's riding boots, and a wardrobe made by Deacon Brodie, whose double life may have inspired Jekyll and Hyde. Outside, Makars' Court has words by Scotland's writers, from John Barbour in the 1300s to Muriel Spark, set into its flagstones. Give it forty minutes.
More about Writers' Museum
2 min on foot
National Library of Scotland
An attraction
It's a 2-minute walk back to the Lawnmarket and round the corner onto George IV Bridge to the National Library of Scotland, free for anyone to walk into. As Scotland's legal deposit library it can claim a copy of every book published in the UK, and its collections include a Gutenberg Bible and the last letter of Mary, Queen of Scots, though they're not always on show. There's often a free exhibition on. Give it half an hour, and use the toilets before lunch.
More about National Library of Scotland
9 min on foot
Armchair Books
A shop
Walk 9 minutes down the bend of Victoria Street, through the Grassmarket and along the West Port to Armchair Books. Stop on Victoria Street for lunch at Oink, which serves hog roast rolls every day from 11am until the day's hog is sold out. Armchair Books is a maze of tall bookcases packed with thousands of second-hand books, its sign promising Victorian illustrated ones too, and it's easy to stay far longer than you meant. Give it half an hour.
More about Armchair Books
9 min on foot
Greyfriars Kirk
An attraction
It's a 9-minute walk through the Grassmarket and up Candlemaker Row, a steady climb, to Greyfriars Bobby's statue and the kirkyard gate. William McGonagall, often called the worst poet in British history, lies here in an unmarked grave, with a memorial from 1999. In Ian Rankin's The Falls, Rebus muses on this churchyard. Give it twenty minutes, then walk a minute along George IV Bridge for tea at the Elephant House, which calls itself the birthplace of Harry Potter. If there's a queue, go straight on to the Monument.
More about Greyfriars Kirk
20 min on foot
Scott Monument
Walk 12 minutes down into East Princes Street Gardens to the Scott Monument. Find Fergusson again among the sixteen writers carved low on the tower, across from Burns on the west face. Be at the kiosk by about 2.50pm to join a tour at around 3pm up the 287 steps. Then it's 11 minutes across the New Town to 17 Heriot Row, Stevenson's family home and a private house, and 7 more to the Oxford Bar, where Rebus drinks. From the bar, Waverley is about 20 minutes' walk back.

If it rains

Most of the day is spent indoors, in the Poetry Library, the Storytelling Centre, the Writers' Museum, the National Library and the bookshop. The kirkyards, the Heart and Makars' Court are out in the open but quick, and the walks come to about an hour and twenty minutes, none of it under cover, on cobbles that turn slippery in the wet. In steady rain or wind, leave out the Scott Monument climb, since its views are from the platforms at the top. Spend the hour instead at Edinburgh Central Library on George IV Bridge, opposite the National Library, open to 8pm from Monday to Wednesday and to 5pm on Thursday.