You can easily spend £100 or more in Edinburgh on tourist attractions like the Scotch Whisky Experience, Dynamic Earth, Johnnie Walker Princes Street and the Edinburgh Dungeon. But with so many good free things to experience, why would you want to?
The choice of free things to do is especially rich during the Fringe Festival period, when there’s a mountain of zero cash events, including the Edinburgh Free Festival (Aug 1-25; freefestival.co.uk) with its hundreds of free shows.
Street entertainment
There’s also lots of free street entertainment in the centre of town during this period, and even on the quietest days of the year the Royal Mile (five connected streets, the Old Town’s main thoroughfare) will have a sprinkling of buskers, street performers, kilted bagpipe players and the like.
It’s a particularly attractive city to wander, with its rows of elegant townhouses and many historic buildings. Being hilly, it offers a free workout into the bargain too. And no doubt you’ll want to wander: Scotland’s capital has more than its fair share of open space, both near the centre and beyond.
Climb an extinct volcano for spectacular views
A climb of Edinburgh’s 822ft mini-mountain, the extinct volcano known as Arthur’s Seat located within Holyrood Park, is rewarded with stunning views. Furthermore, Holyrood Park is a beautiful landscape of Scotland’s scenery in miniature, with glens, lochs, hills, moorlands and marshes. Holyrood Park is adjacent to the Scottish Parliament building on Canongate. It has a permanent exhibition and free guided tours for real political enthusiasts.
And just off the main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street, a walk up Calton Hill to admire Nelson’s Monument and the National Monument affords views that Robert Louis Stevenson believed to be the best of the city. Around the hill is Regent Walk, created around 1815, which gives outstanding views from the Palace of Holyrood House all the way to Edinburgh Castle.
A river runs through it
Running through the city is the river the Water of Leith, which includes a designated wooded urban wildlife site with roe deer, herons and kingfishers in residence. It has a walkway that affords a peaceful stroll away from the bustle of the city, passing many areas of interest such as Colinton Village, Craiglockhart Dell, the Union Canal, Saughton Gardens, Murrayfield Stadium, the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Dean Village, Stockbridge, the Royal Botanic Garden and Leith.
The great thing about central Edinburgh is they’ve crammed everything conveniently together, as if there’s always been the appreciation how visitors haven’t got time to traipse from one side of town to the other for each attraction.
Free museums
Take museums. They’ve plonked four free ones conveniently near each other along the Royal Mile. There’s the Museum of Childhood, celebrating toys through the years; The Museum of Edinburgh, containing oodles of artefacts from the capital’s past; The People’s Story Museum, with an imaginative exhibition describing the lives of Edinburgh people from the eighteenth century onwards; while The Writers Museum focuses on three of Scotland’s most famous writers, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Walking tours
If you want an initial overview of the city, there’s a choice of free (tip-based) walking tours. City Explorers offers a two-hour introductory tour at 10am, 11am and 1pm, and at 7pm a 90-minute ghost tour. All are daily and start from 154 High Street (The Royal Mile). Sandeman’s Free Walking Tours start at 11am and 2pm and last around 2.5 hours. They depart from 130 High Street (The Royal Mile) on the corner with Stevenlaw's Close. Search online for plenty more free tours, and others are listed on the guruwalks.com website. There are pub crawls too.
Children will warm to The Potter Trail (thepottertrail.com), which visits locations that inspired Harry Potter characters and scenes, visits the places where JK Rowling wrote the books and also teaches about the witches and wizards of medieval Edinburgh.
Live music
Edinburgh’s choice of live music any night of the week is impressive. Whistle Binkies (4 South Bridge, EH1 1LL; whistlebinkies.com) and Stramash (207 Cowgate, EH1 1JQ; stramashedinburgh.com) have free entry.
Art galleries
Edinburgh is also a feast of more than 20 art galleries, with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (1 Queen Street), now simply called ‘Portrait’, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Belford Road), now called ‘Modern One’ and ‘Modern Two’, and National Gallery (The Mound), now the ‘National’, being unmissable. They offer some free lectures and workshops and a free gallery bus travels between the National and the Modern throughout the day. Details: nationalgalleries.org
Classical and traditional music
For Scottish folk music, head for Captain’s Bar (4 South College Street, EH8 9AA; captainsedinburgh.com). Regularly each month some of Scotland’s finest emerging and established musicians perform for free at the Scottish National Gallery and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Details: nationalgalleries.org Classical music lovers will enjoy the regular free weekday lunchtime concerts and ones at 6pm on Sundays at St Giles’ Cathedral (stgilescathedal.org.uk). Also known as the High Kirk of Edinburgh, and dating back to the 1120s, the cathedral has more than 200 memorials honouring various Scots as well as some notable stained glass windows.
Cinema
Banshee Labyrinth (29 Niddry Street, EH1 1LG; thebancheelabyrinth.com) has a cosy cinema regularly showing free classic, B-movie, zombie and horror films. There are also live gigs and DJ nights that are free to attend.
Mega museum
The National Museum of Scotland (Chambers Street, EH1 1JF; nms.ac.uk) has diverse collections taking in the wonders of nature, art, design, fashion, science and technology. Interactive displays, films and touchscreens bring things even more to life: try your hand at fashion design, building a bicycle or testing your driving skills in a Formula 1 car simulator.
Golf
Bruntsfield Links, a ten-minute drive north-west from the centre, is one of Scotland’s few free public short hole golf courses. No need to book, and you can hire clubs if you buy a drink at the nearby Golf Tavern (30-31 Wright’s Houses, EH10 4HR; golftavern.co.uk).
Botanical gardens
The Royal Botanical Garden (20a Inverleith Row, EH3 5LR; rbge.org.uk), located a mile north of the centre, boasts 70 acres of exotic plants and gardens that include a rock garden, a woodland garden, an arboretum, rhododendron collection and a Scottish native plants collection.
Good to know!
I was in Edinburgh last week, I went to Banshee labyrinth! and also to stramash that has free live music everyday!