Real History Talks is a company dedicated to bringing you the best quality audio tours. Written by local Edinburgh historian, Eric Melvin, our tour of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile will both educate and entertain you, providing you with a much deeper understanding of Edinburgh, and Scotland’s history, and ensuring you get much more from your visit to the centre of Edinburgh.
An experienced Festival guide, Eric has taken countless tours down the Royal Mile, and knows what people are interested in about Scotland’s most famous street. The Royal Mile tour guides you from Edinburgh Castle, through murder, mystery, love and scandal, all the way down to Holyrood Palace. Along the way you will learn about some of the Royal Mile’s famous – and infamous – inhabitants and visitors, including Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Deacon Brodie and Robert Burns. You will soon realise why Eric was one of the Edinburgh Festival’s more popular guides!
If you want to experience a lively and interesting tour of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile at your own pace at any time of day, then Real History Talks is the tour for you. We provide you with a great way to see the city of Edinburgh without being tied down to tour times and dates. Your tour is a downloadable MP3 with an easy to understand map. Real History Talks is a company dedicated to bringing you the best quality downloadable audio tours.
Produced by radio professionals, Real History Talks are bristling with life, imagination and music. They give a real sense of stepping back in time. The tour has several points of additional information, where you can make the choice to keep listening for more tales of Edinburgh’s murky past, or else skip on to the next track to keep the tour a bit more compact.
The benefit of having a tour you can pause at any point is obvious. Fancy another look down that interesting alleyway? Seen an interesting souvenir shop? Need to recharge with a nice cup of tea and a scone? Not a problem! Just pause the tour and pick up again where you left off! You can even do the tour over several days if you want to spread the fun out!
Real History Talks is an Edinburgh-based family business, headed by Eric Melvin, a published local historian who is also an experienced Festival tour guide. Eric’s nephew, Richard, was a radio producer at BBC Radio Scotland before setting up his own company, Dabster Productions, which specialises in producing radio programmes and podcasts. Eric’s niece, Katie, has worked as Exhibition Manager at the Tartan Weaving Mill next to Edinburgh Castle before becoming Marketing Manager at the 5-star visitor attraction Scottish Mining Museum. Katie is working on marketing with Eric’s son John, who is Operations Director at Galink, an inbound tour company catering to the Japanese and Chinese markets.