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Published on Saturday 8 July 2006 00:14

HOW much do you know about where you live?

This is the time of year when the streets are clogged with tour buses carrying bored visitors around our cities, and it is sometimes hard to see why anyone would risk an hour on a roofless vehicle in Scotland.

But you get a different perspective on the world from the top deck of a bus - a fresh look at familiar landmarks, a chance to see how buildings, people and places fit together in the wider scheme of things. This makes a sightseeing tour a rewarding activity for locals just as much as visitors.

Most cities in Scotland have a sightseeing bus - with the curious exception of Aberdeen.

From this month, Edinburgh has a new addition to celebrate its status as the world's first UNESCO City of Literature. The Scottish Literary Tour Trust, which currently operates a guided pub trail taking in the haunts of bygone authors, has put together an hour-long bus tour which explains the capital's literary heritage.

Starting with the Scott Monument and the Caf Royal (a popular meeting place for the likes of Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean in the 1950s and 1960s), it winds past the Burns monument opposite the old Royal High School, the Canongate Kirkyard, the Scottish Poetry Library and the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Guides explain the influence and significance of the city's divisions between Old Town and New Town as they take you on to Heriot Row, Charlotte Square and Milne's Bar.

For those whose acute embarrassment precludes them from the risk of being spotted mingling with tourists on an open-topped bus, the pub tour trail still exists.

This begins in the historic Beehive Inn in the Grassmarket and follows a route past the Martyrs' Cross, the site of the old gallows, through the winding streets, wynds and courtyards of the Old Town, over the Mound and down to Rose Street in the New Town. Led by actors, it is an impressive essay on the life and work of Scotland's greatest poets and novelists, and the creation of classic tales such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It takes in everyone from Sir Walter Scott and Muriel Spark to Irvine Welsh over the course of a two-hour performance.

After the Beehive there are only three more stops so it isn't the raucous bar crawl favoured by many of Edinburgh's thirstier visitors. The next stop is the Ensign Ewart, followed by the delightfully unspoilt Jolly Judge, and finally Milne's Bar on Rose Street. Once known as the Poets' Pub, its walls are still decked with poems and photos of the writers inspired by time spent drinking and revelling there.

JK Rowling and Alexander McCall Smith are among the current Edinburgh-based writers responsible for the city's worldwide reputation as the home of scribes - a status which is thought to be worth about 2.2 million a year to Edinburgh and 2.1 million to the rest of Scotland in extra income.

• The Edinburgh Literary Bus Tour runs twice daily, at 11am and 12:30pm, from Waverley Bridge, 10; Edinburgh Literary Pub Tour, nightly during the summer months, 7:30pm, 7. For more details of both, tel: [phone] or visit www.edinburghliterarypubtour.co.uk