Tube style chart features over 400 city watering holes

Even the most organised of pub crawls can descend into chaos by the end of the night.

But partygoers in Edinburgh could find their nights out a little easier to keep on the straight and narrow in future thanks to a new map of pubs in the city, designed in the style of the London Underground map.

The Pub Stops of Edinburgh map features more than 400 of the Capital's pubs, linked by a series of coloured lines which criss-cross the city.

The map was designed by maths teacher John Coats, who created several other maps for cities across the country, starting with his native Sheffield - but this is his first Scottish map.

Click here to see a full size version of the map.

He said a lot of his research had been done online: "I wish I could afford to have had a pint in each of the pubs - but the internet is a wonderful thing, Google Earth has helped enormously.

"I've tried to be as comprehensive as possible, I don't think I've got 100 per cent of the pubs in Edinburgh on there, but I'm reasonably certain that I've got 90 per cent plus.

"Theoretically you can follow the lines on a pub crawl, but for me one of the attractions of the London Underground map is that it's a schematic and it's not quite to scale, so sometimes things that look close together on the map are not that close."

Among the lines most densely-packed with stops are, unsurprisingly, those that pass through the Grassmarket, Rose Street and Leith Walk, while "passengers" on the yellow line through the north-east of the city will have to brace themselves for a long journey of almost two miles between The Pond on Salamander Street and The First and Last on Seafield Road East.

The map is backed by Caledonian Brewing Company, whose Managing Director Stephen Crawley said: "The Pub Stops map is a great way for residents and visitors to Edinburgh to explore the diverse range of drinking outlets this city has to offer - from the traditional pubs to the contemporary style bars.

"The clear design and layout of the streets will make it easy for people to navigate their way around the streets."

The map's publication follows the creation earlier this year of the Innertube Map, which shows the capital's bike paths in the same style of map.

The Pub Stops map is available from www.pubstops.co.uk, McCrae of Gorgie, the Marchmont Gallery, Old Scotland in Pictures on Brunswick Street and Curiouser & Curiouser in Broughton Street.