Close-up of a man with gray hair and beard, wearing a black and orange jacket with a zipper, and a gray pair of headphones around his neck.

Meet Jonathan Ellenor - Founder and Senior Guide

Marketing's what I did before, and it's less of a leap than it sounds, because that job's all storytelling too. But history is the thing I actually love. Scottish history especially, and Edinburgh's most of all, because it's stacked so thick here that you can be standing somewhere completely ordinary and be standing on top of five different centuries. Getting to tell people that, in the city I now call home, is the best job I've had.

There's a reason it's called StoryLed. The story comes first. It's not decoration on top of a list of sights; it's the thing driving where we go and why. Most tours work the other way round: there's a set route, a script to learn, and the guide runs it the same way on Tuesday as they did on Monday. That's fine, and some of them do it well. It's just not what I'm offering.

What I'm offering is a personal experience. I spend the first stretch of the tour getting to know you: what you're into, what brought you to Edinburgh, what you'd actually find interesting. Then I take you to the things I reckon you'll love. Someone here for the Reformation gets a very different three hours from someone here for Harry Potter, and I'm glad to give either.

This approach only works with a small group. Any more and I'd need a headset, and then it's a broadcast instead of a conversation. Small groups mean I can properly talk to everybody, you can stop me mid-sentence, and we can stand somewhere for ten minutes if it's got you. It's much closer to being shown round by a friend who lives here than it is to being on a tour, which is exactly the point.

What Sets Us Apart

Six people, never more

Most Edinburgh tours are sized for the operator's margin, not your afternoon. Ours are capped at six. That means no headsets, no shouting to be heard at the back, and no losing anyone down a close because the group's too big to fit. You can stop your guide mid-sentence and ask something, and there's time to actually answer it properly.

Built around you, not a script

There's no fixed route repeated the same way every day. Your guide spends the first part of the tour getting to know you: what brought you to Edinburgh, what you're curious about, what you'd actually enjoy. From there, what you see and hear is shaped around that. Two tours rarely run the same way twice.

A local, not a hired voice

Your guide has lived in Edinburgh for over a decade and still finds new corners of it regularly. What you get on tour isn't a memorised script but real, lived knowledge of the city, told the way you'd tell a friend visiting for the weekend. That's the difference between a tour and being shown around.