The Edinburgh Tour Guide
Almost everything written about Arthur's Seat describes the hill. That is not the problem you have. The hill is 251 metres and it is not going anywhere. What you are actually choosing is where to start, and that single decision changes the climb by more than seventy metres.
Start at Dunsapie Loch if you can get there, and you usually cannot. That car park sits at about 115 metres and leaves roughly 135 metres of climbing. Broad Pavement, by the palace, sits at about 37 metres and leaves about 215 metres. The catch is that the road to Dunsapie is open to cars Tuesday to Thursday, 9.30am to 3pm and nothing else. Also: the Radical Road has been shut since 2018, so plan without it.
Cost
Nothing
Summit
251 m
Climb
135 to 215 m
Five starts, and the only number that decides between them
The summit is fixed. So the useful comparison is not distance or difficulty, both of which people describe differently, but how much of the 251 metres you still have to climb once you have got to the start. We measured the start elevations rather than repeating anybody's, and the method is at the bottom of this page.
| Where you start | Height | Climb left | Official time up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dunsapie Loch car park | ~115 m | ~135 m | Not published |
| The Hawse (the saddle, on foot) | ~110 m | ~140 m | 25 min, Zigzag path |
| St Leonard's, Holyrood Park Road gate | ~80 m | ~170 m | Not published |
| Palace of Holyroodhouse gates | ~43 m | ~210 m | Not published |
| Broad Pavement car park (the main one) | ~37 m | ~215 m | 45 min, Summit path |
The two times in the last column are not ours and not estimates. They are printed on Historic Environment Scotland's own map and guide to the park, and they are the only two it publishes. We have not invented times for the other three, because HES did not, and a fabricated number in a table is worse than a blank.
Read the table as one sentence: starting at Dunsapie removes about a third of the climb you would do from the palace. That is why every guide recommends it, and it is also why the next section exists.
The short cut is open to cars three days a week
Historic Environment Scotland's roads page states it plainly: The High Road and Dunsapie Loch Car Park are open to vehicles from Tuesday to Thursday, 9.30am to 3pm.
Three days, five and a half hours each. That is 16 and a half hours out of a 168-hour week, or under one hour in ten. If you are in Edinburgh for a long weekend, the window does not exist at all.
And on top of that, check the banner
The same page carries a separate notice, which on 29 September 2026 read: The High Road is currently closed to motor traffic. Pedestrians and dismounted cyclists can still access the road.
HES tells you itself that this is how it works: Unexpected or temporary closures will display in a banner on this page.
So the Tuesday-to-Thursday rule is the standing timetable and the banner overrides it. Look at the banner on the morning you go, not at a guide written last year.
Two consequences worth planning around. First, the weekend is out: all park roads close to vehicles on Saturday and Sunday, with closures starting between 8.15am and 9am and reopening completed by 10pm, and HES notes the window shifts through the year with the daylight. Broad Pavement, Meadowbank and Duddingston car parks stay reachable. Second, and this is the part people miss, the road being shut to cars does not shut it to you. You can walk or wheel a bike up the High Road to Dunsapie whenever you like. It just stops being a short cut and becomes part of the walk.
The Radical Road has been fenced off since 2018
The path under Salisbury Crags is the one every photograph of Edinburgh from above was taken from, and a great many guides still send you along it. The park's own printed map and guide says this:
Historic Environment Scotland, in its own park leaflet
The Radical Road is closed to the public until further notice due to serious danger of falling rocks.
The climbing area is currently closed.
The scale of it, reported by the BBC in November 2025: 50 tonnes of rock fell from the crags in late 2018, after a 100-tonne fall in 2011 and five temporary closures in the two years before. HES later assessed three sections, the narrowest ones, as presenting unacceptable risk. The worst carries an estimated probability of a fatality from a rockfall event of one in 4,886, against one in 95,435 for a section it considers tolerable. Reopening the 1.3 km route needs rockfall fencing and netting along most of it, at an estimated cost of up to £2.4 million.
There is movement. On 27 May 2026, according to the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society, HES received consent for works that will partially reopen the road: the stretch from The Hawse to the northern end of South Quarry, which covers the geologically famous ground where James Hutton worked. What we cannot tell you is whether that section is open today. HES's own visitor pages do not say, and we are not going to guess on your behalf. The Ranger Service answers on 0131 652 8150. Plan your walk as though the Radical Road is shut, and treat it as a bonus if it is not.
Is it worth paying for a guide?
You do not need one. This is a public hill in a free park, the paths are wide and busy, and you are never more than about half an hour from a main road. Nothing sells Arthur's Seat because nobody owns it, and if you want to walk up it on your own this afternoon, nothing is stopping you.
That said, we have done it with a guide, and the honest report is that it was good. The thing you are paying for is not route-finding, because you can see the summit from almost everywhere in the park. It is the stories, and you will not get them off the path. A hill this old in a city this old has a great deal attached to it that is simply not written anywhere you would happen to look, and a guide who works it daily hands it to you while you walk. There is also a practical use, given everything above: they know which paths are fenced off this week.
Arthur's Seat Hike with a Local Guide
Two hours, Arthur’s Seat on its own, and the most reviewed guided walk up the hill. Works out at £12 an hour.
Arthur's Seat and Calton Hill Walk
Three hours over both hills, so Calton Hill’s monuments and the summit in one outing. At £8.67 an hour it is the better rate of the two.
If you would rather not book anything, the alternative that costs nothing is the park's own Ranger Service, which runs a programme of guided walks through the year and can be reached at rangers@hes.scot. It is the same 14-strong team the BBC reported dealt with 314 incidents in the park in 2023, up from 162 in 2018.
What the parking actually costs, and the members trap
The hill is free. Getting a car near it is not, and one line on HES's roads page catches out exactly the people who would expect to be covered.
| Car park | Cost | When you can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Broad Pavement (by Holyrood Palace) | £1 per hour, 8.30am to 5.30pm | Daily. Free on Sat, Sun, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 25 and 26 Dec, 1 Jan |
| Dunsapie Loch | No charge listed | Tue to Thu, 9.30am to 3pm only |
| St Margaret's Loch and Duddingston Loch | No charge listed | Subject to the weekend road closures |
| Overnight parking is not permitted anywhere in the park. | ||
If you hold a Historic Scotland membership
It does not help you here. HES states it in one flat sentence on its own roads page: Historic Scotland Members are not exempt from charges.
Worth knowing if you bought the membership for Edinburgh Castle and assumed it travelled.
What else is shut, and the rules that catch people out
Holyrood Park has more restrictions than a public park normally does, partly because it is a working conservation site and partly because bits of it keep falling down. These all come from HES, either from the roads page or from the park leaflet.
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Radical Road | Closed to the public until further notice. Partial reopening consented 27 May 2026, not confirmed open |
| Climbing area | Closed |
| Duddingston Low Road | Closed to vehicles for rockfall risk. Pedestrians welcome, now fenced; cyclists asked to dismount |
| Cycling off-road | Not permitted. Road and the green path by Queen's Drive only |
| Drones | Not permitted anywhere without permission |
| Camping, fires, barbecues, golf | Not permitted |
| Dogs | Welcome, waste to be disposed of responsibly |
On footwear, we will just repeat the park operator rather than improve on it: HES recommends sturdy footwear with good grips and its map carries standing warnings about sheer drops and uneven and slippery surfaces. It is a small hill and it is still rock. For what the weather and the daylight do to all of this, our best time to visit guide has the numbers: in December the sun is down before 4pm every day of the month.
How we got these numbers
The two walking times and the 251-metre summit are HES's. The start elevations are ours, and here is how, because a number you cannot check is a number you should not trust.
We took the coordinates of each start from OpenStreetMap and queried two independent elevation models for every point. At the low starts they agree closely: Broad Pavement came back at 37.7 and 37.0 metres, The Hawse at 108.9 and 110.0, Dunsapie at 116.6 and 115.0. Agreement within about two metres across unrelated datasets is good enough to publish, rounded to the nearest five.
At the summit they did not agree, and that is the interesting part. One returned 213.6 metres and the other 233.0, and both are well below the surveyed 251. Coarse elevation models average over a grid, so they shave the tops off sharp peaks. A number that does not converge is a number that is wrong, so we did not use it: the summit figure on this page is the surveyed one, which HES prints on its map and OpenStreetMap independently carries as 251. That also settles the 250.5 metres and 822 feet you will see quoted around the web. 251 metres is 823 feet.
Quick answers
How long does it take to climb Arthur's Seat?
Historic Environment Scotland, which runs the park, publishes two times in its own map and guide: 45 minutes from the main car park to the summit by the Summit path, and 25 minutes from The Hawse by the Zigzag path. Those are ascent times. Allow roughly half as long again to come down, which is where our own guides budget 1 to 1.5 hours for the round trip. HES publishes no time at all for the Dunsapie Loch start.
How high is Arthur's Seat?
251 metres. That figure comes from two independent places that agree: Historic Environment Scotland prints it on its own park map, and OpenStreetMap's summit node carries the same value. You will see 250.5 metres and 822 feet quoted elsewhere; 251 metres is 823 feet, and the surveyed figure is the one to use.
Which is the easiest way up Arthur's Seat?
The one that starts highest, because the hill is a fixed 251 metres and every metre you drive is a metre you do not climb. Dunsapie Loch car park sits at about 115 metres, so it leaves roughly 135 metres of ascent. Broad Pavement by Holyrood Palace sits at about 37 metres and leaves about 215 metres, which is over half as much again. The problem is access: Dunsapie Loch car park is open to vehicles Tuesday to Thursday, 9.30am to 3pm only.
Can you drive up to Dunsapie Loch?
Only on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday between 9.30am and 3pm, which is 16 and a half hours in the week. That is Historic Environment Scotland's standing rule for the High Road and the Dunsapie Loch car park. Separately, HES posts temporary closures as a banner on its roads page, and on 29 September 2026 that banner said the High Road was closed to motor traffic. Pedestrians and dismounted cyclists can still use the road. Check the banner on the day before you plan around it.
Is the Radical Road open?
Assume not. It has been fenced off since 2018, when 50 tonnes of rock fell from Salisbury Crags onto it, and the park's own printed map still says it is closed to the public until further notice due to serious danger of falling rocks. Historic Environment Scotland received consent on 27 May 2026 for works to partially reopen the South Quarry section, but HES's visitor pages do not currently confirm that section has opened, so we are not going to tell you it has. The Ranger Service is on 0131 652 8150.
Is Arthur's Seat free?
Yes. It is a public hill in a public park, there is no ticket, no gate and no closing time. The only thing that can cost you money is parking: Broad Pavement car park near Holyrood Palace charges £1 per hour from 8.30am to 5.30pm, free on Saturdays, Sundays, Good Friday, Easter Monday, 25 and 26 December and 1 January. Historic Scotland members are not exempt from that charge.
Do you need a guide for Arthur's Seat?
No, and you should not book one to find your way. It is a walk up a hill inside a capital city, the paths are obvious and busy, the summit is visible from most of the park, and thousands of people do it every week alone. We have done it with a guide as well, though, and it was worth doing: what you are buying is the stories attached to the hill, which are not written on the path and which you would have no way of picking up on your own. That, plus somebody who knows which routes are fenced off this week, which in this park is less trivial than it sounds.
What should you wear to climb Arthur's Seat?
Historic Environment Scotland's own advice is sturdy footwear with good grips, and its map carries warnings about sheer drops and uneven, slippery surfaces. That is the park operator talking about its own ground, not us being cautious. The upper sections are rock and worn earth rather than path, and they are genuinely slick in the wet.
About this guide
Written by Diego Fresno, Independent travel writer and researcher. The High Road hours, the weekend road closures, the Broad Pavement charge, the members exemption line and the Duddingston Low Road closure were read from Historic Environment Scotland's Holyrood Park roads page on 29 September 2026. The two official walking times, the 251-metre summit, the Radical Road wording, the closed climbing area and the park rules come from HES's own Holyrood Park map and guide, read the same day. The 2018 rockfall tonnage, the risk probabilities, the 1.3km length and the £2.4m remediation estimate are from BBC News, 11 November 2025. The 27 May 2026 consent is from the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society, dated 29 May 2026. Start elevations are our own, from OpenStreetMap coordinates queried against two independent elevation models, and the summit is deliberately not from them because the two disagreed by nineteen metres there. Deliberately not claimed: a walking time for the Dunsapie start, because HES publishes none; whether the South Quarry section of the Radical Road is open today, because no source we could reach says so; and any path-by-path route description, because we have not walked all five. Tour prices, durations and review counts came from a live Viator search in GBP on 29 September 2026. The verdict on the guided walk is first-hand: Diego has done one, and what it added was the stories rather than the navigation, which is what the page says. This page carries affiliate links, and it still opens by telling you the hill is free and that you can walk up it alone this afternoon. Verified: August 2026. About the author →