The Waverley has hosted our monthly storytelling night Guid Crack for over 30 years. The former landlord welcomed our stories and met our storytelling eccentricities with his own particular brand of pub management. It was ramshackle, haphazard and full of character (all things you’d want in a pub), and has brilliantly retained all of that after re-opening, only with cleaner toilets. It’s a place that’s alive; you can sense the tales that have been told in there, especially in that upstairs room which is as evocative and other-worldly as many of the stories it has witnessed. Cracking pint of T, too.

Scottish International Storytelling Festival runs from Wednesday 22 October–Saturday 1 November; main picture: Neil Hanna.