Pub Crawls & Walking Tours

I quickly realized I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher so I started brainstorming on what else I could do here in Spain. At that point my Spanish level was still low so getting a job where I could primarily speak English was key. I landed on tour guiding, which was something I looked into before coming over to Spain. The problem with tour guiding here in Valencia is to be a licensed guide you need to have a degree in tourism so I had to find my way around that!

Luckily, I did.

At the expense of my sanity but you live and learn.

I had recently fallen head over heels in love with Valencia when I joined a Tourism company providing walking tours and pub crawls to travellers or tourists in hostels.

I’ve never been a huge history buff but when I joined this tourism company and started reading up about the story of Valencia it drew me in full force. I was stumbling over my fingers to type out question after question to discover more about the city. I soaked it all up and practiced for days around the main monuments preparing for my first walking tour.

Being a walking tour guide taught me a lot. You meet people from all kinds of countries and cities of all different ages and backgrounds. The similarities you notice in behaviour or opinions from various nationalities is fascinating and really opens your eyes and mind to a more global view of society. You also learn a lot about yourself, you are the leader and there is no boss or supervisor watching or supporting you so you should have complete control. We were all given the same script, historic information and city route, but every guide gave a different tour. That's a big reason why I loved it, there was a lot of creative freedom and on top of that it was a huge test of confidence and control. The groups would sometimes be larger than 30 people and keeping control of that could be difficult, as well as having the confidence to talk in front of all these strangers, spouting historic facts that could be challenged at any moment. I was already confident speaking in front of people, with my background in music and theatre, working in a Glasgow pub and teaching, safe to say being a walking tour guide was easy for me to pick up.

What I hadn’t trained for, though, was being a pub crawl guide. This brought new challenges. Speaking in front of tourists who are interested in what you have to say is easy. Trying to inform and direct already half drunk tourists on the rules of the night and then trying to cart them in and out of 4 bars and a club was a completely different story!

I was very familiar with pub crawls before getting this job. I worked on one of the pubs that fell on the famous ‘Sub Crawl’ route in Glasgow. If you don’t know, pub crawls are events where you go to a few (or sometimes several) pubs for about an hour or for one drink and then move onto the next one getting drunker and drunker as you go. It’s a popular event to do in hostels when you are travelling and trying to meet people and have a group to go out with in a city you don’t know. It can get crazy. While I worked there the biggest group of people we had one night was over 125!

Of course, we lost people on the way. Luckily most of the bars were close together but the walk to the nightclub could sometimes be a nightmare! The thing that made it easier was that the guides got a free drink in every bar, and sometimes more if you made friends with the bartenders. Now don’t get me wrong, that made things easier for the first few months but after a while being in an environment with so much alcohol where everyone is getting drunk wears you down. We weren’t expected to get drunk of course but try staying sober while tourists get drunker and drunker all around you for 5 or 6 hours, it’s tough!

There are definitely certain qualities you need to be a good pub crawl guide and I would say you need to have a certain self control but it is a great way to build confidence, get to know your city, meet people and make new friends. A temporary job perhaps, but if you’re looking for a job where Spanish isn’t entirely necessary and you don’t mind your sleep pattern going awry, it could be a good place to start.

I ended up taking on a manager role in this company and was given all kinds of new admin responsibilities, organising new routes and events, managing the student interns, making rotas, meetings with bar and club owners etc. These were all new skills and I really appreciate the fact that I was able to learn and navigate all the new challenges I was faced with. I was shown a completely different world and industry and I learned so much about Valencia and how it was, how it works now and how it is constantly growing and changing and it has led me to where I work now…