If this is your first visit to the Edinburgh Festival, you may be surprised at how much there is to see simply on the street. If you want to, you can spend a good couple of hours a day sampling what's on offer, without ever seeing the same thing twice and without a penny leaving your pocket.

Performers on a Royal Mile stage

These are, of course, all outdoor options, but they go ahead whatever the weather. In fact, if you're not bothered by a bit of drizzle, you'll find a cloudy sky keeps the crowds at bay.

Royal Mile stages

Every day, you can catch a whole afternoon of free entertainment on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, just outside the Fringe box office and the city-centre landmark of St Giles' Cathedral. The road's closed to traffic, and temporary stages are set up to show extracts from performances across the whole range of genres at the Fringe.

The main purpose of the Royal Mile stages is to help you choose where to spend your hard-earned cash later on, but don't be deterred - you can use it as a complete freeload if you prefer. We have more information on the Royal Mile stages in our section on choosing shows.

Street performers

Street performer at Fringe Sunday

The typical street performance follows a well-rehearsed pattern. First, the performer builds the size of his audience, attracting attention by exhorting those already there to cheer wildly as he completes a variety of warm-up stunts. Then there is an extended period of patter involving "volunteers" from the audience and, always, more wild cheering. Only at the very end will he pull out his key stunt - an impossibly dramatic feat involving some combination of swords, flaming torches, chainsaws and a unicycle - before the audience dissipates, a new one forms and the whole thing happens all over again.

It's easy to be cynical, of course, and after seeing a few such performances you do realise that they're really all the same, but it's still a pleasant way to occupy a free half hour. If you're going to do it at all, do it properly: let go of your inhibitions and cheer.

There are street performances on the Royal Mile throughout the Festival, but the best opportunity to see them is at Fringe Sunday, where it seems that all the conjurers and unicyclists in the world must be gathered on the Meadows. You'll be asked to put money into the hat at the end; this is entirely voluntary, but if you enjoyed the show, £2 per person is a reasonable reward.