London is our main course but we also serve up wonderful side dishes in the shape of Explorer Days to Stonehenge & Salisbury, Oxford, Bath, Cambridge, Hampton Court, The Cotswolds, Canterbury, Chatsworth, Constable Country, etc.

And look, if you know the score, and just want to know what's on when - just click here for a table, laid out in chronological order, of all the out-of-town trips we're doing this Winter (2008-09). And a tip of the hat to walker Chuck B. who came up with idea ("please set them all out in order in a single table").

An Explorer Day is an interesting, fun, and inexpensive way to get the most out of your visit to these not-to-be-missed places. After all, if you've only got a few fleeting hours to take it all in, why squander a good part of your time wandering around trying to get your bearings? See below and each day's page for full details.

Explorer Days consist of two completely different walks - one in the morning and one in the afternoon - with a lunch break in between. Afterwards there's some free time for shopping or a museum or gallery visit. We travel by comfortable, high speed train. The ride through the lovely old English countryside takes an hour or so. We get back to London in time for you to go to a show or do an evening walk.

To go on an Explorer Day simply meet your London Walks guide by the main ticket office of the designated London  railway station at the time stated. Your guide - Richard or Gillian or Chris or Hilary or Simon or Alison - will be holding up copies of the distinctive white London Walks leaflet.

Explorer Days are unbeatable value: just £12 for adults (£11 for Discount Walkabout Card holders; £10 for students and Super Adults [over 65s]; children under 15 go free) plus your tariffs  (train fares and any entrance fees). And there's "added value" galore because time and again the tariffs - which are available through the guide - are a big saving on the normal price.

See below for the adult tariff for a given Explorer Day. N.B., there are often further reductions for students, senior citizens and children. British Rail Pass holders travel free.

A word about how this page is organised. Listed below - in alphabetical order - are the descriptions of the Explorer Days that we're running at the moment - i.e., in the current, Winter 07-08 London Walks programme, which kicked in on November 1st and runs through April 30th.. After you've scrolled down right through them all - from Bath to Windsor you'll come to a table, wherein I've set out the "Additional Explorer Days" for the Winter 07-08 programme. Beneath the table are three parallel lines. And then, just to whet your appetite, beneath those lines I've set out - in alphabetical order again - all the other Explorer Days in the London Walks repertory. So the whole page gives you the full monte, so to speak. And by all means, if you'd like a private Explorer Day for a group summer or winter...well, as I've spelled out here, the full panopoly is on the menu. Just give us a bell and tell us what you'd like and we'll make it happen for you.

And bang goes the starting pistol. Read on...

Bath is like being in heaven without going to all the bother and expense of dying. A scoop of pure honey set in a green bowl, Bath is, quite simply, "the world's most perfect Georgian city". A graceful and airy miracle of Palladian grandeur, it's a world of arcades and crescents, of Assembly Rooms and Pump Rooms. In the 18th-century it was the focus of the Age of Elegance. Today it's our turn to savour the accreted delights of the slow centuries as we explore this exquisite place and its stunningly cosmopolitan Roman foundations, folded into a time-warp in the lovely Somerset hills. Bottom line: a trip to Bath is an event. European cities don't come any more provocative. Or profound. Or poetic. Guided by Richard.

 And talk about travelling back in time to the ancient world...feels like we've waited 2,000 years for this! 

Meet by the main ticket office - it's by Platform One - of Paddington Railway   Station at 9 am.

In the Winter 2008/09 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on November 6th and runs through April 30th -

we go to Bath on the following dates:.

Saturday, May 2

 

 Tariff: £36

 

Across the Immense Span of Centuries

Like Chaucer's pilgrims to Caunterbury we wende. And what tales Canterbury has to tell. Tales writ in the ancient cathedral towering moodily over the nearby pubs and shops. Tales gleaned from half-timbered, white-washed little houses lining narrow streets. Tales borne by the river Stour swabbling past brilliant flowerbeds and under arching stone bridges. In Canterbury we enter another world...we step into mediaeval history.

 In the Winter 08-09 London Walks programme
- which kicks in on November 6th and runs through April 30th -
we go to Canterbury on

Saturday, January 17th

Saturday, March 14th

Meet Simon by the main ticket office of
Victoria    Railway Station at 8.45 am.

 Tariff £21

"May your day be merry and bright..."

What could be jollier? It's 1827 and the streets are thronged with hundreds of costumed characters. Everywhere you look there are top hats and frock coats and bonnets and hooped skirts. Yes, it's Christmastime in Charles Dickens's hometown. Welcome to the best Dickens Christmas Festival in the world. And there's guaranteed snow! Let alone a parade and a candle-lit carol service.

In the Winter 2008-09 London Walks programme -

and Sunday, December 7th.

  

Meet Alison and Simon (he'll be wearing a topper and a Victorian frock coat!) by the ticket office of 

 

Victoria    Railway Station at 9.30 am.

 Tariff £12

In the Winter 2008-09 London Walks programme -

which kicks in on November 6th and runs through April 30th -

 we go to Leeds Castle & Canterbury on

 

Victoria Railway  Station at 8.45 am.

 Tariff  £41

---

from Paddington  Railway Station

Meet by the main ticket office of 
Paddington  Railway Station
(the main ticket office is by Platform One)

If you're thinking about going on this one you're on the edge of perfection. Don't turn your back on it. Which is by way of saying, Oxford makes words sing. Towery city and branchy between towers; cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmed, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river-rounded." Yes, yes, yes, welcome to the city of dreaming spires! "There's no other place like it in the world, it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it." Our setting: Oxford's mediaeval colleges and walls; its bridges, libraries and gardens; its cloisters and quads, its towers and dreaming spires, gnawed by time and echoing with centuries of youthful exuberance. Our themes: town and gown; the life and times of generations of dons and undergraduates; kings and punting and Alice in Wonderland; scholars, wits and celebrated eccentrics; poets and Inspector Morse, Brideshead Revisited and Shadowlands and, yes, American Presidents who didn't inhale.

And that's just the half of it! In the Cotswolds we'll explore a world of chuckling streams, stone bridges, and thatched cottages; of ancient churches and manor houses; of old mills and millponds; of vast panoramas, rolling hills, and deep green valleys; of villages out of a storybook. Explore, in short, what is quite possibly the most beautiful countryside in the world.

In the Winter 2008-09 London Walks programme -

which kicks in on November 6th and runs through April 30th -

 we go to Oxford & the Cotswolds on the following dates:

 

Friday, January 2nd

Saturday, February 14th

 

N.B., from Easter we'll go there every Wednesday!.

 

Meet Richard at 9.30 am

by the main ticket office - it's right by Platform One -
of Paddington  Railway Station.

Tariff  £29

---

"You'll never see anything like it again"
from Waterloo  Railway Station
(meet your guide by the main ticket office, which is opposite Platform 16)

Behold. And then look at each other with a wild surmise. Because here, on Salisbury plain, under a sky like moving marble, you're going to be face to face with primeval Britain... 

Stonehenge! That place of ancient ghosts. Stonehenge..."those storm-sculptured stones...that outlast the skies of huistory hurrying overhead." Stonehenge...observatory? altar? temple? tomb? ...to serve strange gods or watch familiar stars. And before that, there's Salisbury. Salisbury...even the name is mellifluous. Salisbury is the most spectacularly beautiful cathedral in Britain. Salisbury is the river Avon and mediaeval streets lined by half-timbered houses with high oversailing upper floors and tall gables and rejoicing in names like Ox Row and Silver Street and Fish Row. Salisbury is Thomas Hardy's Melchester and Anthony Trollope's Barchester - and views over the meadows that Constable painted. And betwixt and between...there are picturesque country roads that take us past the ancient site of Old Sarum and through a lush valley, past old churches and thatched cottages and country mansions. And if you'd like some more views - more imagery - click here!

To go on the Stonehenge & Salisbury Explorer Day meet any Tuesday
by the main ticket office - it's opposite Platform 16 - of
Waterloo  Railway  Station at 10 am.

 N.B., in the Winter 08-09 London Walks programme - which kicks in on November 6th and runs through April - we'll go to Stonehenge & Salisbury on Saturday, November 15th; Saturday, December 20th (for the Winter Solstice!); Thursday, January 1st (New Year's Day at Stonehenge!); Saturday, January 24th; Saturday, February 21st; Saturday, March 21st (for the Spring Equinox!); and Saturday, April 11th.

  Tariff: £37

The most fascinating small city in England is just 20 minutes from London. St. Albans is England in miniature, an essence of England. You can stand on the bank of its little river, the Ver, and suddenly feel yourself touched, saddened by the great passage of time  - Romans, and Saxons, and Normans, and Lancastrians rode across this stream, galloped up that hill, and disappeared into the centuries. And the same goes for the little town itself (little town, hell, long, long ago this was the most important city in Roman Britain!) - here you see it all - from the Legions of Julius Caesar to the dynasty of the Churchills. These streets are corridors in the vale of time. Here's the only Roman theatre in Britain; here's the oldest street market in this sceptered isle - it dates back to the Saxons; round this corner there's a 600-year-old Moot hall; round that one a clutch of mediaeval and Tudor coaching inns; hard by, a rare curfew clock tower; up these lanes a sprinkling of half-timbered Elizabethan houses; over there, streets and buildings that are essays in Georgian England; here, a Victorian prison. Let alone all sorts of hidden, curious places and things - and a skein of enthralling history. Not to put too fine a point on it, St. Albans is London's best kept secret! 

 Okay, who's for a "grab", a "soundbite"...here's Alison before that rare clock tower...

Want to  read more? Click here...

  In the Winter 2008-2009  London Walks programme -

which kicks in on November 6 and runs through April 30th -

we'll go to St. Albans on the following dates:

 

Saturday, November 8

Monday, December 22*

Sunday, January 11**

Sunday, March 8**

Saturday, April 10

 

Meet Hilary or Alison at 10 am
on the pavement just outside the exit of
West HampsteadTube.

 Tariff: £10

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more".

Windsor is Camelot on the silvery Thames. Windsor is a 1000-year-old castle commanding the Great Park and brooding over a mediaeval town. Windsor is the most famous royal residence in the world. Windsor is "the architectural epitome of the English nation...its fabric provides an insight into the evolving ideas about kingship and related rituals, about techniques of military defense, and about developing expectations of domestic comfort and convenience. But despite its familiar appearance, nothing at Windsor is quite what it seems...for behind its imposing walls and gates lie centuries of secrecy, intrique and forgotten visions of grandeur." And - embarras de richesses...just over the 18th-century footbridge there's Eton, ancient Thameside town and legendary school. And here the superlatives peal like bells...because Eton College, founded 50 years before Columbus discovered America, is the most famous school in the world. It's the nursery of kings - Prince William was educated here - and the crucible of a defining moment in history: for "the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."

In the Winter 2008 - 2009 London Walks programme - which kicks in on November 1st and runs through April 30th - the Windsor Castle and Eton College Explorer Day takes place on: 

Saturday, February 7

 

Meet your guide - Gillian or Chris or Hilary -

by the main ticket office (opposite Platform 16) of

Waterloo  Railway Station at 10 am

 

 Tariff  £21

 

"It's like spending the morning in a painting."

Constable Country is the site of The Haywain, the river Stour, Dedham Lock. It's the archetypical English landscape. And for a chaser - and they don't come any better - we'll explore the oldest town in Britain...with its Roman wall and gateway, its Norman castle (and the finest keep in England!), its Dutch quarter, its Victorian park, its ancient street market...in short, if you haven't  been there, go - because this is a very special day out! 

 In the Summer 2009 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through November ?? -
we go to Constable Country & Colchester on

TBA

Meet Hilary at TBA am by the main ticket office of
Liverpool Street  Railway  Station.

  c. £32

"The sound of water escaping from mill-dams, etc., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills". As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places...Those scenes made me a painter and I am grateful." John Constable, letter to the Rev. John Fisher, 1821.

The Cotswolds are achingly beautiful. They're the fresh green lap of this fair isle. They're cottages wreathed in honeysickle and stone bridges and old mills and millponds and storybook villages and matchless flower gardens. They're rural England at its best. 

 In the Summer 2009 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through November ?? -
we run The Cotswolds Explorer Day on the following midsummer Sundays:

Meet him by the main ticket office -
it's right by Platform One - of Paddington Railway   Station.  

 Tariff: c. £34

In Hampton Court "dead kings and queens
walk again and dead lips ask,
"what of the isles of England and her sea?
"till whispers fill the tower of memory"

There are any number of ways to "do" Hampton Court, but this is the best. In the same way that tailored is superior to off-the-peg. Because with Hampton Court "content" - Great Hall, Haunted Gallery, State Rooms, Private Apartments, Maze - takes care of itself. What doesn't take care of itself is "presentation". And presentation makes all the difference - the difference between something that seamless and times and unforgettable as opposed to theme-parky. And that's why we go by boat from Richmond. Just as Henry VIII did. It's a living act of "restoration" - because Hampton Court is a riverside palace and was meant to be approached by water. It makes for a golden day - stimulating and peaceful, beautiful and companionable.

Or to put that another way: can there be a finer way to start the week? We begin at Richmond, the prettiest Thameside village of them all. The picturesque old streets and buildings here are the very stuff of history: Maids of Honour Row, Old Palace Yard, Trumpeters Court, the old Tudor Gatehouse. Then it's on to Hampton Court Palace. Like Henry VIII, we travel by boat. (We'll get a sandwich from the best sandwich shop in Richmond and picnic on board!) Upstream, a final loop of the Thames brings us along the watermeadows of our best loved national monument: "it typifies the grand alliance of history and architecture more than any building in England." And so the stage is set for our afternoon walk, a tour of the palace and its precincts, everything from Henry VIII's Real Tennis Court and the Maze and the Haunted Gallery to the State Rooms and Great Hall and Private Apartments. (N.B., you'll save yourself a lot of money if you start your journey by getting a 6-Zone Travel Card: it'll cover your fares to Richmond and back from Hampton Court...and of course it'll also be good for any other travel you undertake in the London area for the rest of the day.)

 In the Summer 2009 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through TBA -
The Royal Richmond & Hampton Court Explorer Day
takes place on the following dates:

To go on it meet the guide - Chris or Hilary or Gillian or Richard -
at 10 am by the main ticket office (it's opposite Platform 16) of
Waterloo Railway  Station.

 £18

In Winchester the whole tapestry of English history unfurls before us. It's the city of King Alfred the Great, quondam capital of England, perhaps even the Camelot of Arthur. It's Winchester College, founded in 1382 and the very pattern of the English public school. It's the Great Hall of the Norman castle. It's the mediaeval Westgate. It's - glory of glories - the Cathedral. (Words can't begin to do justice to the astonishing vista of its seemingly endless interior - it's the longest cathedral in Europe.) It's the Round Table of King Arthur. It's Jane Austen country and the muted voices of grazing sheep and the merry click of bat upon ball and the lush green fields of England.

In the Summer 2008 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through November 5th -
we go to Royal Winchester on:

Monday, September 22nd

Meet Hilary at 9.30 am by the main ticket office
(it's opposite Platform 16)
of Waterloo Railway Station.

 £27

                                                                           Photo by Rob Roy
True story. Two of our guides honeymooned in Rye. They chose it because they wanted "the most ancient, picturesque, romantic, and interesting village in southern England"...and everybody they asked said, "ok, then you have to go to Rye". And in case you're wondering, it was the Mermaid Inn, which dates back to 1156 and was rebuilt in 1420. We can have cream tea there. After we've visited the most important battlefield in the world. Where everything changed, changed utterly, in that "year of four kings and Halley's comet".

 In the Summer 2008 London Walks programme -  
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through November 5th - 
we go to Rye, Battle & 1066 Country on

Saturday, September 13th

Photo by Rob Roy

Meet Gillian or Chris by the ticket office of 
Charing Cross Railway    Station at 8.45 am.

 Tariff £34

Timing is everything, so we go to Warwick Castle when it's in full plume! When pikestaffs are aloft and swords are clashing, when knights are jousting in the tiltyard - it's like being at a mediaeval tournament! When there's falconry, a mediaeval fair and "live" ghosts in the castle. Enough said? And a bonus - we'll also do a tour of the historic - and very picturesque - old town itself.

In the Summer 2009 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through TBA -
the Warwick Castle Festival Explorer Day takes place on:

Meet Richard at 8.30 am by the ticket office of Marylebone Railway Station. Tariff £37

"A day away from Chartwell is a day wasted."  Winston Churchill

We're rolling through stunningly beautiful countryside. On our way to drop in on Winston Churchill at Chartwell. No question about it, he's here - the dining room's set for afternoon tea, there are daily newspapers and fresh flowers and cigars at the ready. Here's his study. And his library. Outside there are black swans on the lake and panoramic views over the Weald of Kent and his favourite refuge - his garden studio.

 In the Summer 2008 London Walks programme -
which kicks in on May 1st and runs through November 5th -
we go to Chartwell & the Weald of Kent on Saturday, June 14th

Meet Gillian or Chis at 9.15 am
by the ticket office of Charing Cross Railway  Station.

 Tariff  £34