THE THURSDAY EXPLORER DAY - Away We Go! |
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THE THURSDAY MORNING LONDON WALKS |
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THE THURSDAY AFTERNOON LONDON WALKS |
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THE THURSDAY EVENING LONDON WALKS |
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 9 am on Thursdays (from June 10th - August 26th)*
from Paddington Railway  Station
meet by the main ticket office - it's by Platform One
You want it in 19 words? Only two cities on the planet are World Heritage Sites. Bath is one of them.
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, it's 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. (As this photo essay attests to.) In the 18th-century it was the focus of the Age of Elegance. Today's it's our turn to 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. And, er, look, if you'd like a sneak preview, a click here will take you to a wonderful little film of our Bath trip.
 The Bath Explorer Day takes place
every Thursday (from June 10th through August 26th) at 9 am.
To go on the Bath Explorer Day meet Richard
by the main ticket office of Paddington Railway Station at 9 am.
N.B. the main ticket office is right by Platform 1
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OLD MAYFAIR - "the best address in London"10.30 am on Thursdays
from Green Park Tube
(meet Russell on the corner, just outside the north exit)
Now here's a champagne cocktail of a walk. It's a marriage made in heaven: "the best address in London" and a top drawer guide - a chevalier and a place where Old Masters and old money, Rolls Royces and glamour, titles and butlers are par for the course. It's hob-nobbing with knobs on it - because Mayfair's been home to Clive of India, Disraeli, Handel, Florence Nightingale, Jimi Hendrix, Dodi Fayed, and the Earl Mountbatten, to name but a few. Last but certainly not least, it boasts London's best village within a village - Shepherd Market, a charming little nest of alleys that hasn't lost a jot of its 18th-century scale and village atmosphere, let alone its raffishness.
The Old Mayfair walk takes place
every Thursday at 10.30 am
and every Monday at 10.30 am.
Meet Russell or Graham on the corner
just outside the north exit of Green ParkTube.
Green ParkTube is on the
Victoria, Piccadilly & Jubilee Lines
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THE FORBIDDEN CITY - "the place where it happens"
"the best of everything...top to bottom"
10.30 am on Thursdays
from St. James's Park Tube Broadway/Westminster Abbey exit
This walk is what in another context would be called a game-changer. Sure, it's Landmark London – all the Big Ticket stuff. Palaces aplenty, the Changing of the Guard, No. 10 Downing Street, the "Royal Peculiar", the places where history – world history – has been made, etc. What makes it a game changer is the way we see it. In short, we nook and cranny it. Get around behind. Get up above*. Get inside. See things Londoners – let alone the tourist hordes – never get to see. It's that "specialilty" London Walks is famous for – "the degree of granularity that you get". Everything from the import of a black circle by the 2 on a certain clock to what the Horse Guards are actually guarding. Want to read a bit more? Here's a related "take" on this walk.
*Up above because we end with an optional visit to "the reviewing stand in the sky" - opened specially for us! – where we look down into Buckingham Palace Gardens. How wag-a-tail wonderful is that? We get to see exactly what's on the other side of that wall! Even the Corgis if they're out.
The Forbidden City walk takes place
every Thursday at 10.30 am.
Meet Helena just outside the Broadway/Westminster Abbey exit – meet on the corner, opposite 40 Broadway
of St. James's ParkTube.
St. James's Park Tube is on the Circle & District Lines
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HISTORIC GREENWICH "Versailles with a riverscape"10.45 am on Thursdays
from Tower HillTube
We begin with an overture: the best boat ride in London. The Tower, Tower Bridge, Docklands, and then, three miles downstream, the Thames bursts into one of the sublime sights of English architecture: "the most stately procession of buildings in England." Moments later, another frisson: the mast and spars, the web of rigging of the Cutty Sark, the hauntingly beautiful old tea clipper. As the poet said, "they mark our passage as a race of men; earth will not see such ships again." Welcome to Greenwich! Maritime Greenwich. Royal Greenwich. Greenwich the home of time and centre of space. The Greenwich of crooked lanes, bric-a-brac shops, and bustling antique and flea markets. Greenwich the "green village." Greenwich of the Queen's House, Old Royal Observatory, Royal Naval College, the world's largest nautical museum, the Millennium Dome, and the Cutty Sark itself! Nick or Hilary will turn the pages of its history for you.
Want some more? Here's Nick at his spellbinding best: wonderful voice, perfect timing, humour, engagement with his audience. It's a tour de force of brilliant guiding. Absolutely equal to the occasion and the subject matter – and that's really saying something because he's in the Painted Hall. Having Nick open it up to us the way he did was worth the price of admission alone (as the saying goes).  Here's the clip – enjoy! And the cup overfloweth! Nick wrote the Greenwich chapter in our book.  Here he is reading an excerpt.
The Historic Greenwich Walk takes place
every Thursday at 10.45 am
every Sunday at 10.45
and every Tuesday at 10.45 am
Meet your guide just outside the exit of
Tower HillTube at 10.45 am.
Tower Hill Tube is on the Circle & District Lines
N.B. We get you a huge discount – 50 percent off – on the price of the boat ticket. Your guide – Gillian or Chris or Nick or Hilary – goes with you on the boat.
 Guided on Thursdays by Nick or Hilary
Guided Sundays and Tuesdays by Gillian or Chris
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THE FAMOUS SQUARE MILE - 2,000 Years of History11 am on Thursdays
from Monument Tube, Fish Street Hill exit
This is the great classic London Walk. It explores the very heart of the City - the most historic part of the capital. Threading their way through an intricate network of narrow alleys and cobble-stone lanes, Tom, Judy and Fiona chronicle the 2,000 years of London's rich and tumultuous history. And illustrate it by drawing upon everything from street names to ancient customs to the frozen music of London's great buildings, among which are the ruins of the Roman Temple of Mithras, the Bank of England, the Lord Mayor's Mansion House, and ancient Guildhall. (The walk includes, whenever possible, a visit inside Guildhall!)
The Famous Square Mile Walk takes place
every Thursday at 11 am
and every Sunday at 10.30 am
Meet Tom, Judy, Fiona or Graham outside the main exit – the Fish Street Hill exit – of MonumentTube.
Monument Tube is on the Circle & District Lines
Guided on Thursdays by Tom, Judy or Fiona
Guided on Sundays by Graham
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THE BEATLES MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR |
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OLD WESTMINSTER - 1,000 Years of History2 pm on Thursdays
from WestminsterTube, exit 4
This is the cornerstone, the great seminal London Walk. Miss it and you've missed London. For Old Westminster is London at its grandest: the place where kings and queens are crowned, where they lived, and often were buried. It's the forge of the national destiny, the place where the heart of the Empire beat, the Mecca of politicians throughout the ages. The past here is cast in stone and we take it all in: ancient Westminster Hall, the Houses of Parliament, the Jewel Tower, and Westminster Abbey. And to see it with a great guide is to have that past suddenly rise to the surface...like seeing a photographic print come up in a darkroom. It doesn't get any better than this. And embarras de richesse, we'll also explore the private face of Westminster - the London equivalent of Georgetown! Unlike the tourist hordes, we'll get to see the hidden and ever so picturesque Georgian back streets where all the political salons are! We end at the Cabinet War Rooms, the fortified bunker that housed Winston Churchill's centre of operations during the war. You'll get a brilliant discount on the price of admission if you want to visit the War Rooms.
And fancy a listen? Try this. It's the opening of the Secret Westminster chapter in our book, London Walks London Stories. A chapter that was inspired by - and draws on - this walk.
The Old Westminster Walk takes place
every Thursday at 2 pm;
every Saturday at 11 am;
every Sunday at 2.45 pm;
and every Tuesday at 2 pm.
Meet your guide just outside exit 4 of WestminsterTube.
WestminsterTube is on the Circle, District & Jubilee Lines.
Guided on Thursdays by Shaughan or David
Guided on Saturdays by Simon
Guided on Sundays by Graham
Guided on Tuesdays by Judy
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OLD KENSINGTON - London’s Royal Village2 pm on Thursdays
from High Street KensingtonTube
Meet in the rotunda just beyond the ticket barrier (by the M & S sandwich shop)
This one's special. It's rarely the first – or even the second or third – walk people go on, but when they do get round to taking it, they often say it's the one they liked the most. And no wonder, because Royal Kensington is London at its best – picturesque, stimulating, and full of character. Its parts are as delightful as London can provide: everything from warmly handsome old Kensington Palace (home to the late Diana, Princess of Wales) to Kensington Gardens (all meadows, shaded walks, bowers, and flower gardens, it might be the grounds of a stately home in some rural shire) to cobbled little soigne lanes and mews, girt with pretty cottages and charming old shops; and from millionaires' row and regal avenues to beautifully kept squares and a clutch of the world's greatest museums; let alone a garden in the sky (the largest and most breathtaking roof garden in Europe); the secluded town house of the greatest Londoner of the 20th-century, an American president's flat, the most astonishing small literary house in the world, acres of gentility, a secret trap-door into a hidden world, and more history and colourful characters than you can shake a stick at.
And afterward you can visit the State Apartments or take tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace! Now who's for another visual or two? Or if you'd like a further word or two, click here. Or here. And finally, how about some audio? There's a chapter on Kensington in our book, London Walks London Stories. It's one of the five chapters that fell to me, David, to write. Anyway, here's a tri-partite taster – of Kensington, of the walk and of the book. In short, here's how the chapter opens.
The Old Kensington - London's Royal Village Walk
takes place every Thursday at 2 pm
and every Saturday at 2 pm
Meet David or Angela or Adam in the rotunda just beyond the ticket barrier ("subway turnstile" in North American parlance) of High Street KensingtonTube.
High Street Kensington Tube is on the Circle & District Lines
Guided on Thursdays by David or Adam
Guided on Saturdays by David or Angela
"Kensington, especially in a summer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any place can or ought to be, in a world which, sometime or other, we must quit." Nathaniel Hawthorne, Our Old Home, 1863
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OCCULT LONDON & THE DA VINCI CODE "Researching this I often felt we should be
in a Witness Protection Programme..." Brian
2 pm on Thursdays
from TempleTube
People have long sensed the high strangeness of London. That some of its nodal points appear to be the foci of arcane secrets; that the Monument and Nelson's column - can it be a coincidence that they're both 202 feet high? - cast significant shadows at the summer solstice; that there appears to be "intelligent design" in London's alignments and angles; that there could well be a secret gnosis incorporated into the architecture of some of our most famous buildings; that a 1960 mural of Jean Cocteau in a hidden little London church suggests that he and Leonardo da Vinci were collaborators across the centuries - and that their religious beliefs were not nearly as orthodox as the history books would lead us to believe. Dan Brown's best-selling novel lifts the lid on some of these matters. As does Gerard de Sede's The Templars Are Among Us. And if they're right... it's a live rail running right through our culture. "Heretical beliefs", the goddess mystery, sexual alchemy secrets, mastery over time itself, gateways where the human and divine worlds meet; a church that's allegedly denied its true roots...it's, well, dangerous to touch.
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THE BLITZ - London at War |
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THE ANCIENT CITY AT NIGHT Take Another Look!
6.30 pm on Thursdays
from BankTube
(meet Peter G. by the Wellington statue outside exit 3)
If I were going to take Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Dante, Elizabeth I, Adam Smith, George Washington and Claude Monet on a London Walk this is the one I'd plump for. Because of where it goes and what we see. Historically this is the oldest part of London; but it's also the most aggressively modern part. And after hours - which is when we're heading in there - it's transfigured: crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly, submerged in its past. We can peer into its depths. And then rub our eyes and wonder at a church that "transcends originality", at the only private house in the country with its own court and cells, at a lost river, at a jewel box of a market (going there is a little touch of Harry Potter in the night), at Dirty Dick"s, at the architectural equivalent of a butterfly collection. And to see it at night - washed in blue and green light - it's like moving, stunned, through the crevasses of a mountain glacier!. And that's just first impressions, a quick scratch at the surface. The behind-the-scenes stuff - hidden courtyards, dimly lit alleyways and wonderful old pubs* - will take us right down into the depths of London's ancient past. Guided by Peter G.
*Yes, pubs are included on this walk; a post-walk curry is an optional extra (which is by way of saying, the walk ends near that little parade of the best - and best value - curry houses in London!)
The Ancient City at Night - Take Another Look! walk takes place
every Thursday evening at 6.30 pm
Meet Peter G. by the Wellington statue -
it's just outside exit 3 of BankTube.
Bank Tube is on the Central & Northern Lines
Guided by Peter G.
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"Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night." Rupert Brooke
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HOKAHE!* THE PARLIAMENTARY PUB WALK The Buried Reefs & Sunken Cities of Whitehall7 pm on Thursdays
from EmbankmentTube
Hokahe! because Whitehall isn't just "government street", a straight shot from Trafalgar Square down to Parliament. It's got eyelets and grommets. And to thread your way into them is to be teleported into some seriously old-timey London history! The effect is a little bit like clambering about below decks on a galleon. Or creaking open a vampire's casket. And as for Whitehall itself – yes, there is an "access problem". But not that access problem. This may be the British Kremlin but you can walk right through it. The "access problem" here is Whitehall's secret lexicon. The past – and indeed the disturbing present (and let's not kid ourselves, power is always creepy) – is here, but it's in the minutiae, encoded. You have to know where to look – and what you're looking at. And the "closer"? A couple of fine if gnarled old pubs! Let alone No. 10 Downing Street, Horse Guards, the Admiralty Arch, the Eye, Parliament, Banqueting House, the Cenotaph, etc. seen at their stunning best – lit up and without hordes of tourists. *It's Lakota Sioux for "Come on, let's go!"
The Parliamentary Pub Walk takes place
every Thursday at 7 pm.
Meet Andy just outside the exit of Embankment Tube
EmbankmentTube is on
the Northern, Bakerloo, Circle & District Lines
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"The only plagues of London..."
"Everywhere outside their houses are the citizens" gardens, side by side yet spacious and splendid and set about with trees. There are also in the northern suburbs of London splendid wells and springs with sweet healing, clean water…[where]…crowds of schoolboys and students and young men of the City take the air on summer evenings…The only plagues of London are the immoderate drinking of fools and the frequency of fires."
William Fitzstephen, Preface to the Life of Thomas a Becket, c. 1180
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APPARITIONS, ALLEYWAYS & ALE 7.30 pm on Thursdays
from EmbankmentTube
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No hype.* No over-egging the pudding. This is just an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned, works-a-treat London Walk. It's beautifully put together, beautifully crafted, fun to go on. It's got variety to sigh for. It's got those inside-the-stopped-works-of-a-watch moments** that London Walks specialises in. It's got the buzz and bright lights of theatreland. It's got eastern exotica and palaces and parks in the gloaming. It's got great ghost stories. It's got never-knew-that/didn't-know-this-was-here open sesames. It's convivial. It's forbidding and inviting. It's visually very appealing.
It's got how-bizarre-is-that finds – e.g., the grave and gravestone of the Nazi ambassador's dog. It's got a superb guide named Russell.
Update: we're often asked: "what will we see on this – or that – walk?" By way of a fun, partial answer – here's a peek. Now who's for some audio? Here's Adam, pinch hitting for Russell on December 16, 1897. Funny thing that. Because when we turned into this alley it was June 26, 2008. Was. That's creepy old London for you. You're not careful where you're going – you turn certain corners - and time bends. What's this? It's a gas lamp. Here's Adam. And there's the famous actor, William Terriss. William Terriss, who's just been murdered tonight, right here, December 16, 1897.
*For example, tritely – let alone embarrassingly – describing stuff as "spine chilling" when it ain't. Not even remotely so. Not us, Needless to say.
**Slightly spooky little alleyways that even locals don't know about.
The Secret West End – Apparitions, Alleyways & Arbours Walk takes place
every Thursday evening at 7.30 pm.
Meet Russell just outside the exit of EmbankmentTube.
Embankment Tube is on the Circle, Bakerloo, District & Northern Lines
Guided by Russell
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7.30 pm nightly (except Dec. 24 & Dec. 25)
from Tower HillTube
Please tread carefully and keep away from the shadows - you are about to enter the abyss...
He came silently out of the midnight shadows of August 31, 1888. Watching. Stalking. Butchering raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led...nowhere. Yes, something wicked this way walked, for this is the Ripper's slashing grounds. We evoke that autumn of gaslight and fog, of menacing shadows and stealthy footsteps as we inspect the murder sites, sift through the evidence - in all its gory detail - and get to grips, so to speak, with the main suspects. Afterward you can steady your nerves in The Ten Bells, the pub where the victims - perhaps under the steely gaze of the Ripper himself - tried to forget the waking nightmare. And for a pictorial or two, click here. Anything else? Well, yes, indeed. How does a very fine little video trailer of the walk grab you? To see it, CLICK HERE.
The Jack the Ripper Tour takes place
every* single night at 7.30 pm.
N.B. on Saturday afternoons there's also a Ripper "matinee".
I.E. we also do the Ripper walk every* Saturday afternoon at 3 pm.
Meet the guides – on Thursday evenings it's Angela and Shaughan -
just outside the exit of Tower HillTube.
Tower Hill Tube is on the Circle & District Lines
*except December 24th & December 25th
Guided by Donald or Molly on Mondays
Guided by Donald or Molly on Tuesdays
Guided by Steve on Wednesdays
Guided by Angela and Shaughan on Thursdays
Guided by Donald or Shaughan on Fridays
Guided by Fiona or Peter G. on Saturday afternoons
Guided by Steve on Saturday evenings
Guided by Donald on Sundays
N.B., Let's call a spade a spade. Going on Donald Rumbelow's Jack the Ripper Tour is as close as you're going to get to nailing the Ripper. Donald is the author of the best-selling The Complete Jack the Ripper, the definitive book on the subject. He's been the chief consultant for every major television and film treatment of the Ripper for the last 20 years. In the words of The Jack to Ripper A to Z (the bible of Ripperology studies): "Donald Rumbelow is internationally recognised as the leading authority on the subject". The former Curator of the City of London Police Crime Museum and a two-time Chairman of the Crime Writers" Association, Donald is Britain's most distinguished crime historian. And I hasten add, he's not some dry-as-dust academic. He spent 25 years on the City of London Police Force - which in effect means you'll be taken over some of the most famous crime scenes in the world by a law enforcement professional – a law enforcement professional who just happens to be the world's leading expert on those particular crime scenes! Oh and I almost forgot - he's also a top-flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guide!
But a word of warning: never part with your money or set off with anyone until you're absolutely certain you're with Donald or – if it's another night – one of his London Walks colleagues. Donald (and co.) will be holding up copies of the distinctive white London Walks leaflet. And remember, Donald and his colleagues never ever start the Jack the Ripper Tour before 7:30 pm. In short, don't let anyone pull a fast one on you.
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ADDITIONAL WALKS ON SELECTED THURSDAYS
| DATE |
TOUR |
TIME |
STATION |
| Sept. 2 |
The Great Fire of London – The Anniversary Special! |
6.30 pm |
MonumentTube Fish Street Hill exit |
| Sept. 30 |
The Jack the Ripper Anniversary Special No. 2 "The Double Event"
Two Murders under the Microscope – 122 Years to the Day!
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7 pm |
WhitechapelTube |
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