Look around, put your feet up,
make yourself at home...
Getting from A to B
Like London Walks itself, our website is simplicity itself. It's pretty much self-explanatory. But one or two "signposts" might be in order.

What does sometimes catch people out is that some of our "pages" - including the Homepage - are long, tall drinks of water. I.E., what you can see on the screen is often only the tip of the iceberg. You need to scroll on down quite a ways to get to the bottom of the page.
 
The Homepage is a perfect case in point. It sets out all the basics - the nuts and bolts about how you go on a London Walk - how long they take, where you meet the guide, how much it costs, etc. etc. But unless you've got a screen as tall as a fence post you're not going to see it all in one "grab". You've got to scroll down. 

Not much else to add except that the main organising principle to both our programme and this website is the seven-day week. You want to know which walks are running on, say, Tuesday...well just click on Tuesday on the menu on the column to your left and hey presto it takes you to Tuesday's Walks. That page is laid out "chronologically". At the top of the page are the Tuesday morning walks. Scroll down you come to the Tuesday afternoon walks. Scroll some more and you come to the evening walks. 
 
We normally run about 15 different walks every weekday. Weekend days are even busier. There are 20 or 21 London Walks going every Saturday. Ditto on Sundays.
 
In addition to all of the regularly scheduled walks there are also quite a few Special Walks. They're "one-offs" that are "date specific" - as opposed to taking place every Tuesday (or every Wednesday or every Thursday or every Friday or every Saturday or every Sunday or every Monday) week in and week out. The date-specific "Specials" are normally listed in a table right at the very bottom of the day in question. And there's a second bite of the cherry in the Special Walks section. There's a link to it on the menu on the column to your left. On that Special Walks page we try to round up all the strays...get 'em all together under one roof.
 
And that's about it. The other links will put you in the picture about this, that and the other facet of our programme. E.G., you want some further "particulars" about the out-of-town Explorer Days that we do...well just click on the Explorer Days link. You want a "two inches of ivory" "portrait" of any given London Walks guide...well, just click on The Guides link and go get 'em. (They're listed alphabetically.) 

And that's all there is to it. Wield that "scroll down" key - and keep in mind the Days of the Week organising principle and you've cracked it. So pop on in and have a look round. Nothing else to say except how do you like your tea? With milk and sugar? Just milk?
 
Well, actually that's not all there is to it. That's the nuts and bolts, the practical side of it. But there's another side. Another side that has just as much to recommend it. And that's by way of saying, the www.walks.com is also chock-a-block with incidental goodies. It's like a Christmas pudding. There's some pretty decent photography. Much of it provided by some pretty decent photographers. That's one job you wouldn't want to entrust to me, David. Though I'm perfectly happy to admit - even proud to admit in a couple of cases - that a few of them are my handiwork.
 
There's also now quite a bit of voice - of audio - on the site. Mostly from walks of course. But we've also got a few "trailers" - a few reads - from our forthcoming book, London Walks London Stories, up on the site.We signpost every bit of audio with a highly original little symbol. This: 
 
That's it in miniature (the version we usually use). Its much bigger brother looks like this:
 
 
It's already sprinkled all over the website. And indeed over the latest edition of the London Walks leaflet. So when you see that little speaker symbol...well, let's put it this way, where there's a speaker symbol there's sound. So by all means, get clicking - and listening. And it's not all London Walks "voices" - we've even got a little Sounds of London section.
 
The photographs and the audio are the spangles. A bit of "extra" to go with the words. And believe me, there's a bit of extra - quite a bit of extra - in the matter of the words! If you get a chance, have a poke round - this website's like an interesting old attic. It's chock-a-block with this, that and the other. All kinds of extra little "mini essays" about the matter to hand. Everything from notes about restaurant recommendations and "added value" to personal impressions of various walks and Explorer Days to pdfs of articles I've published about London to little additional information portraits about London neighbourhoods or names or whatever to ruminations about what makes a great guide (what we look for in a guide) to news about "in-house" developments (the Award, Mary's Blue Badge [and the award she bagged with it], new walks, Don's knee, our book, etc. etc.) to, yes, walkers' feedback (walkers' reports on walks they've been on, their recommendations, etc. etc., including their photographs).
 
So if the planning and looking forward to is part of the fun - and it is for just about everybody - well, the website can make quite a significant contribution to that end.
 
And it's only going to get richer and more stimulating along those lines. In the pipeline, e.g., is a Recommended Reading section for any given walk. Well, for most of the walks, at any rate. That'll be - needless to say - a work in progress. Not going to happen overnight. Witness the Today in London History section, which we've been pecking away at for a couple of years now and still have a good ways to go on. But, hey, it's London. Wasn't built in a day. Just as London Walks wasn't. Just as the London Walks website wasn't.
 
And not just London. The out-of-town stuff - the Explorer Days - keep being added to as well. Watch this space - well, watch that space (The Stonehenge & Salisbury Explorer Day) - there's some amazing "accompanying" stuff going up there real soon now.