Along the Thames Pub Walk

Blackfriars underground station, London

Guided by Adam or Chris or David or Nick G. or Richard III or Simon

Walk Times

Day	Walk Type	Start Time	End Time
Friday	Weekly	6 pm	8.30 pm	Winter Summer	Reserve Online

Short read: If you only have time for one walking tour, this is the one to go on…

Thinking about going on this one? Or on your way to the walk? Click here. This podcast is a perfect fit.

Long read: The classic London pub walk. It takes in London’s last remaining galleried coaching inn, its best riverside walkway, its oldest market, the most sensational art gallery in the world (we usually pop inside for a quick look), the church where Harvard University’s founder was baptised, and an 18th-century pub that brews its own beer – plus lashings of Shakespeare, a jot of Dickens, lots of pub lore, and London’s best skyline panorama.

It gets better. Because there’s also, four centuries on,  the recently discovered remains of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (and its sister playhouse The Rose), to say nothing of the thrilling, thatch-roofed reproduction that’s risen, Phoenix-like, only a stone’s throw away. Let alone the astonishing replica of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hinde, the ship that the great Elizabethan mariner sailed around the world over 400 years ago. Anchored there in the murky Thames, its timbers creaking eerily in the misty London night and The Globe just yards away – it’s a ghost ship lost in time. Say it again, “the most exciting walk in London…” 

Walkers on a recent Thames Pub walk with guide Adam

ALONG THE THAMES PUB WALK – THE PRACTICALS

The Along the Thames Pub Walk takes place most Friday evenings at 6 pm. The meeting point is just outside the exit of Blackfriars Tube. N.B. the walk ends less than a minute’s walk from London Bridge Tube and Railway Station.

THE WEATHER – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

“In four decades of guiding I’ve never once taken an umbrella.* It doesn’t rain on my walks.”** David, the Seigneur of this favoured realm [London Walks]

“I divorced weather forecasts five years ago. It’s like being unchained from a lunatic. You might as well look at a horoscope as pay any heed to UK weather forecasts” – London Walks guide, Adam, Visit England Superstar Finalist 2022.

London Weather Facts: Jerusalem, Gibraltar, Rome, Rhodes, etc. all get more rainfall than London. New York gets twice as much. London is one of the driest cities on earth.***

For a deep draught of the subject, try this richly satisfying (and eye-opening) podcast – https://www.walks.com/podcast/london-weather/

*Historically, the British public regarded the idea of not getting soaked when it’s pissing it down as ‘too French’, with accounts saying we called people a ‘mincing Frenchman’ if they were caught using an umbrella.

**Ok, we get the occasional mizzle but a mizzle does not pleasure and pain make, let alone a downpour [‘pleasure and pain’ is Cockney rhyming slang for ‘rain’]

***Needless to say London doesn’t have that reputation, it’s the last thing you’d expect. But this is the most mysterious, the most secretive city in the western world. Shape-shifting is par for the course for London. This place makes a speciality of pulling the wool over everybody’s eyes. Literally and figuratively – literally “the wool” is “the low London sky.”

IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE GUIDING

Don’t just take it from us…

LONDON WALKS REVIEWS

“Best Tourism Experience in London”  Gold Medal Winner, Visit London

“The original and best – there are several companies offering walking tours of London but London Walks (London’s oldest) is easily the pick of the bunch” London, Cadogan Guide

“Even jaded Londoners find these London Walks a source of astonishing gems of information about the city in which they live.” Daily Mail, Top London Treats

“The best walking tours are organized by London Walks”  USA Today

LONDON WALKS PRIVATE WALKS

If you can’t make one of the regularly scheduled, just-turn-up, public Along the Thames Pub Walks do think about booking one as a private tour. If you go private you can have the Along the Thames Pub Walks – or any other London Walk – on a day and at a time that suits your convenience. We’ll tailor it to your requirements. And – always with private London Walks and tours – we go to great lengths to make sure the guide-walker(s) “fit” is well-nigh perfect. Ring Fiona or Peter or Mary or Niamh on 020 7624 3978 or email us at [email protected] and we’ll set it up and make it happen for you. A private London Walk – they’re good value for an individual or couple and sensational value for a group – makes an ideal group or educational or birthday party or office (team-building) or club outing.

GIVE THE GIFT OF LONDON WALKS

A private London Walk makes a very special, indeed, unique gift – be it a birthday or anniversary or Christmas present or whatever. Merchandise schmerchandise (gift wrapped or not) – but giving someone an experience, now that’s special. Memories make us rich.

MIND THE GAP

It’s not even close

LONDON WALKS – STREETS AHEAD!

Don’t just take it from us.

“If this were a golf tournament every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]