London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets Ahead.
Story time.
History time.
Good morning, London.
And good morning, London Walkers, wherever in the world you are.
And a very good morning especially to my old friend over in America who’s been delighting me recently.
He’s reading Dame Judi Dench’s wonderful book about Shakespeare. And every few pages he stops to send me a message.
Not about Shakespeare.
About Britishisms.
He’s collecting them.
He’s become a sort of linguistic butterfly collector.
“Dried.”
“Half-cut.”
“Tannoy.”
“Knees-up.”
Every time he finds another one he’s pleased as Punch.
Well, here’s another one for your collection, my fellow David.
“Busman’s holiday.”
It’s one of those wonderfully British expressions.
A busman’s holiday is exactly what it sounds like.
Your day off…
…spent doing pretty much what you do for a living.
An architect on holiday in France who spends the week touring cathedrals.
A chef who has Sunday off and celebrates by cooking a magnificent dinner for friends.
A railwayman who spends his holiday riding preserved steam railways.
Busman’s holiday.
It’s older than most people realise.
The phrase first crops up in print in 1893.
And here’s the lovely bit.
There weren’t any motor buses.
The “bus” was a horse-drawn omnibus.
The music hall star Albert Chevalier explained the expression in a newspaper article. He said a London bus driver would spend his day off riding up on the box beside another bus driver, watching the horses, chatting about routes, talking shop.
He simply couldn’t keep away.
Sound familiar?
Chevalier confessed he was exactly the same.
His holidays consisted of…
…going to theatres and music halls.
Occupational hazard.
Or perhaps occupational delight.
The Americans borrowed the expression. You’ll find it in American dictionaries these days.
But somehow it has always felt unmistakably British to me.
And it got me thinking.
Because London Walks guides go on busman’s holidays all the time.
It’s one of the defining characteristics of the tribe.
Lost causes we are.
We’re hopelessly, incurably, passionately curious.
And we’re London obsessives.
So we spend our days off…
…going on London Walks.
Sometimes it’s a walk we don’t guide ourselves.
Sometimes it’s one we do.
Especially one we do.
Because two London Walks guides never guide exactly the same walk.
The route may be almost identical.
The streets are certainly identical.
But the walk won’t be.
One guide notices a carving you’ve somehow walked past for twenty years.
Another has unearthed a diary nobody else has read.
Somebody else knows an irresistible anecdote.
Different passions.
Different interests.
Different obsessions.
The same walk.
An entirely different experience.
It’s one of the things that sets London Walks apart.
Nobody hands us a script and says, “Memorise that.”
Every guide brings themselves.
Which means every guide teaches the rest of us.
I invariably come away having learned something.
And then…
There are Charlie’s walks.
That’s busman’s holiday territory on another level altogether.
Because Charlie’s Ultimate London Walk has now left the London most of us know.
It’s heading into London’s far-flung reaches.
Into places I’ve never set foot in, undreamt of in my wildest imaginings.
For me, every turning is a surprise.
Every point-out is new.
Every story is fresh.
It’s the Platonic ideal of a busman’s holiday.
Tomorrow Charlie leads Stages Nine and Ten of his magnificent Ultimate London Walk.
Remember, this is the forty-two-mile crossing of London.
Fourteen stages.
From the Hertfordshire border right across the capital to the Surrey Downs.
Very London this because the place has been described as like Budapest. Two cities separated by a river. If you’re a north Londoner – that’s me – south London is a foreign country. And vice versa.
So, yes, Charlie’s bound for that foreign country on the morrow. Tomorrow morning’s outing begins in Brixton.
And Brixton isn’t just a market.
It’s markets, plural.
A whole world of them.
Covered arcades.
Victorian passages.
Electric Avenue, famous long before the song.
Named because it was one of the very first streets in London lit by electricity.
Fruit piled into impossible pyramids.
Fishmongers.
Spice merchants.
Record shops.
Caribbean bakeries.
Latin American cafés.
Barbers.
Tailors.
Every few yards the soundtrack changes.
So do the aromas.
One moment it’s jerk chicken and allspice.
The next it’s freshly ground coffee.
Then tropical fruit.
Then incense.
It’s less like shopping than travelling without ever leaving London.
And then Charlie performs one of those wonderful London Walks magic tricks.
Twenty minutes earlier you’re in one of the liveliest, busiest, noisiest places in the capital.
Then suddenly…
Quiet.
Brockwell Park.
Brockwell Hall.
Its secret walled garden.
One of those places that somehow manages to hide in plain sight.
High brick walls.
Flowers tumbling over borders.
Bees drifting lazily from bloom to bloom.
The scents changing as you wander.
It’s astonishing how quickly London changes the channel.
And then Windrush Square.
A reminder that London isn’t just buildings.
It’s people.
Journeys.
Stories.
Windrush Square commemorates the Caribbean men and women who helped rebuild Britain after the Second World War.
It remembers those who served in Britain’s armed forces.
It celebrates campaigners.
And it acknowledges one of the great modern injustices, when members of the Windrush generation, invited here, settled here, worked here and paid their taxes here, suddenly found themselves treated as though they didn’t belong.
Then, after lunch…
One of London’s greatest surprises.
One of those places where visitors invariably ask, “Are we really still in London?”
Yes.
Very much so.
Except London has somehow slipped into slippers.
It feels more like an English village that accidentally found itself inside a capital city.
Ancient houses.
Village greens.
Towering trees.
Old fingerposts.
The College.
And Dulwich Picture Gallery.
England’s first purpose-built public picture gallery.
Its doors have been open for well over two centuries.
It’s a jewel box.
Intimate.
Civilised.
The sort of gallery where masterpieces don’t overwhelm you.
They become companions.
And then woodland.
One of my favourite lines from Charlie’s briefing note.
Woodland where, as he puts it, “only the distant sirens tell you it’s London.”
Isn’t that marvellous?
It captures perfectly something people who’ve never ventured beyond Zone One often don’t realise.
London isn’t one city.
It’s a glorious patchwork of hundreds of different Londons stitched together.
Market London.
Village London.
Woodland London.
Tomorrow Charlie walks through all of them.
That’s what The Ultimate London Walk is really about.
Discovering that London isn’t one place.
It’s hundreds of places.
Now that sounds like my sort of busman’s holiday.
And perhaps yours too.
If you’d like to join Charlie tomorrow for Stages Nine and Ten of The Ultimate London Walk, you’ll find all the details at walks.com.
See you tomorrow.