London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to you, London Walkers, wherever you are. It’s February 28th, 2025.
The last day of February – and not before time. Every year I eagerly await the end of February. Because of course it means we’re getting there, getting through the winter.
So for a – shall we say, warm-up act today – a little bit of weather history.
This day in 1662 – February 28th, 1662 – it was a Tuesday – was known as Windy Tuesday. Nobody who was there ever forgot it. It was the worst storm in 350 years. Bad storms in this country, they earn themselves names. So the monster storm on January 15th, 1362 came to be known as St Maury’s Wind. St Maury – better known as Maurus – was a sixth century saint who didn’t just walk on water, he ran on water. Ran out on the sea to rescue a drowning boy. His feast day is January 15th, the day of his death, in 584. And no, he wasn’t martyr’d, he died of natural causes. Anyway, yes, there was a beast of a storm on January 15th, 1362 and inevitably it came to be known as St Maury’s Wind. Windy Tuesday, in 1662, held second place in the London Chamber of Weather Horrors, until the Great Storm of 1703 came along. Anyway, batten down the hatches, let’s close with Windy Tuesday. We do that by looking over the great diarist Samuel Pepys’ shoulder as he makes his entry for February 28th, 1662. Here’s Sam. “Everywhere full of brick battes and tyles flung down by the extraordinary Winde last night (such as hath not been in memory before) that it was dangerous to go out or doors. Several persons have been killed today by the fall of things in the streets.” One notes that Pepys saw fit to flag the word Winde up with a capital W.
A week later Pepys notes that over 1,000 oaks were lost in the Forest of Dean. That was understating it. The final tally was 3,000 trees. And oh my god was that important. We learn from weather historians Antony Woodward and Robert Penn that wood was, in the 17th-century, the most important natural resource after food. It was used for fuel, building material and, most important of all, for defence. The British navy – which was the linchpin of this country’s wealth and power – was completely dependent on wood. By way of example, it took 3,800 trees to build a third-rate, 74-gun ship of the line. The timber, mostly oak, had to be seasoned and stored for years before it could be used. And trees took a century to replace. Well, you see the importance of forests. To fell more trees than you replaced was national suicide. National suicide that was helped along its way by storms like Windy Tuesday.
Ah, yes, the weather in this country.
You want to understand these Brits you really have to get your head round their weather. You can make a start with that by keeping in mind three phrases that are common currency here.
Brits are wont to say, “we don’t get seasons, we get weather.” Another version of that sentiment is, “we get four seasons in one day.” And then there’s “if you don’t like the weather just wait”. Because of course it changes so fast.
Now for our main course today I’m handing over to Ann. One of my all-time favourite London Walks is her Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History walk. The niche walk par excellence, it’s coming up in a few days. And, as always, Ann’s done us a little Latest Cat News piece by way of an advancer on her Cat Tails Walk.
And you know something, there’s a neat transition we can make. Ok, it’s a cheeky stretch, but it’s fun all the same. We can bridge from the Brits and their weather obsession to Ann’s Cat Tales podcast by reminding ourselves how the weather has stamped itself all over this country’s history and culture. We sawed off a bit of that with Windy Tuesday and its bearing on 17th-century forestry management. And the thing is it’s the length and breadth of the spectrum, it’s both national and personal. Personal, there’s Frank Skinner’s dictum, “You can spend your whole life trying to be popular but at the end of the day the size of the crowd at your funeral will be largely dictated by the weather.” And as for a cat weather connection – a cat connection of sorts – Fog gave us the Cat’s Eye. Cat’s Eyes are an essential part of the British road safety toolkit. They’ve been guiding drivers safely along dark and foggy roads for over a century.
Cats’ Eyes are of course those reflective road studs that provide a low-cost, self-sustainable means to delineate road lanes in adverse weather conditions.
But nobody’s got a better eye for cat comings and goings – what they’ve been getting up to – their doings and escapades and exploits and adventures and scrapes – than Ann.
Here’s Ann. As usual, what she has to say will have you purring with delight. As will her Cats’ Walk.
[Ann’s cats’ commentary follows]
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.