London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers, far and wide.
It’s Saturday, August 30th, 2025.
This one’s like one of those days when a Premiership team – or Major League or NFL team if you’re thinking in American terms – one of those days when a Premiership team honours a star player. It’s said player’s Day!
Here at London Walks today is Charlie Forman Day.
Charlie Forman, superstar guide. Superstar guide who goes where no other guide has gone before.
And the whole day is Charlie’s. Including the London Calling Book Club Corner.
So to get us started, here’s what Charlie’s been reading:
“LONDON – Immigrant City by Nazneen Khan-Ostrem.
Exploring the history as well as the present-day life and feel of many of the communities that have migrated to London over time – impressive in its range and vitality.”
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me Charlie that you’ve tracked that one down and glommed onto it. And I’m very glad you have. It’s a new one to me. And if you’re reading it that’s good enough for me. I’m going to get it and read it myself.
Ok, main event now.
Strap in. The countdown’s begun. Ticking down to 10.30 am, Saturday, September 6th. That’s launch time, that’s ignition, that’s lift-off.
Yes, one week from today The Ultimate London Walk gets underway. The realisation of Charlie’s lifelong dream, a walk all the way across London, from the northern edge of London in Hertfordshire to the southern edge in Surrey. A walk in fourteen stages, from September 6th to the first weekend in October.
The meeting point for the first leg of the walk – at 10.30 am next Saturday, September 6th – is Hadley Wood Railway Station. Charlie’s quite splendidly laconic about the moment. Here’s what he says:
“This is it.
The start line of an epic journey across the capital – one foot in Hertfordshire, one in London. Move off dipping down the Broadgate meadows with their Green Belt ‘mosaic of habitats’ to enjoy the pasture beyond.”
Love it, “start line…one foot in Hertfordshire, one in London…meadows, pasture…” Bliss it’ll be to be alive, to be there, to be in that moment. An I was there moment, a moment his walkers will be able to tell their friends about, let alone their grandchildren.
Ok, so that’s Charlie about the start. Here’s me about the whole project. The Ultimate London Walk. Thirty very short sentences which, taken together, make it clear why this podcast is Charlie Forman Day. Here we go.
It’s here.
It’s a first. In all of London’s billions of journeys this has never been done.
It’s a London no one’s ever seen – ever put together – ever experienced. A London never glimpsed, never garnered, never grasped.
It’s forest and fields. It’s water and wilderness. It’s green glades and hidden history. It’s Ur London and urban London.
It’s not just vaguely apprehending the grand old tree London. It’s travelling through its bole – experiencing every ring of its growth.
It’s 14 walks over five autumn weeks. It’s been over half a century in the making. Or, depending on how your counting, over 2,000 years in the making.
It’s The Ultimate London Walk – walking all the way across London.
Its terrain breakdown:
20 percent is through Woodland (ecologically, London’s classified as a forest)
20.8 percent is through Open Ground
17.6 percent is through Parks
9.7 percent is along Unpaved Lanes and Paths
23 percent is along Side Streets and Roads (fab Sides, all of them)
8.8 percent is along Main Roads (and they’re Mains you want to walk along!
It’s three guides. Two halves of the city. One unforgettable journey.
It’s a giant step for London, many many small steps for Londoners and nonpareil guides Charlie, Dr Ann and Mary, who saw the angel in the marble and set him free. I.E., had this vision, walked it, created it. And are now going to birth it and share it.
It’s London Walks achieving its entelechy.
Glorious word, entelechy. Perfect word. Lapidary, luminous. A word cut like a diamond. It means: the realisation, the flowering of potential.
Which is exactly what The Ultimate London Walk delivers.
Thanks, Charlie.
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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.