London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very merry Christmas to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
Yes, it’s Christmas Morning, Thursday, December 25th, 2025.
And here it is, here’s your daily London fix.
Picture it. Christmas morning. Hyde Park. 1864.
Most of London’s still in bed. One or two brave souls are opening presents. And a small group of men are standing in their underpants by the Serpentine, about to do something monumentally stupid.
They’re going for a swim.
On Christmas Day.
In open water.
This is how one of London’s strangest, hardiest, most endearing traditions begins.
Let’s start with the basics.
The Serpentine Christmas Day swim was inaugurated on December 25, 1864. Not vaguely Victorian. Not sometime in the 19th century. Christmas Day itself. Right there on the calendar.
The people responsible were members of the Serpentine Swimming Club, founded that same year. These were serious swimmers. Outdoor swimmers. The kind who think cold water is “bracing” rather than “a medical emergency”.
And they decided that Christmas morning would be the perfect time for a race.
Why? Because of course they did.
This first outing was a 100-yard-race straight across the lake. No fancy costumes. No rubber ducks. No charity branding. Just men, water, and a very brisk sense of humour.
The winner that year was a man called H. Coulter, who received a gold medal. One imagines he also received a towel, a strong drink, and a certain amount of local admiration for not keeling over.
How many swimmers were there? We don’t have an exact headcount. Victorian record-keeping wasn’t great at that level. But contemporary accounts suggest a modest handful, a few dozen at most. Enough to make it feel like an event. Not enough to make it sensible.
Was it in aid of charity?
No. Not originally.
This wasn’t a fundraiser. It was a challenge. A statement. A bit of sporting bravado. Charity would come later. In 1864 this was simply about doing something difficult because it was there to be done.
And the water?
Cold. Obviously.
The Serpentine in December typically sits somewhere around 3 to 4 degrees Celsius. That’s cold enough to take your breath away. Literally. Cold shock is a real thing. Your lungs forget how to behave. Your brain briefly questions your life choices.
Victorian Londoners didn’t have wetsuits. Or safety briefings. Or medical teams standing by with foil blankets.
They had grit. And towels. And probably a flask.
Now here’s the extraordinary thing.
It didn’t stop.
They did it again the next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.
With one modern exception in 2020, when Covid put paid to almost everything, the Serpentine Christmas Day race has taken place every single year since 1864.
That makes it one of the oldest continuously swum races in the world.
Not just Britain. The world.
Same distance too. Still 100 yards. Still short. Still savage. This is not about endurance. It’s about nerve. Get in. Get across. Get out.
These days it happens at 9 am sharp. Christmas morning. South bank of the Serpentine, near the café. The swimmers arrive early. The spectators wrap up like Arctic explorers. Steam rises off the water. Breath fogs the air.
And yes, sometimes the water freezes.
There have been years when ice had to be broken before swimmers could enter. Actual ice. Chopped away. Christmas morning. Hyde Park. London politely pretending this is all quite normal.
One early twentieth-century account describes swimmers waiting while officials hacked a clear channel through the surface. And then, without hesitation, in they went.
This is not a large swim. On most years there are 20 to 30 swimmers. It’s a members’ race. You have to earn your place by swimming throughout the winter season. You don’t just roll out of bed on Christmas morning and fancy a go.
That’s important. This isn’t a novelty plunge. It’s the culmination of months of cold-water swimming.
How long are they in the water?
Barely minutes. Often less. Some are out in under a minute. The fastest make it look easy. Nobody lingers. Nobody floats about admiring the view.
In, across, out. Then towels, hats, gloves, and a stampede towards warmth.
Now let’s talk about Peter Pan.
In 1904, the writer J. M. Barrie donated a silver cup to the race. Yes, that J. M. Barrie. The man who gave the world the boy who wouldn’t grow up.
The trophy became known as the Peter Pan Cup, and it’s still awarded to this day. Barrie himself presented it for years. The symbolism is perfect. Eternal youth. Daring. A refusal to be sensible.
The cup is beautiful. Small. Elegant. Very un-muscular for something won by people who’ve just survived near-freezing water.
There have been some wonderful characters over the years. Swimmers winning well into their sixties and seventies. Women swimming alongside the men long before formal inclusion. Long-standing club figures with nicknames, rituals, and legendary toughness.
There are stories of spectators outnumbering swimmers ten to one. Of applause echoing across the park. Of Christmas morning dog walkers stopping dead in disbelief.
And that’s really the magic of it.
This isn’t loud. It’s not commercial. It doesn’t shout.
It just happens.
Every Christmas morning, while most of London is still peeling sprouts and hunting for batteries, a group of swimmers walks into Hyde Park, strips down, and does something gloriously, defiantly unnecessary.
They race the cold. They race each other. They race history.
And then they go home and have Christmas dinner like everyone else.
London wouldn’t be London without people like this.
And Christmas wouldn’t quite be Christmas without a few idiots willing to get into freezing water before breakfast.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.