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.
Wherever you are.
It’s Sunday, February 1st, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
Ah, yes, February the first.
And here’s a thought.
More than a thought, a recommendation.
Today, instead of the usual hellos and how-are-yous, instead of the tired small talk and the weather chat, there’s a far better greeting available to you.
Try this.
Tilt your hat – metaphorical or otherwise – smile, and say:
A very happy Imbolc to you.
And then roll out a well-timed pause. Maybe give your collocutor a sly look. A cheeky look. A knowing look.
And enjoy the look you get back.
Because Imbolc isn’t a word people hear every day. Which is precisely why it’s such a good one. A little mysterious. Slightly ancient. A bit magical round the edges. The sort of word London likes.
And today, London is standing on a hinge.
Not a headline hinge.
Not a breaking-news hinge.
A quiet one. An old one. The kind London specialises in hiding beneath its pavements.
February the first is Imbolc.
Long before London had traffic lights, postcodes, or property prices that make your eyes water, this date mattered. It marked the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The dark had peaked. The light, just barely, was starting to fight back.
Imbolc is one of the old quarter days of the Celtic year. A seasonal marker, not a festival in the modern sense. No tickets. No stages. No spectacle. Just attention.
The awareness that winter is no longer absolute.
And that matters. February can feel merciless. Cold clings on. Food once ran low. Spirits dipped. A moment that quietly said, you’re past the worst, meant everything.
Now, before we go any further, let’s clear up a common and very understandable confusion. People hear “Imbolc” and think of a word they already know.
Embolic.
They are not the same thing.
Not cousins.
Not siblings.
Not even neighbours.
Imbolc comes from Old Irish, most likely i mbolg.
Literally: in the belly.
That’s the image. That’s the meaning.
Life not yet born.
Growth not yet visible.
But something is happening.
Ewes are pregnant. Milk is beginning to return.
The agricultural year is stirring quietly, internally.
Promise rather than fulfilment.
There’s another possible root too: oí-melg – ewe’s milk. Same idea. Fertility. Nourishment. The system creaking back into life.
Now compare that with embolic, which comes from Greek, emballein, meaning “to throw in.”
In medicine, an embolism is something thrown into the bloodstream.
In calendars, an embolic month is an extra month thrown in to keep things aligned.
Same sound. Completely different story.
Imbolc is about potential.
Embolic is about insertion.
And once you understand that, Imbolc suddenly makes perfect sense as a London story.
Because London is a city permanently in the belly of something. Always incubating. Always carrying the next version of itself before anyone else can see it.
Roman Londinium didn’t erase what came before. It sat on older rhythms. Medieval London didn’t wipe out the Roman city. It absorbed it. Christian feast days didn’t bulldoze pagan calendars.
They rebranded them.
Imbolc slips neatly into Candlemas on February 2nd. Candles blessed. Light ceremonially welcomed back. Same instinct. New language. Different sign on the door.
This is also Brigid’s day. Goddess of fire, poetry, healing, and the hearth. Later canonised, barely changed, as St Brigid. The flame stays lit. The name shifts. London understands this manoeuvre instinctively.
The themes stay constant. Cleansing. Renewal. The quickening of the year.
Historically, people cleaned their homes. Tended the hearth. Lit candles. Made Brigid’s crosses. Baked simple, sustaining foods. The work of light, not celebration. Preparation rather than payoff.
London is brilliant at this. It doesn’t destroy ideas.
It files them.
And you can still see Imbolc in the city if you know where to look.
Look down, not up.
Churchyards tell the story. Snowdrops push through cold earth right about now. White. Small. Stubborn. Not showy. Not waiting for permission. They don’t announce spring. They prefigure it.
Snowdrops cluster around churches because churches inherited sacred ground. Burial grounds. Places already weighted with meaning long before stone towers arrived.
St Pancras Old Church. Hampstead. The Inns of Court. Little green islands where the city’s older calendar still ticks.
This is an older London, buried beneath the modern city.
Medieval Londoners would have felt this day keenly. February was dangerous. A marker that said the balance had shifted mattered psychologically as much as agriculturally. Imbolc was reassurence. A hand on the shoulder of the year.
And modern Londoners still feel it, even if we don’t know the word.
You sense it when the light lingers a minute longer.
When you step out of the Tube and think, hang on, it’s not quite as dark.
When a park feels like it’s holding its breath.
That’s Imbolc.
Not spring. Not yet.
Just the knowledge that winter no longer has a monopoly.
Which brings us back to that phrase: in the belly.
It’s not optimism. It’s process. Trusting that unseen work is happening.
London lives by that principle. Always has.
Political movements. Cultural shifts. Music scenes. New ideas. They all gestate here long before they surface. In basements. In rented rooms. In half-heard conversations no one’s paying attention to.
London is permanently pregnant with itself.
So February the first isn’t an empty square on the calendar. It’s a threshold. A moment when the old year loosens its grip and the next one quietly clears its throat.
Beneath the pavements, beneath the timetables and screens, the ancient clock is still running.
Imbolc doesn’t shout.
It murmurs.
And London, of all cities, knows how to listen.
This is London.
Streets ahead.
And hey, mate – you heard it here first.
Don’t forget to use it.
Dazzle ’em with:
A very happy Imbolc to you.
A perfect London greeting.
A wink, a nudge, and a little ancient magic slipped into the everyday.
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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time Out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top-flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.