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 Wednesday, November 19th.
And coming your way in a flurry – your daily London fix. I say in a flurry because I’m looking out the window and what do you know, it’s snowing. Yes, snowing. But here’s the thing.
Snow in London
is a rare bird at the best of times.
It saunters in only when it feels like it, usually in February,
like an actor
turning up halfway through the play
and expecting applause.
But here we are,
third week of November,
and there it goes
swirling past the window,
behaving as if it owns the place.
A premature guest.
You can almost hear London muttering wonderful just wonderful
under its breath.
And yet there’s nothing like it,
that first snow.
London takes on a different register when the flakes start falling.
The city exhales.
Traffic hushes.
People look up,
which Londoners never do
in normal circumstances.
Umbrellas pause in mid air.
Phones are raised like votive candles. Even the pigeons freeze,
which is a Christmas miracle in itself.
It starts with the rooftops of course. London rooftops are
the city’s secret stage.
All those little slopes
and chimneys and odd angles.
When snow lands on them,
the whole thing becomes
a patchwork quilt
stitched by a Victorian aunt
with time on her hands.
Look at the chimneys:
tiny white hats
perched on Dickensian stovepipes. Hampstead does this best.
It’s practically built for snow.
Snow on Flask Walk.
Snow on the Heath.
Snow on the Georgian doorcases
that never asked for decoration
but wear it beautifully anyway.
Stand by a Hampstead pond and
you get that wide open,
arms-stretched feeling.
The Heath in snow is the closest
London gets to a spiritual cleanse.
Even the dog walkers
soften around the edges.
Down in the Square Mile
it’s a different show.
The towers vanish into a gentle blur. From the ground,
the Walkie Talkie looks like it’s attempting to disappear,
which many Londoners
would count as a public service.
Snow on the Bank of England
gives the place a sort of mythic hush,
as if it remembers a time
when gold meant something
and clerks warmed their hands
on the ink bottles.
Snow on the steps of St Paul’s
hits you right in the chest.
All that Wren geometry
softening at the edges.
Footsteps making their quick-lived patterns.
There’s something about the way snow mutes sound in the City.
The buses rumble, but the echo is softer. You feel as if you’re walking inside
a gently shaken snow globe
and someone, somewhere,
is having a nostalgic moment.
And what about the canals?
Snow on water is a quiet kind of theatre. The towpaths along Regent’s Canal
turn into narrow white ribbons,
and the live-aboard boat people
poke their heads out to glare at the sky
as if it has malfunctioned.
Moorhens skate
with admirable optimism.
The narrowboats
become floating iced buns.
Cross Camden Lock and watch
how the snow falls straight down
while the crowds veer sideways.
Classic Camden.
Over in Little Venice
it’s all elegance and hush, a scene
that feels borrowed
from a children’s book
illustrated in watercolour.
London parks might be
the greatest canvas for early snow.
Hyde Park goes all Cinderella. Kensington Gardens
puts on its calmest face.
Regent’s Park transforms into a stage set for a very polite winter opera.
The Outer Circle
is sprinkled with joggers
who pretend not to slip.
Snow on the topiary
outside Winfield House
is the sort of thing
you secretly hope to glimpse.
And let us not forget Greenwich Park where the Queen’s House looks positively smug under a dusting,
like a cake
that knows it has perfect icing.
But the real joy is the small stuff,
the street-level magic.
Snow piling on wrought iron railings. Snow dusting the lion heads
on old Victorian door knockers.
Snow clinging to bikes
that have been chained
in exactly the wrong place
at exactly the wrong time.
Shopkeepers sweeping half-heartedly then giving up
when they realise
it’s only the third week of November
and no one has the energy for this.
Black cabs gathering a fine coating
so they resemble props
from an Edwardian Christmas card.
And Londoners themselves:
the brief, beautiful moment
when we all look slightly enchanted. Even the commuters at London Bridge manage a smile or two
before reality reasserts itself.
And there’s that curious,
collective pause.
London’s a city that barrels forward
on rails of habit.
But snow – even a flurry –
forces us to renegotiate how we move. The pavements become
experiments in balance.
People suddenly remember physics. Someone always attempts
to cycle through it
and regrets it within five seconds.
Trains run on delays
that get explained
with increasingly whimsical excuses. And Tube platforms
acquire that faint scent
of damp wool that is essentially
London in bottled form.
Then, of course, the nostalgia kicks in.
Snowfall in London summons ghosts. Schoolchildren shrieking in playgrounds.
The faint tinny rattle
of ancient radiators warming up.
The smell of wet mittens.
You remember winters
when buses still had conductors
and everyone wore hats.
Snow in November stirs memories
you didn’t know
were sitting at the back of the wardrobe waiting to be let out.
And the best part is that
London never quite trusts snow.
It treats it like a charming stranger. Delighted but wary.
If it lingers too long,
the romance crumbles.
Slush appears.
Pavements turn treacherous.
The city becomes a giant cold puddle. But in these first hours,
with the flakes still dancing
and the rooftops turning white, London is briefly, wonderfully otherworldly.
Snow is London’s soft-focus filter.
It forgives the city’s blemishes.
It lends a little sparkle,
a little hush,
a little mischief.
And when it arrives early,
well, that’s a gift.
An unexpected chapter.
A little seasonal overture
before anyone has found the decorations.
So yes, it is early.
But that’s the charm of it.
London in snow is like London smiling. Rare,
fleeting,
and worth stopping for.
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.