London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Thursday, September 4th, 2025.
Yes, London Calling Book Club Corner first.
In the Chair today, actor and Blue Badge Guide Sam Bond. How do you go wrong with a name like Sam Bond. “Bond, Sam Bond.”
Sam’s a new addition to Team London Walks and I’m wheeling him out today because he’s covering my Kensington Walk on Saturday. In fact, bumped into him today when I was guiding the walk. Sam was going over the ground, as they say.
Anyway, Sam’s got three on the go. His first book is Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski.
Over to Sam.
He says, “I found this at a church sale recently.
When I was first free of the dictates and control of the Education System, my desire was to get out there and travel. I was lucky to be part of the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, which effectively started my long-term career as an actor. We travelled all over the country with a production of TS Elliot’s Murder in The Cathedral and this ended up being performed on the Moscow Arts Theatre stage during Perastroika and Glasnost. My second travel adventure for that year off – it was 1988 – was to go round the perimeter of Northern America on Amtrak and the Greyhound. A journey this book also does and for me reminds me what courage it takes to get out there…alone and explore…the world.”
Ah, many thanks, Sam. I like the sound of Stranger on a Train. I’ll be adding that one to the shelves. And thanks for covering Saturday’s Kensington Walk.
Which leads right in to today’s main course. Sam’s covering my Kensington Walk because I’m going to be up in Hadley Wood. Which is by way of saying, it’s here at last. A walk that’s been over half a century in the making. Or, depending on how you’re counting, over 2,000 years in the making.
I’m talking about The Ultimate London Walk. The walk all the way across London. From the northern edge of London up in Hertfordshire, to the southern edge down in Surrey. Done in stages – 14 walks over five weeks. Beginning Saturday and running through early October.
A first. Something nobody’s ever done. A London nobody’s ever seen. In all of London’s billions of journeys, no one’s ever walked this one.
And it starts this Saturday. That moment – it’s the spark in the darkness. London tohubohu to London let there be light.
And for sure, I’m going to be there. Be there with the microphone. Hope to get a few soundbites from some of the walkers.
And so this edition of London Calling is a bit of an advancer for the 30 or so walkers who are going to be there for ignition and lift-off. For the curtain raiser on the most extraordinary journey in London Walks’ storied history.
Here you go London Walkers, here’s a little amuse-bouche – a taster – before the banquet begins on Saturday morning. Because that’s when it all kicks off: The Ultimate London Walk, the great trek across the capital, north to south, Hertfordshire to Surrey. Fourteen stages, five autumn weeks, two thousand years of history under your boots.
And where do we start? Hadley Wood Station. Now, the name alone is a bit of poetry, isn’t it? Hadley Wood. It sounds like somewhere you might stumble across Mr. Toad, or Jane Austen characters out for a turn, or a Regency duelist polishing his pistols. And in a funny way, you wouldn’t be far off.
Because Hadley Wood is steeped in history. This isn’t some anonymous commuter-belt stop. This is border country – London nudging into Hertfordshire – and it’s seen its fair share of drama.
Take the name Hadley. It goes right back to the Saxons. It means “heather clearing.” You can almost smell the heather on the breeze when you roll it around in your mouth. A rustic beginning, but the wood itself hides some very un-rustic tales.
For starters, Hadley Wood was once part of the great hunting grounds of the Bishop of London. Yes, my lord bishop, crosier in one hand, crossbow in the other. Bishops then weren’t just men of God; they were landowners, power-brokers, keen shots. They owned vast swathes of Middlesex. And Hadley Wood was their playground.
Fast forward to the 18th century and the land gets parcelled off, turned into grand estates. Cue the arrival of the Crescent – a sweeping arc of Regency houses, the kind of development you’d expect in Bath or Bloomsbury. And with it came the genteel classes, swelling the population, giving Hadley its elegant stamp.
But history isn’t all tea and crescents. There’s a whiff of powder here too – gunpowder. Because Hadley Wood lies just a musket-shot from Hadley Green, site of one of the great dust-ups of English history: the Battle of Barnet, 1471, Wars of the Roses. Picture it. Edward IV versus Warwick the Kingmaker. Thousands of men hacking and slashing through the mist. Shakespeare dramatised it in Henry VI Part III. And our walk forms up right on the doorstep of that blood-soaked turf. A London Walk that begins with Shakespeare and the Wars of the Roses – you couldn’t ask for a better overture.
Notable personalities? Plenty. The 20th century saw Hadley Wood become something of a celebrity bolt-hole. Comedians, musicians, actors – a few sought the privacy of its leafy lanes. In the 1930s the glamorous actress Gracie Fields had her eye on property nearby. More recently, footballers and pop stars have nested here. It’s the kind of place where you half expect to see a Bentley nosing out of a gravel driveway.
And let’s not forget the railway. The station itself – our meeting point – dates from 1885. The coming of the Great Northern Railway transformed Hadley Wood from a sleepy enclave into a commuter hub. But it never lost that air of seclusion. Even today, it feels like a secret pocket of countryside perched on London’s edge.
And finally, there’s the romance of the setting itself. Wooded slopes, elegant villas, the sense of space. Hadley Wood is where London exhales, loosens its collar, lets the greenery creep back in. Standing there on Saturday morning, you’ll have one foot in Hertfordshire, one in London.
That’s the genius loci of the place. A liminal zone. A perfect place to begin a liminal journey – across the whole metropolis.
So, appetites whetted? They should be. The Ultimate London Walk begins in a landscape haunted by Shakespeare’s battles, blessed by bishops, shaped by railways, and sprinkled with celebrity stardust.
Saturday morning. Hadley Wood Station. Start line. See you Saturday morning.
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.