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 Tuesday, January 27th, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
You don’t have to like rugby.
You don’t even have to understand it.
That’s not a disclaimer. That’s the invitation.
Because this story isn’t really about a game. It’s about London. About Britain. About how a country explains itself through rules, and then immediately breaks them.
Let me start with a voice from the crowd. Katreya.
“I knew nothing about rugby and couldn’t have cared less. And I absolutely loved this walk.”
That’s the bullseye. That’s who this walk is for.
Yes, rugby lovers come away grinning. Of course they do.
But so do the blissfully indifferent. The mildly curious. The downright sceptical. The people who hear the word “scrum” and think it’s something you find on your shoe.
Why?
Because it all comes down to the guiding.
Meet your fly-half. Rick Jones.
Blue Badge superstar. Distinguished London arts critic. Walking encyclopaedia. Dazzling raconteur.
And for good measure, once a Harlequin. Literally once.
Yes. That Rick Jones.
Rick has done something very London Walks. He’s picked up the ball and run with it.
We’ve never done a “sports” walk before. And frankly, this barely is one.
What it is, is a London story. Told through a game that turns out to explain rather a lot about Britain.
Culture.
Class.
Accident.
Argument.
Pubs.
Schools.
Tribal loyalties.
And that glorious national habit of inventing rules and then testing exactly how far they’ll bend before they snap.
“What if I’m clueless about rugby?”
Perfect. You’re hired.
As Katreya put it, and she really does say it better than anyone:
“Rick guided us through streets tourists overlook. His style is eccentric, his knowledge breathtaking, and the tour was wildly entertaining. I might even watch a game now.”
That’s not conversion. That’s alchemy.
Now, the walk itself. Or if you prefer, the match.
We meet at Temple Tube. First one’s on February 6th. Second one’s on February 13th. Third one February 27th. And the fourth and final one is on March 13th. Start time for all four of them is 2.30 pm. And surely you’ll have guessed, Rick’s running them in conjunction with the big Six Nations Championship tournament.
Anyway, yes, we form up. Scrum. Kick off. Call it what you like, at Temple Tube.
And straight away, you’re into it. Unexpected streets. Hidden histories. London doing what London does best, which is to reveal itself sideways.
Our first try is St Clement Danes.
William Webb Ellis was vicar here in the 1840s.
Yes. That Webb Ellis.
Back in 1823, as a schoolboy at Rugby, he did something that would echo for two centuries. He picked up the ball and ran with it.
With a fine disregard for the rules.
Seven nil.
From there we press on via Lincoln’s Inn Fields, one of London’s great breathing spaces, to the Freemasons’ Arms.
A pub with a big story.
This is where football split in two in 1863. Association football went one way. Rugby went the other.
It’s the moment of divergence. The sporting equivalent of a fork in the road.
And it happens, of course, in a pub.
We kick a field goal. Ten nil.
Then it’s on to the Rugby Estate. Eight acres of London, gifted to Rugby School in 1567. A slice of the capital quietly explaining how institutions reproduce themselves, century after century, brick by brick.
And finally, the Rugby Tavern in Rugby Street. Two hundred years of memorabilia. Two hundred years of stories. Game over. Applause.
But here’s the thing.
This walk isn’t asking you to memorise rules. It’s asking you to understand a country.
Britain’s class system.
Its schools.
Its regional identities.
Its fierce loyalties.
Its pubs.
Its arguments.
Its love of tradition.
And its equally strong love of breaking with tradition at exactly the right moment.
If you want to understand this place, it helps to understand the game that means so much to so many of its people.
Why now?
Timing. Perfect timing.
This is the Bicentenary plus one. Two hundred years since that moment at Rugby School, with the added pleasure of hindsight. A once in a generation excuse to tell this story properly. And to walk it.
And yes, for the record, rugby really does run in Rick’s family. His nephew is Huw Jones, Scotland international centre.
But don’t worry. This walk never tackles you.
As one walker put it:
“Knowing your lineouts from your scrumdowns doesn’t matter a jot. It’s the rebellious characters, the history, and the London places that make it come alive.”
Exactly.
So here it is. Rugby Tour Extraordinaire.
You don’t have to like rugby.
You don’t have to understand it.
You just have to like a great London story, brilliantly told, on the streets where it happened.
London calling.
London Walks connecting.
Streets ahead.
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.