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 May 3rd, 2025.
May 3rd. Holy Rood Day.
What in the world is Holy Rood Day you ask?
Ask and thou shalt receive.
Rood is the Old English word for cross. Or gallows. There were lots of roods – lots of crosses – but only one rood was Holy. That was of course the cross Christ was nailed to Crucified on.
And Holy-Rood Day is the day – well, the anniversary of the day – the most famous cross of all was discovered. That was in – so the story goes – the year 326. And who made the find, who found the Holy Rood? Wait for it… St Helena.
St Helena was a woman to be reckoned with. Not only did she find the Holy Rood. She was also the mother of Constantine, the great Emperor.
And this one – this story’s – got legs. Finding the cross Jesus was nailed to some three centuries after the event was a miracle in itself. But this was the miracle that kept on giving.
Fragments of the cross were sold to pilgrims. Well, if you were a believer you would want one of those souvenirs wouldn’t you. It was a win-win because it was a brilliant revenue source for the religious centre that was in possession of the Holy Rood. But here’s the miracle within the miracle. It seems that the holy rood was able to replicate itself. So however many wooden fragments were pared off the holy rood and sold to awed pilgrims, the cross was never whittled away. There was always more holy wood where those holy wood fragments came from. An unending, inexhaustible supply of the precious relic. John Calvin…you heard of him? He was a famous theologian and reformer. Lived about 1200 years after St Helena discovered the Holy Rood. One day John Calvin took stock. He calculated that if all the pieces of the true cross displayed in churhes round the world were put back together it would take at least 300 men to support its weight.
Well, that’s what May 3rd’s got going for it. That’s the significance of this day. And as it happens, we’ll be looking at a very rough hewn old cross today. It’s a World War I battlefield cross. We’ll see it in St Mary Abbots in Kensington. The grand finale for my Kensington Walk is taking my walkers into St Mary Abbots and for ten minutes of high intensity guiding – bing bing bing. Showing them a few particulars it would take them months to find if they wandered in there and poked around on their own – at sea, at a loss – not knowing what’s in there, what to look for, and where it’s to be found. Anyway, yes, I do ten minutes of high ampage, extremely efficient guiding in there at walk’s end. And one of the things I show them is that old battlefield cross. Today of course I’ll be fitting that stop up with the Holy Rood story, reminding them that this is Holy Rood Day so it’s especially appropriate that we’re in here, standing before this old, shaggy, rough hewn battlefield cross on this day of days.
And that, London Walkers, is just batting practice for today’s podcast. The main event is an interview. An interview that actually took place in Kensington a few weeks. Took place in a cafe after I’d wound up that afternoon’s Kensington Walk.
Margaux is our – London Walks’ – miracle. Well, that happened to us. And goes on happening. She’s an SEO expert. SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. She’s a specialist in getting under the bonnet – souping up the London Walks website – so people can find it when they do a Google Search. And then once they’ve found it, read a bit about London Walks and London Walks guides and the walks they do – well, whither this is tending is obvious, isn’t it. We hope, having found us, they like what they’ve found and go on a walk or two. You can think of potential walkers as pilgrims. And, at some little risk of sacrilege, you can think of our website – walks.com – as the Holy Rood. Separating the pilgrims from the Holy Rood is the vast, uncharted wilderness of the internet. Margaux gets the pilgrims across that wilderness to the Holy Rood they’re seeking. So she’s super important. Plus she’s fun and lively and great to work with. She’s a blessing. We’re so lucky to have found her. And since she was in town – French mum and English dad, she lives and works in southern France – anyway since she was in town I suggested to her that we get together and do an interview. It’s in the wings, behind the scenes stuff. And I thought, ‘yeah, I’ll bet there’ll be some London Walkers who’d like to know a little bit about Margaux, hear her story.
So here we go. To continue that baseball metaphor I briefly glanced at, Play Ball. Here’s the Margaux interview. And here’s a link to the MGX website.
[Margaux interview follows]
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.