London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Top of the morning to you, London Walkers, wherever you are. It’s Saturday, January 4th.
This one’s going to be about the walk I’ll be doing this afternoon. Kensington – London’s Royal Village.
So, yes, about that specific walk but there are things that we can extrapolate from it.
And something else about it. London Calling – the London Walks podcast – is fast closing in on its 1500th instalment. And the fact of the matter, if we do 15,000 of them, this one will be the most commonsensical of the lot. And finally, it’s also about this time of the year. And about the weather. What we do about it. How we respond to it.
The given – the hugely important given – is that this is the best city in the world to do walking tours. And not just because of the history and the general interest and the secretive nature of London. Its being the most mysterious of all western cities.
We’ve also got the weather on our side. In Sevilla, in Spain, you can’t do walking tours during the day in July and August. It’s just too hot. Oppressively, dangerously hot. Other end of that scale, you can’t do much in the way of walking tours in New York City in the dead of winter. It’s too bitterly – icily cold. Too much snow. Treacherous footing.
London, happily for us, is a different story. The climate we’re blessed with, we operate year-round. Literally 365 days a year.
But sometimes, like today, it does get a bit nippy. I think we’re looking at about 3 degrees Centigrade this afternoon. That’s 38 Fahrenheit. And, it being January 4th, it gets dark early. So that’s also a factor.
So what’s my response going to be? What can my walkers expect this afternoon. How am I going to keep them warm? How am I going to make sure they see everything, even though it’ll be dark at walk’s end.
The walk normally ends across the street from High Street Kensington Tube Stop. Which is where it starts of course.
We pitch up there a little after 4 o’clock and it’s a magic lantern show. In quick succession we’re looking at a cotton field in Egypt and we’re up on a skyscraper above Manhattan and we’re in Yorkshire shearing a sheep and in the Yukon on a bear hunt. And that’s not forgetting the hart panting for the cooling stream when heated in the chase. Poor hart, you look closely you can see he’s got an arrow in his haunch. And there’s the train surging out of a tunnel. And a ship on the high seas. And an aeroplane winging its way through fleecy clouds. And a cornucopia of luxury goods that’s been tipped over and they’re tumbling out: a pair of very expensive gentleman’s gloves and a flash hat and a stylish teapot. Etc. All of that’s there to see on the High Street. If you know where to look. Of course the unkindest cut for everybody else on the High Street is that they won’t see those things. It’s an extraordinary thought, Kensington High Street is the second busiest shopping street in London – thousands of shoppers descend on it every day – and out of the thousands spend some time on that High Street the only people who will see the bear hunt and cotton picking in Egypt and the sheep shearing in Yorkshire etc. will be my London Walkers. Because I’ll show them where they can see those things. Show them where to look.
But here’s the thing, that magic lantern show is way up on the top of the buildings we give some attention to. And when it gets dark those treats are lost to view. So, well, you’ve guessed, I want my walkers to see those things, so I reroute. The vantage points where we can see the bear hunt and the panting hart and Nubian cotton pickers become, in the dead of winter, the first stops on the walk.
Now what about the cold. A couple of things to bear in mind. Part and parcel of my Kensington Walk is what I’ve got in my parcel: four centuries of old maps and illustrations and very old photographs. And for the record, I’ve had our printer produce sets of them. So each walker – or pair of walkers – gets their own copy to look at. Or I make really big reproductions – A2 size. I don’t hold up an Ipad. That doesn’t pass muster. I want my walkers to be able to see these documents properly.
And the other thing is the wonderful old parish church, St Mary Abbots. We normally end the walk just fifteen yards away from it and I lay on an optional extra. Anyone who would like to go into the church and have me guide it for them for fifteen minutes or so, well, that offer is there for the taking. And usually at least half the group take me up on the offer. But it is an add-on. An optional extra at walk’s end.
But it won’t be this afternoon. We’re going into the church about twenty minutes after the walk starts. I’ll guide the church interior. But while we’re in there we’ll also sit down, near a radiator, we’ll be seated, we’ll be warm, we’ll be comfortable. And that’s where we look at the documents – the old maps and illustrations. Rather than looking at them in situ, outside. Standing there in some cases for five, six, seven minutes while we scrutinise a 280-year-old map. Doing it that way is fine on a warm day in June. But it’s not the best way of doing it on a cold day in January. So we’ll be in the church probably 40 minutes. 30 of those minutes will be taken up with those documents. But what that means is that instead of two hours outside in the cold it’ll be 90 minutes. We’ll still see everything on the walk. It’s just that the ratio of walking to standing and looking and listening will be significantly altered. No long stops. The lengthy explanations will have been rolled out in the church. In the church where we’re seated, comfortable, warm. Years of experience has taught me, standing in the cold can be pretty miserable. The way you stay warm is to keep moving. Punctuated with short, snappy stops.
And hey, I’ve even applied that principle to our time in the church. Even though it’s warm in there. I’ve seen fit to refine our time in there. The point being that if you sit for a long time, your blood goes to your feet, your brain gets a bit stodgy. So the thirty minutes or so that we’re in there poring over those documents – and in some cases hearing longish stories that I normally tell outside – we don’t spend those thirty minutes seated in the same pew. I’ve arranged for us to have three different sit-down stops. Ten minutes each. Or thereabouts. You want to see it in pedagogical terms you can’t fault how we do it. It’s got the best educational pedigree ever. It’s how Aristotle taught. Peripatetic lectures. He taught in his gardens. He and the students would walk for a bit. Get the circulation going. Then they’d stop and he’d give a short lecture. And then they’d walk again. And then there’d be another stop and a short lecture. And so on. Aristotle had figured it out. We’re more alert, more wide awake when we keep moving. With brief stops after each stretch of strolling. Sedentary is half way to stupor. Peripatetic lectures…that’s the definition of a walking tour. The difference is that when the church is the garden we’re walking in, we’ve got some deck chairs to sit down in – deck chairs that answer to the name pews – deck chairs to sit down in after we’ve stood up and walked, say, from the front pew – the royal pew – to the one overseen by Mr Mason, the Royal Coachman.
Yes, that’ll do for a parting shot. On today’s walk people will be sitting in a pew that’s held royal bottoms. Makes for a pretty special bragging rights email. “What am I going to do today? Well, I’m going to sit in a place that’s held a royal bottom.”
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.