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THE SATURDAY MORNING LONDON WALKS |
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THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON LONDON WALKS |
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THE SATURDAY EVENING LONDON WALKS |
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THE SATURDAY EXPLORER DAYS - Away We Go! |
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IN THE FAR OFF TIME - The London of Shakespeare & Co.  10 am on Saturday from
Monument Tube Fish Street Hill exit
Back down the centuries we go. Take a look at this map. That's where we're heading. Some of what you can see on that map is still there. Translation: primeval London is still there - the past is always buried in the present. It's still there literally. It's still there structurally. And it's still there Literarily. Because this is where English poetry began 'in the Monthe of Maii'. Chaucer's pilgrims set out from here. Modern drama was born here. In short, say hello to the Bankside district, home to Shakespeare's Globe, old and new, and the other Elizabethan theatres (and the stews and bear-baiting dens and St. Saviour's, where he buried his brother Edmund, and an ancient, swaybacked coaching inn in whose courtyard Shakespeare's plays are still performed). And a bonus: it's also cobbled, echoing Clink Street threading between brick cliffs of warehouses where bars of sunlight probe the shadows - the London of Dickens's troubled childhood, the London which haunted him to his dying day. Bottom line: the past is high impact here. High impact like nowhere else in London. In short, this is a thrilling walk! Okay, time for some audio.Here's Shaughan - at the site of the original Globe Theatre - giving us a stunningly vivid glimpse of the Bankside 400 years ago.
The In the Far Off Time Walk takes place
every Saturday at 10 am
Meet Shaughan just outside
Monument Tube, the Fish Street Hill exit
Monument Tube is on
the Circle & District Lines
N.B. This walk does not duplicate Wednesday's and Sunday's
Shakespeare's and Dickens's London - The Old City Walk.
 Guided by Shaughan
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10.30 am on Saturdays
from EmbankmentTube |
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What a wonderful goulash of a walk this is. It gets you into streets that you'd never find off your own bat - streets that look like an old movie shot through a vaselined lens. Into a neighbourhood that precious few Londoners have seen, let alone visitors. It's a thrilling discovery - the real deal. There's no better sense of place in London - and no finer architectural effect. Yellow brick, perfectly preserved, all unselfconscious self-respect, real Cockney - unaltered Dickensian London. And the miracle is that it's still there, embedded in central London - screwed in to the big city. That discovery alone makes this one of those bewitching "somewhere else" London Walks. And getting there is a bit of all right too - because there's a dramatic river crossing, a stroll along the Thames, the world's foremost arts complex, London's best loved old theatre, a real London street market (instead of a tourist trap), a stunning bird's eye view of the capital (and there's a lift, so we won't have to climb hundreds of stairs!), and buckets of character.  Here's Adam reading from his chapter on Somewhere Else London in our book, London Walks, London Stories. And here's a "grab" from the walk itself.
The "Somewhere Else" London Walk takes place
every Saturday at 10.30 am
and every Tuesday at 2 pm.
Meet Adam or Stephanie just outside the exit of EmbankmentTube
(they're normally outside the exit that leads out towards the Thames).
EmbankmentTube is on
theCircle, Bakerloo, District & Northern Lines
Guided by Adam or Stephanie
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DOCKLANDS Cobblestones, Quaysides & Cloud-capped Towers
10.30 am on the first Saturday of every month
from Canary Wharf Tube, main exit*(N.B. when Canary Wharf Tube is closed - as it will be on Jan. 3rd and Feb. 7th - take the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) to Heron Quays (a DLR station). It's a very short walk from Heron Quays to the Canary Wharf Juibilee Line exit. Heron Quays is in fact closer to the Canary Wharf Jubilee Line station than the Canary Wharf DLR station is. And it's all clearly signposted.)
And so we come to the most extraordinary letter in London's alphabet.First, the bass note: the river. Down here the Thames is broad-shouldered, easy and big. There's a salt tang in the air. And gulls. And cat-o'-nine-tails winds. Haunted winds that whisper of tall ships and swollen sails and spices and silks and rum. And then make good on that promise when they Zephyr us round corners into a pungent past of centuries-old sugar warehouses and ships workshops and the Dockmaster's House. So, yes, like the river, time bends here. And flows. Flows backward. And then, round other corners, ricochets into the fireworks of a futuristic London. Because this is Wall Street on Water - a place where cutting-edge, 21st century power and energy are made visible and tangible.A place where this time-honoured city is re-inventing itself. Spectacularly. In short, if you like walks that have Surprise Me written all over them...well, you just turned up trumps. And a bonus...we'll end at the new, not-to-be-missed River Thames & Docklands Museum.
 The Docklands Walk only takes place
on the first Saturday of every month.
just outside the main Jubilee Line exit -
NOT the East exit - of Canary WharfTube.
N.B., a 2-Zone Travel Card (or Oyster Card) is a good idea, because we take a couple of short journeys on the DLR. And in any case you'll be able to use it for your initial journey to Canary Wharf Tube for the start of the walk; and use it for your return journey at walk's end; and indeed use it for the rest of the day. Bottom line: you'll save yourself some dosh if you're a card-carrying London Walker!
Canary WharfTube is on
the Jubilee Line
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NOTTING HILL & PORTOBELLO MARKET |
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Many a beau without a shilling,
Many a widow not unwilling;
Many a bargain, if you strike it:
This is London! How d'ye like it?
John Bancks, "A Description Of London"
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FROM THE REPERTORY - 10.45 am |
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OLD WESTMINSTER - 1,000 Years of History
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11 am on Saturdays
from WestminsterTube, exit 4
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This is the cornerstone, the great seminal London Walk. Miss it and you've missed London. For Old Westminster is London at its grandest: the place where kings and queens are crowned, where they lived, and often were buried. It's the forge of the national destiny, the place where the heart of the Empire beat, the Mecca of politicians throughout the ages. The past here is cast in stone and we take it all in: ancient Westminster Hall, the Houses of Parliament, the Jewel Tower, and Westminster Abbey. And to see it with a great guide is to have that past suddenly rise to the surface...like seeing a photographic print come up in a darkroom. It doesn't get any better than this. And embarras de richesse, we'll also explore the private face of Westminster - the London equivalent of Georgetown! Unlike the tourist hordes, we'll get to see the hidden and ever so picturesque Georgian back streets where all the political salons are! We end at the Cabinet War Rooms, the fortified bunker that housed Winston Churchill's centre of operations during the war. You'll get a brilliant discount on the price of admission if you want to visit the War Rooms.
And fancy a listen? Here's Karen doing her high wire act across the mid-17th century. And some more? Click here. It's the opening of the Secret Westminster chapter in our book, London Walks London Stories. A chapter that was inspired by - and draws on - this walk. And if you fancy a listen AND a watch click here. It's that little Introduction to London Walks video we've knocked out and, yes, it stars Karen and this walk and a couple of dozen happy walkers!
The Old Westminster Walk takes place:
every Saturday at 11 am;
every Sunday at 2.45 pm;
every Tuesday at 2 pm;
and every Thursday at 2 pm.
Meet your guide just outside
exit 4 of WestminsterTube.
WestminsterTube is on
theCircle, District & Jubilee Lines
Guided on Saturdays by Karen
Guided on Sundays by Graham
Guided on Tuesdays by Judy
Guided on Thursdays by Shaughan or David
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THE LONDON OF OSCAR WILDE 11 am on Saturdays
from Green ParkTube
(meet outside the north exit, on the corner)
The 1890s. Gaslit streets. The rattle of hansom cabs. The silvery laughter of stagedoor Johnnies and chorus girls. The London of Whistler, Beardsley, Shaw, Lillie Langtry, and Gilbert & Sullivan. Above all, though, the London of Oscar Wilde. Oscar - of all writers, the best company. Oscar - at the height of his fame as dramatist and wit, amusing and outraging Victorian society by turns. Oscar - refulgent, majestic, ready to fall. And fall he did. His life came crashing down...mired in scandal and broken in three of the most celebrated trials of all time. We follow in Oscar's footsteps...tracing his triumph and tragedy in the very places where the drama unfolded, bringing to an end the Naughty Nineties. One of those "very places" Alan's talking about right here, in this bit of audio.
And while we're at it, why not hear from a walker? (Indeed, I learned a few things about the walk myself from reading her "review").
The London of Oscar Wilde Walk takes place
every Saturday morning at 11 am.
Meet Alan just outside Green ParkTube
(outside the north exit, on the corner).
Green ParkTube is on
theVictoria, Jubilee & Piccadilly Lines
Guided by Alan (who will be attired as Mr.Wilde himself, green carnation and all!)
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OLD CAMDEN TOWN - Catacombs, Canals & Cafes11 am on Saturdays
from Camden TownTube
Camden Town is the London smorgesbord par excellence. A place where the past melts imperceptibly into the post-modern. A place of canals, cafes, cobblestones, Catacombs, craftsmen's studios, street cred, NW1 literati, Industrial Age iron and brick, leafy terraces and crescents, antiques, artists, actors, and art deco. And that's not to mention Camden Lock, London's busiest and brightest market - and its fourth largest tourist attraction, which "at its best combines the bonhomie, excitement and buzz of Rio's Carnival"! The Lock is the centrepiece of the walk, but Judith, a local artist, also explores the sights behind the sights, unrolling the shifting scene like one of those Victorian panoramas: everything from street style and Neobeatniks to Dickens, Dingwalls, and the Vanishing Viscount by the canal; and from George Bernard Shaw and Toss the Pieman to Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan and the Electric Ballroom. Afterward, if you like, you can take a traditional narrowboat to the Zoo or Little Venice.
The Old Camden Town Walk takes place
every Saturday morning at 11 am.
Meet Judith just outside the exit of
Camden TownTube.
Camden TownTube is on
theNorthern Line
Guided by Judith
"I thought of London spread out in the sun
Its post districts packed like squares of wheat."
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings, 1964
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THE BEATLES IN MY LIFE WALK |
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THIS IS LONDON! The Flash-Bang-Lightning Highlights Tour!*
1.45 pm on Saturdays
from Tower HillTube
We begin as London began - with the Thames, on the Thames. Silvery lifeline, main highway, chief processional route, the Thames is, quite simply, London's Grand Canal. Tower Bridge, where we embark, and Westminster Bridge, where we go ashore, bracket London and to take ship on this stretch of water is to glissade down the centuries. Here kings and queens were borne in painted and gilt state barges; on the one shore, Wren's St.Paul's Cathedral engraved the sublime against the London sky; on the other, Shakespeare wrought his magic, "not of an age, but for all time!" The Thames knew great men and women in death, too: these waters bore Elizabeth I's funeral and Nelson's and Churchill's. And hand in glove with the history...the most famous of all London views, as throat-catching today as it was to Wordsworth 200 years ago: Earth has not anything to show more fair. Ashore, we take in the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. James's Park, Whitehall, Buckingham and St. James's Palaces, the Mall and Trafalgar Square. As ever, the sights behind the sights is our watchword. In short, this is the walk that most memorably captures London's inimitable mixture of idiosyncratic detail and grand, powerful statement.
*Opens with a boat ride and closes with our most magical - indeed fairyland - vista!
N.B. the boat trip costs £3 (a huge discount on the normal price).
This is London! - The Flash-Bang-Lightning Highlights Tour!
takes place every Saturday afternoon at 1.45 pm.
The meeting point is:
just outside the exit of Tower HillTube.
Tower HillTube is on the Circle & District Lines.
Guided by Chris or Judy or Stephanie
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OLD KENSINGTON - London's Royal Village2 pm on Saturdays
from High Street KensingtonTube
Meet by Pret a Manger, in the rotunda just beyond the ticket barrier
This one's special. It's rarely the first - or even the second or third - walk people go on, but when they do get round to taking it, they often say it's the one they liked the most. And no wonder, because Royal Kensington is London at its best - picturesque, stimulating, and full of character. Its parts are as delightful as London can provide: everything from warmly handsome old Kensington Palace (home to the late Diana, Princess of Wales) to Kensington Gardens (all meadows, shaded walks, bowers, and flower gardens, it might be the grounds of a stately home in some rural shire) to cobbled little soigne lanes and mews, girt with pretty cottages and charming old shops; and from millionaires" row and regal avenues to beautifully kept squares and a clutch of the world's greatest museums; let alone a garden in the sky (the largest and most breathtaking roof garden in Europe); the secluded town house of the greatest Londoner of the 20th-century, an American president's flat, the most astonishing small literary house in the world, acres of gentility, a secret trap-door into a hidden world, and more history and colourful characters than you can shake a stick at. And afterward you can visit the State Apartments or take tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace! Now who's for a visual or six? Or if you'd like another word or two, click here. Or here.
And finally, how about some audio? First, a "bite" from the walk itself: here's "the voice" - Angela - doing her stuff. Enjoy. And for a second course, well, as you've surely guessed, there's going to be a chapter on Kensington in our book, London Walks London Stories. It's one of the five chapters that have fallen to me, David, to write. And I've done the deed. Needless to say, it draws on - and is inspired by - the walk. And transforms it. It complements it, in other words. It's a companion piece to the walk. Anyway, here's a taster - both of the book and Kensington. In short, here's how the chapter opens.
The Old Kensington Walk takes place
every Saturday at 2 pm
and every Thursday at 2 pm.
Meet David or Angela or Adam in the rotunda just beyond the ticket barrier ("subway turnstile" in North American parlance) of High StreetKensington Tube.
High Street KensingtonTube is on
the Circle & District Lines
Guided on Saturdays by David or Angela
Guided on Thursdays by David or Adam
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The Roof Garden - The English Woodland |
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OLD MARYLEBONE - Psst! Read on...2 pm on Saturdays
from Bond StreetTube
(meet just outside exit 2, by the
HMV shop in Stratford Place)
"London specialises in hiding the best of itself." Old Marylebone's a case in point. Here you'll lose your way and find your heart...get gratifyingly lost and get London back the way it was. The way it was at the time of the American Revolution! The way it was just after the Napoleonic Wars - for this is Regency London at its best! The way it was for Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett - we'll see the old church where they were married! What else? Well, this one's fascinating because it's so unexpected - a quirky old village in the heart of the West End; delightful because it's our greenest walk; revealing because it takes us into one of the private worlds London excels in; stimulating because it's like a series of flashbacks to every bit of old London you've ever seen; brilliant because of the private mansion we'll go into for a quick look at a couple of world famous paintings; satisfying because everything locks into place like the lines of a sonnet; and, finally, brilliant because of the sheer voltage of the finale: here is the loveliest set-piece in London, the final expression of a classical age, "a definition of western civilization in a single view".
The Old Marylebone Walk takes place
every Saturday afternoon at 2 pm.
Meet Tom or Helena or Margaret by the HMV shop in Stratford Place -
it's just outside exit 2 -
of Bond StreetTube.
Bond StreetTube is on
theCentral & Jubilee Lines
N.B. This is one of our "weather proof" walks - if the weather is completely foul, we'll spend more time in the gallery.
Guided by Tom, Helena, or Margaret,
"I think it [London] on the whole the best point of view in the world."
Henry James, Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 13 November 1880
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2 pm on Saturdays
from Warwick AvenueTube
If you fancy something completely different, this is the walk for you. Little Venice is the prettiest and most romantic spot in town. A unique combination of white stucco, greenery, and water, it boasts the finest early Victorian domestic architecture in London; a Who's Who of famous residents (Robert Browning, Edward Fox, Joan Collins, Annie Lennox, and Sigmund Freud to name but a few); and a jewel of a "village" street. And that's not to mention its canals. One of them - Regent's Canal - is known as the "loveliest inland waterway in England". Part of the walk is along the canal towpath - which to this day is studded with fragments of evidence that bring the Age of Canals to life. And afterwards you can have tea - or a bite to eat - at a stylish canal-side cafe. And why not lend an ear? Which is by way of saying, here's a bit of audio from this walk. It's Shaughan in all his full-throated - let alone multi-charactered - glory! And you'd like some more? How about this? This one encapsulates a lot about Shaughan and his walks - just how much fun they are, how talented he is, why people like him so much and the kind of experience he turns a London Walk into. Enjoy.
Cue Shaughan, who guides the walk: "Walking this one is always a revelation - behind the elegant facade is the other story; the maids, butlers, cooks & grooms - the downstairs-backstairs people who made it work. I talk about the rise, decline and resurgence of wealth in the area - these days there are quite enough "Celebs" to turn Maida Vale into "Media Vale". I drop more mames on this one than you can fit in your basket. And running through this stucco wedding cake - the artery that supplied goods from the Heart of England to its Brain - The Grand Union Canal. Look at London from both sides for an afternoon, and finish with chocolate cake and a boat ride."
The Little Venice Walk takes place
every Saturday at 2 pm;
every Sunday at 2 pm;
and every Wednesday at 11 am
Meet Shaughan just outside the exit
of Warwick AvenueTube.
Warwick AvenueTube is on
theBakerloo Line
Guided on Saturdays and Sundays by Shaughan
Guided on Wednesdays by Peter or Richard III
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2 pm on Saturdays
from HolbornTube
The British Museum is the big one...the most important museum on the planet. It's an incomparably rich treasure-chest, brimming with things of world historical importance. The Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian antiquities and mummies, the Elgin Marbles, the Black Obelisk, the Magna Carta, the 2,000-year-old Lindow Bog Man, the Sutton Hoo treasure...here is civilisation, manifest. Here the past turns on its pivots to face the 21st century. The snag is that you can't see for looking...both because of the embarrassment of riches and the sheer size of the place (the building covers 13.5 acres - set off in the wrong direction and you have to walk three times too far). Indeed, how you see it is almost as important as what you see. "The best commentary on the revolution of Greek art and the quality of its achievement is...simply to come direct to the Elgin room from the Egyptian and Assyrian ones, as if into an explosion of life, even, as in the frieze, of gaiety." Which is by way of saying, to see these things with a great guide...well, you'll never be quite the same again. In short, the secret is to use your time at the British Museum well.
Okay, time to take the gloves off with this one. GO ON THIS WALK. Coleridge once said that watching Kean act was like reading Shakespeare by lightning. This walk has that kind of ampage.I'll go further: it's the only London Walk that's got that kind of ampage. These artefacts - and a great guide - it's the Everest - the summit - of this activity, this profession, this pursuit. It all comes together here - History, Art, Western Civilisation (and its counterparts). Who we are - and why we are what we are. It's more than heady - it's thrilling. Here's an example. It's Brian, shedding incandescent light on the Parthenon.(If you thought those were just some old Greek statues - of no moment, really, nothing to do with our modern age - well, these 90 seconds will have you mopping your brow.) And this is just his introduction!
For a chaser, try this. Enjoy. N.B. this walk is a moveable feast - a diadem of delights, an amazing technicolour dream-coast. In short, every stop is cause for wonder. So come on back when you get a chance, there'll be more to sample here from time to time. |
And on that note methinks it's time to garnish the words, words, words with a little photo essay. Open sesame by clicking here.
The British Museum tour takes place:
every Saturday at 2 pm,
every Monday at 2.15 pm
and every Wednesday at 2 pm
Meet your guide just outside the exit of
HolbornTube.
HolbornTube is on
theCentral & Piccadilly Lines
Guided on Saturdays by Karen
Guided on Mondays by Tom or Chris or Hilary
Guided on Wednesday by Molly or Donald
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"The spy is as old as history..."
"Espionage is the world's second oldest profession
and just as honorable as the first."
Michael J. Barrett, assistant general counsel of the CIA,
Journal of Defence and Diplomacy, February 1984
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SPIES' & SPYCATCHERS' LONDON 2.30 pm on Saturdays
from Piccadilly CircusTube
(meet by the Clydesdale Bank, outside the subway 3 exit)
"Espionage was the hot end of the cold war"
Spies' London is peopled with Ian Fleming's James Bond and John Le Carre's George Smiley. But it's also the London of the genuine article. The London where for over 40 years Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and the mysterious fifth man infiltrated the British and American security services and spied for the Soviet Union. This walk takes us into that hole and corner, cloak and dagger London - into the secret places of that murky nether-world. Here we venture into the covert London of MI5, MI6, and the American O.S.S., progenitor of the CIA. Here we close in on the American Soviet agent who finally confessed and unveiled the "Cambridge Ring". Here we pinpoint the "dead letter box" and unmask the fifth man. Here, in Spies' London, fact really is stranger than fiction.
And on that note, here's some audio for you. D-Day first. Then a bearing on a nerve centre. Then some Cold War.
The Spies' & Spycatchers' London Walk
takes place every Saturday afternoon at 2.30 pm.
Look for Spymaster Alan.
He'll be topped off with a black hat...and a green carnation.
He'll be just outside the subway 3 exit of Piccadilly CircusTube -
by the Clydesdale Bank.
Piccadilly CircusTube is on
theBakerloo & Piccadilly Lines
Guided by Alan
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FROM THE REPERTORY - The 2.30 pm Tour du Jour! |
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BLOOD CURDLING LONDON - Welcome to the Nightmare Factory |