THE
LONDON Explorer Day This one's a tour de force - Eternal London in a day! Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the Changing of the Guard, Admiralty Arch, Trafalgar Square, a lunch break, the Banqueting House, the Changing of the Horse Guards, No. 10 Downing Street, old Scotland Yard, the boat ride down the Thames past St. Paul's Cathedral and the Globe Theatre to Tower Bridge and tour in the Tower of London. Wow! N.B. This Explorer Day will not take place on December 31 Return to top
SOHO
IN THE MORNING The brush that painted London sober, sombre and genteel missed Soho. What a delightful hotch-potch the place is. A graceful old square and courtyards and passages that burrow unpredictably between the streets...and everything humming with life. Shutters going up and flower boxes being watered, freshly baked bread carried into restaurants, waiters in white aprons serving Turkish coffee at sidewalk cafes, Chinatown bestirring itself, the colour and clamour of Berwick Street market (if it weren't for the Cockney accents you'd think you were in a Moroccan souk). What a tonic! Return to top
THE
VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM WALK Welcome to Aladdin's Cave. Welcome to a spellbinding couple of hours. Welcome to a treasure house of vast dimensions and wealth. Welcome to the V & A. Here, like nowhere else, we experience history - because it's sensuous and immanent in these beautiful objects, rather than something dimly guessed at in the dark backward and abysm of time. Here the sense of wonder, of discovery - of moving through realms of gold - never flags. Here is one of the great sights of the world - the seven magnificent Raphael cartoons. Here are the exotica of the Orient. Here is the Great Bed of Ware. Here is fashion from the Renaissance to the present day. Here are bronzes, carpets, sculpture, and cloths of silver and gold. Here, in short, is a rhapsody of objects d'art. (And of statistics: there are over seven miles of exhibits.) As with the British Museum, the key, the secret...is to use your time well. And if you want to make a day of it, how about combining the tour with a spot of shopping at Harrods, which is only a stone's throw away. And if you go on the Friday morning V & A walk, you can have lunch in the V & A's extremely civilised café! N.B., the V & A has recently introduced admission charges, but students and seniors go for free. The Adult admission charge is £4.50 And you'll like this: there's no admission charge for Monday's V & A walk! This walk takes place every Monday at 4:00pm and every Friday at 10:45am Return to top
HIDDEN
LONDON This walk is the distillation of a brilliant guide's 25 years' experience probing the hidden places and forgotten nooks of the world's most elusive city. Exploring parts of London that few people know exist - up creeping lanes, round out-of-the-way corners, past secret islands of green - June's at her inimitable best. "She's evolved a highly entertaining style of her own blend of historical commentary and bizarre anecdote laced with mildly scurrilous gossip about past and present celebrities and defunct royals" (The New York Times). In such places and with such a guide, the past becomes our present. Return to top
"London
specialises in hiding the best of itself."
"THE
WESTMINSTER NOBODY KNOWS" This walk takes place every Tuesday and Friday at 11:00am. Return to top
THE
OLD JEWISH QUARTER This walk traces the history of London's Jewish community in the East End. It's a story that embraces the poverty of the pogrom refugees and the glittering success of the Rothschilds; the eloquence of the 19th-century Prime Minister Disraeli and the spiel of the Petticoat Lane stallholder; the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg and the poetry-in-motion of Abe Saperstein's Harlem Globetrotters. Set amid the alleys and back streets of colourful Spitalfields and Whitechapel, it's a tale of synagogues and sweatshops, Sephardim and soup kitchens. This walk takes
place every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 11:30am. N.B. Whenever possible we visit the famous Old Synagogue; they ask for a £1 donation. Return to top
LEGAL
& ILLEGAL LONDON - the Inns of Court The Inns of Court - habitat of the wigged and gowned English barrister - could pass for a collection of Oxford and Cambridge colleges right in the heart of London. They are a warren of cloisters, courtyards, and passageways set amongst some of the best gardens in London. So: ancient rites and customs, high drama, colourful characters, and matters of life and death amid delightful surroundings. It's a rich confection, making this the prettiest and most historical of our central London walks. This walk takes place every Monday at 2:00pm, every Wednesday at 11:00am, and every Friday at 2:00pm. Return to top
CLASSIC
LONDON - "St. Paul's & the River Thames" "Afloat upon ethereal tides St. Paul's above the city rides" This is, quite simply, the perfect recipe for a London Walk. Because St. Paul's and the river Thames are unforgettable London...the epitome of what makes Cockneys homesick...the indispensable bass line over which the rest of this great city shapes its harmonies. First we'll tour the cathedral...experience that cold shock straight from the past, beauty as a genius conceived it, grace that we had forgotten. Then we go down to the river...to the Millennium Mile...to the tiara on the Thames...where history and tomorrow peal likes bells. Return to top
N.B., This
is one of our "weather-proof" walks - if it's completely foul outside
we'll simply spend more time in St. Paul's! There is an admission
charge to St. Paul's, which is all the more reason for seeing it with
an expert! That way you'll be sure to get your money's worth.
ECCENTRIC
LONDON - "London is stranger than fiction"
This is a collector's piece of a walk...one that'll change the way you see central London. It teems with unexpected delights, odd places and passing strange things and people. You'll crack the mystery of the Trafalgar Square lions (and a royal statue), learn how an acrobat risked everything at St. Martin's in the Fields, and whether the spinning dome at the top of the Coliseum actually spins. Orson Welles and Sir John Betjeman put in an appearance...as does the most eccentric bookshop in the world. Enjoy! Speaking of which, if you've worked up an appetite, afterward sensationally delicious cream cakes and wondrously refreshing tea beckon. Return to top
CHARLES
DICKENS'S LONDON This walk is a real eye-opener. It's a sojourn into a lost city - an Atlantis. Which is why Jean, who guides the walk in Victorian costume, doesn't look at all out of place in her bonnet and shawl and apron. Because this London - Dickens's London - has kept the 20th century at bay. It's a London of nooks and crannies and alleyways and gas lamps and 18th- and 19th-century houses - and no cars! It's the London where Dickens lived and worked. It's the London of the 400-year-old Old Curiosity Shop and David Copperfield and Pip and Pickwick. It's "Inimitable" - like Dickens himself. Return to top
"This is
a London particular….A fog, miss."
"the most exciting walk in London...it can do more to interpret the city than anything else, a real skeleton key" If you only have time for one walking tour, this is the one to go on - it's the classic London pub walk. It takes in London's last remaining galleried coaching inn, its best riverside walkway, its oldest market, the finest art nouveau pub in England, the church where Harvard University's founder was baptised, and an 18th-century pub that brews its own beer - plus lashings of Shakespeare, a jot of Dickens, lots of pub lore, and London's best skyline panorama. It gets better. Because there's also the recently discovered remains of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (and its sister playhouse The Rose)...and the thrilling and faithful reproduction of The Globe that's risen Phoenix-like only a stone's throw away. Let alone the astonishing replica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the ship that the great Elizabethan mariner sailed around the world over 400 years ago. Anchored there in the murky Thames, its timbers creaking eerily in the misty London night and The Globe just yards away...it's a ghost ship lost in time. Go on this walk. (Food is available.) This walk takes place every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:00pm. Return to top
"Go where
we may, rest where we will,
THE
OLD KNIGHTSBRIDGE VILLAGE PUB WALK Welcome to the other Knightsbridge. The old lanes, as they're known, are a London original. They're one of the capital's hidden delights, one of its special places. And yes they are hard to find...our higgledy-piggledy route takes us up a cobbled pathway, past a hidden churchyard, along a little mews, through a gate in a wall and down some steps and then...hey presto, we're "through the looking glass" and into the old lanes. Into a collector's corner of mews, alleys, and cosiness. Into unchanging London. Here we could be a million miles from Harrods and the hustle and bustle of Brompton Road. The contrast is as dramatic and unexpected as anything in London...if you didn't know better you'd think you were in the back streets of a Cornish fishing village. And that's just for openers. Stir in pots of history, add a dash of intrigue and gossip, and garnish with pubs that are real trouvailles and you've got a spiffing walk. (Food is available.) Return to top
HAUNTED
LONDON It's blue dusk. Feeding time. Time to pierce the veil which hides the future after death. The time when rooftop cats look down - their eyes green as ringstones - and see things that maybe we shouldn't see. Down here in the creepiest part of London...in alleyways so narrow you can't open an umbrella in them. And so old they're cobwebbed with time. And cobwebbed with something else too. Cobwebbed with events that occurred long ago - events that under certain conditions can again "become dynamic". So when you see the unholy Trinity - and you will see it - and when silver dragons leer at you - and they will - and if you hear footsteps up a deserted alleyway - or voices of persuasion that whisper in the darkness - or catch a glimpse of a hooded, staring transparent figure - congratulations - you've just fed a haunting. It'll be back. And one day...so will you. Now who's for a really cozy pub? This walk takes place every Friday and every Sunday at 7:30pm. Return to top
JACK
THE RIPPER HAUNTS Please tread carefully
and keep away from the shadows - you are about to enter the abyss... He came silently out of the midnight shadows of August 31, 1888. Striking terror at the hearts - and throats - of raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led...nowhere. Jack the Ripper! We evoke that autumn of gaslight and fog, of menacing shadows and stealthy footsteps as we inspect the murder sites, sift through the evidence - in all its gory detail - and get to grips, so to speak, with the main suspects. Enroute we'll steady our nerves in "The Ten Bells", the pub where the victims - perhaps under the steely gaze of the Ripper himself - tried to forget the waking nightmare. This walk takes place every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 7:30pm. N.B., Let's call a spade a spade. Going on Donald Rumbelow's walk is as close as you're going to get to nailing the Ripper. Donald is the author of the best-selling The Complete Jack the Ripper, the definitive book on the subject. In the words of The Jack to Ripper A to Z (the bible of Ripperology studies): "Donald Rumbelow is internationally recognised as the leading authority on the subject". The former Curator of the City of London Police Crime Museum and a two-time Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association, Donald is Britain's most distinguished crime historian. And I hasten add, he's not some dry-as-dust academic. He spent 25 years on the City of London Police Force - which in effect means you'll be taken over some of the most famous crime scenes in the world by a law enforcement professional. Oh and I almost forgot - he's also a professionally qualified Blue Badge Guide! But a word of warning: never part with your money or set off with anyone until you're absolutely certain you're with Donald or - if it's another night - one of his London Walks colleagues. Donald (and co.) will be holding up copies of the distinctive white London Walks leaflet. And remember, Donald and his colleagues never ever start the Jack the Ripper walk before 7:30pm. In short, don't let anyone mislead you. |
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