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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
SHAKESPEARE'S
& DICKENS'S LONDON London was to Shakespeare and Dickens what Paris was to Balzac. It held them in its thrall, was both their canvas and their inspiration, their workshop and their raw material. They in turn made it their own, imaginatively colonising it. And, like "special correspondents for posterity", bequeathed it to us. Today, despite the ravages of time, riot, bombing, and especially fire, traces of their London - shipwrecks from the past - still abound in the City. Everything from superb half-timbered Elizabethan dwellings to the magnificent early 16th-century gatehouse where Shakespeare went with his plays to the offices of the Elizabethan Master of the Revels. And from London's grandest Tudor manor house to crooked little alleys which fed the fires of Dickens's "hallucinating genius". This walk takes
place every Wednesday at 11:00am and every Sunday at 2:00pm. N.B.This walk does not duplicate Monday's and Saturday's "Shakespeare's London" walk. Return to top
"I summon
up remembrance of things past…"
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
LITTLE
VENICE 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. Afterwards you can take tea at a stylish canal-side café. This walk takes place every Wednesday at 11:00am and every Saturday and Sunday at 2:00pm. 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
THE
BRITISH MUSEUM WALK The British Museum is 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. 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." In short, the secret is to use your time at the British Museum well. This walk takes place every Wednesday and Saturday at 2:00pm, and every Monday at 11:00am. N.B., This walk will not take place on January 1st. Return to top
OLD
HAMPSTEAD VILLAGE This is a great walk...they just don't come any better than this. Our setting is London's most picturesque neighbourhood...a perfectly preserved Georgian village crowning the top of a handsome hill and garnished with the capital's most elegant old world promenade, a medley of cobble-stone lanes, pretty cottages, surprising turnings, and unsurpassed views. As for our cast of characters...well it's every bit as beguiling as our setting, ranging from the highwayman Dick Turpin to the painter Constable to the poet Keats; from Freud and D.H. Lawrence to Sting and Boy George; from Elizabeth Taylor and Emma Thompson to Rex Harrison, Peter O'Toole and Jeremy Irons. And for good measure, there's London's most villagey atmosphere and magnificent Hampstead Heath, the capital's best-loved park. This walk takes place every Wednesday at 2:00pm and every Sunday at 10:00am. And it also takes place on Staurday nights at 7:00pm as a pub walk. The Saturday night Old Hampstead Village Pub Walk is guided by Emily. Return to top
"When it's
three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London."
THE
BEATLES MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR Guided by "the pied piper of Beatlemania", this is a chance to Imagine Beatlemania and the Swinging 60s. It's a Magical Mystery Tour of the Beatles' London haunts: their Apple offices, where they played the famous rooftop session Paul McCartney's headquarters; and the world famous Abbey Road Studios and the Abbey Road crosswalk. Richard P., recaptures the era when London was the cultural capital of the world and the "Fab Four" were its rulers. This walk takes
place every Wednesday at 2:00pm N.B. We make a short tube journey to Abbey Road, so getting a Two Zone Travel Card is a good idea. Return to top
"THE
OLD CITY NOBODY KNOWS" This one's a lot of fun. It's curious, unpredictable, eccentric, different London. Heading into the least known quarter of the old city, Tom or Judy delve deep into London's wondrous strange past. Here a stretch of the old Roman wall with its bastions and fort makes a defiant last stand. There venerable livery halls of the City Guilds - galleons lying at anchor - attend to business, as they've done for centuries. Round that corner an ancient church or two - flinty sentinels and signposts to the eternal landscape of the past - keep the 21st century at bay. Hard by, John Wesley's house and London's eeriest ancient graveyard weather the ages. And everywhere, the rustle of the shades and the voices - like distant drums - of Roman centurians and town criers and chimney sweeps. Return to top
THE
NATIONAL GALLERY WALK Dear London Walker, You are cordially invited to an evening with Rembrandt, Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh. Which is by way of saying, "In the National Gallery, as perhaps nowhere else, you can walk through seven centuries of European painting, on the mountain-tops. And, as always on the mountains, it's useful to have a guide, a companion who can spot things that you might miss and trigger thoughts that might not occur to you on your own." Let alone the fact that the National - which has been characterised as everything from "greatest art gallery in the world" to "sex and violence in Trafalgar Square" - covers 10 acres, has 75 galleries, and houses 2,300 of the world's greatest paintings! This walk takes place every Wednesday at 5:00pm. Return to top
"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
OLD
BLOOMSBURY - The Literary London Pub Walk Welcome to Richard's Wednesday evening literary soire! The company's beyond compare: your good selves and the shades of Dickens and Thackeray; Oscar Wilde and G. B. Shaw; Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Circle (who lived in Squares and loved in triangles); George Orwell, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot. The venue's a moveable feast: a procession of handsome Georgian squares; the humming little warren of streets in the Museum quarter; and a couple of the best old pubs in London. The host's a born raconteur. And depend on it, he'll stir things a bit - tell you a thing or two about the aforementioned - how they were flesh and blood men and women who lived, loved, laughed, caroused, quarrelled and spun "words so nimble, so full of subtle flame..." . (Food is available.) Richard requests the pleasure of your company... Return to top
GHOSTS,
GASLIGHT & GUINNESS This is the most haunted city on earth: unutterably old, built over a fen of undisclosed horrors, believed to contain occult lines of geometry. A city where the very mist is like a sigh from a graveyard. Now I don't want to weird you out, but where we're going tonight time past and time present can fuse...especially when the daylight bleeds away. If in a dark window you see an even darker silhouette staring back, or if the branches of a tree suddenly shiver like a spider's web that's caught something, or if you follow a stranger into a graveyard (or a pub where everything isn't as it seems)...you could well be wayfaring to the rebecks of eternity. Fancy a pint? 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. This walk will not take place on December 24 or 25. 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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