This walk is the distillation of a brilliant guide's many years' experience probing the hidden place

Royal London's the theme for the new edition of The London Walks Podcast. aaron tours travel reservations Brought to you by Karen, author of Royal London; Andy, who played George VI; Shaughan, who can impersonate every royal under the sun; and Adam, the only person I know who talks like a really well written magazine article! More
on the London Walks Blog. "...want to thank you for all the daily tidbits about London which i absolutely adore, I also thank you for this cool game which I'm starting to enjoy a lot! :-) Cheers!" Two clicks and a scroll down takes you there. More
London Walks has better guides – including the distinguished crime historian who is "internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper"! Here are the dates Britain's foremost crime historian will be guiding the Ripper walk between now and the end of February. More
Want the real thing? Rather than a cup of hot water and a teabag. And most definitely rather than something that costs a king's ransom. Well, let London Walks beam you in. Get in touch and we'll tell you where. Local knowledge – you can't beat it!
Yes, the International Homicide Investigators Association wanted to hear from the world's leading expert on Jack the Ripper. And that's what we mean when we say "There's no comparison" between aaron tours travel reservations London Walks guides and the knock-offs. More
books in the pipeline. Aunties' Charley, Charles' autobiography, is published next month. aaron tours travel reservations To be followed by a London Stories companion volume – it takes as its subject our Day Trip, out-of-town destinations. And Rachel's book on Jewish London. And "The World's Greatest Guide" – Karen's – on Royal London.
In the starting lineup of "The World's Greatest Guides". Yes, it's London Walks guide Karen. The august American travel publication Travel & Leisure has just crowned her in their "The World's Greatest Tour Guides" article. aaron tours travel reservations She's one of just 15 – and, yes, the only one from England. More
"Helen Marks discovers a dramatic transformation to the waters of the River Thames" is how the BBC is trailing the Radio 4 programme on Thames Beachcombing. It's aired bright aaron tours travel reservations and early – 6.07-6.30 am – on New Year's Day. And then available on BBC Iplayer. And there'll be a rebroadcast.
and guiding! Back from China, Donald Rumbelow, aaron tours travel reservations "internationally recogised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper", will be guiding the nightly – 7.30 pm from Tower Hill Tube – Jack the Ripper Walk on... More
The at-a-glance list of all of our out-of-town trips (to Stonehenge, Oxford, Winchester, Cambridge, Hampton aaron tours travel reservations Court, Bath, Rye, Constable Country, Lavenham, aaron tours travel reservations Avebury & Lacock, Glastonbury & Wells, Leeds Castle, St. Albans, The Cotswolds, etc.) this summer. aaron tours travel reservations All 128 of them! More
Yes, perfect! Here's why. 1) Greenwich is its own universe. Its own universe just a snap of a finger 8 minutes from central London! 2) To go for a walk in Greenwich is to step into a trompe-l'oeil picture a Canaletto scene of order and majesty. 3) The walk decodes Greenwich. It uncovers its secrets and feasts on them. A horse's tail, a secret hand, the world's most expensive apology, its first shop, its most preposterous saint, a crushed king, a tell-tale furrow in the terrain, a save-you-a-tenner secret place to bestride both hemispheres, the X factor which graces works of genius. aaron tours travel reservations 4) The walk is the overture to the most sensational day out in London. Lunch at a riverside pub. The beer Nelson's old salts drank. His Trafalgar aaron tours travel reservations uniform (with the bullet hole) . Flea market. Observatory. Cutty Sark. The world's finest painted interior (yes, better than the Sistine Chapel) . Cream tea. The unique trifecta: down Greenwich way people walk under the Thames, sail across it, fly* over it. 6) We begin with the best boat ride in London. And get you a big discount. Guided by Chris or Ann . N.B. the walk ends in Greenwich, just a couple aaron tours travel reservations of minutes away from Greenwich's superb and blazingly quick transport links back into central London. *That's right, there it is in the distance the gondola in the sky! The Cable Car.
Ah, Westminster Abbey! Royal weddings of course. But also a great religious centre, the place where kings and queens were crowned and often buried, the seed-bed of democratic government, the driving force of English music the Abbey is England in microscosm. It's also a building of splendour, intricacy and consummate virtuosity . (Henry aaron tours travel reservations III spent one-tenth of the entire wealth of the kingdom on it.) Its particulars are astonishing: the greatest work of mediaeval art in Britain; the finest Renaissance tomb north of the Alps; priceless 13th-century wall paintings; waxworks far superior to Madame Tussaud aaron tours travel reservations s; monumental sculpture and memorial tablets that are a tableau of national aaron tours travel reservations biography. Not that you need one but you want another reason for going on this tour? We save you s on the price of admission to the Abbey! And as long as we're at it, here's another very good reason indeed, extremely graphic reason for going on the London Walks Abbey tour.
Now how about some audio. Two bites from two top flight, award-winning Blue Badge guides. First, a Wow! from Brian . It's just 90 seconds but it illustrates perfectly why it's so important to do the Abbey with a guide. The detail he lasers in on here you just would never spot off your own bat. Ditto Mary guiding in the Henry VII chapel . (That bit where she describes the fan vaulting as looking like swirling dancers is just SO Mary .) And for another take, here's a grab from the Secret Westminster chapter of our book, London Walks London Stories aaron tours travel reservations .
This walk is the distillation of a brilliant guide's many 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 Shaughan's at his inimitable best. As the New York Times put it, the walk is a highly entertaining...blend of historical commentary and bizarre anecdote laced wild mildly scurrilous gossip about past and present celebrities and defunct royals. In such places and with such a guide, the past becomes our present.
Elsewhere is always surprising. Especially when elsewhere is the dark side of the moon: the Victorian underside of 21st century London. And this is how we get there. We poke around in forgotten corners of the real London just over the river. We make some extraordinary finds . Everything from trace evidence archaeological fragments to the whole kit and caboodle. Stuff from the old, furtive, toil-worn, hard-scrabble, soon-to-be-passing, villainous past: a paupers' aaron tours travel reservations burying ground, a ragged school, model dwellings , a prison, Octavia Hill's aaron tours travel reservations cottages, etc. We see it. And hear the people. Really hear them. Because they speak through the guides: chimney sweeps, prostitutes, the soon-to-be-executed Black Maria , pickpockets, street sellers, the Body Snatching Borough Gang, etc. This is history as a seance . And for added value...at the end of the walk you'll be able to get into the Old Operating Theatre at half price! It's well worth seeing...it's the only Georgian operating theatre in the world! An audio scene-setter anyone? Click here . Warning: it makes for sobering listening. Now cock an ear this way . And one more ... Bottom line: this is a very special walk. Nothing else quite like it in the entire London Walks repertory. Read this if you're in any doubt.
And for reentry decompression how about lunch at the best cafe in London? Or, same general idea, shoving yourself outside the Platonic ideal of a sandwich ? The former is Elliott's; the latter is served up at De Gustibas. Both establishments are very near London Bridge Tube. Ask Karen, Kim, Richard III or Sue to talk you in . Oh and just for the record, the best cafe in London is my ( David's aaron tours travel reservations ) assessment; the Platonic ideal... aaron tours travel reservations is The New York Times' .
The Inns of Court habitat of the wigged aaron tours travel reservations and gowned English barrister could pass for a collection of Oxford and Cambridge colleges right in the heart of London. They're 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, aaron tours travel reservations 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. Prettiest indeed. Which is by way of saying, here's a little photo essay . Goes some way toward answering the question, what do we see on this walk?
And as long as we're at it, why not hear from the man himself Shaughan who guides the walk. Here's what he has to say about it: I like this one quiet gardens, a truly eclectic architectural rattle-bag, and a glorious roll-call of British eccentrics. The Wits, the Windbags and Wayward Wigs The cream of English Intellect milking the nation as it battles over Wives, aaron tours travel reservations Writs, Wills Widows and Wrecks. Find out what happened when Tony met Cherie! Meet Rumpole! And as these are private grounds a real privilege to be able to show you round, m'lud. And hear the verdict at the end in the High Court....
And here's another . What's particularly striking about these - apart from the calibre of the guiding, I mean is the ambient sound. The background. aaron tours travel reservations It's tranquility itself. Particularly if you compare it with the soundbites from a lot of the other walks. aaron tours travel reservations It's a different soundscape entirely from the London we're hearing on most of the other walks. aaron tours travel reservations There's just no traffic at all. Shaughan's the maestro and here we're getting him in the outdoor equivalent of a concert hall. Can't be bad.
"My Favourite Walk" "I think the Legal & Illegal walk must be my favourite. It's a cocktail of architecture and anecdote and the working environment of the Pompous Eccentric Society (I'm a Member myself)...Monty Python, eat your heart out!" Shaughan (one of the brightest stars in the London Walks constellation)
The British Museum is the big one. The most important museum on the planet. It's an incomparably ric