Saturday, June 2, 2007

More London Calling

How could I forget the Original London Walk? I can't wait!


I want to go on these: (there's lots I want to go on, but doubtful I'll make them all!)


SHAKESPEARE'S LONDON - The Bankside

10 am on Mondays from WestminsterTube, exit 4

This one's the full ticket. The best this town has to offer. We start with that wonderful boat ride - downstream and back down the centuries: from the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and Elizabethan London. Ashore we explore the Bankside district - the world of Shakespeare in Love. Home to the Globe Theatre, old and new, and the other Elizabethan playhouses...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 - there's also cobbled, echoing Clink Street threading between brick cliffs of warehouses where bars of sunlight probe the shadows...yes, this is also the London of Charles Dickens's troubled boyhood. The London that formed him - and which haunted him to his dying day. The boat ride costs £2 (£1 for kids), a brilliant discount!



THE OLD PALACE QUARTER -they don't make 'em like this anymore

Hidden Courtyards, Secret Passageways & Antique Arcades 11 am on Mondays from Green ParkTube, Ritz exit

"I'd put this one in the top four or five of the 51 different walks that I'm personally able to guide. It's got everything I want in a walk." (David). Okay, that's the "opinion" - here's what it's based on. 1) It's olde, vintage London. There are turnoffs - secret passageways - that take you into the 16th century. And the 18th century is par for the course. And it's so well preserved it's a miracle the whole neighbourhood hasn't been sold off to a museum! 2) So, as you'd expect, visually it's very appealing. 3) It's storied. It's storied because it's full of character, full of characters, and marinated in history. 4) It's nooked and crannied. Why is that important? "Well maybe it's just me, but I like to see things other people don't get to see" (David again). 5) It's got a wonderful guide. Her name is Angela. Here's some more about this walk...



JACK THE RIPPER HAUNTS

7.30 pm nightly from Tower HillTube
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. Watching. Stalking. Butchering raddled, drink-sodden East End prostitutes. Leaving a trail of blood that led...nowhere. Yes, something wicked this way walked, for this is the Ripper's slashing grounds. 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. Afterward you can steady your 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.
More...


STONEHENGE & SALISBURY EXPLORER DAY

"You'll never see anything like it again..."10 am on Tuesdays from Waterloo Railway Station
To go on the Stonehenge & Salisbury Explorer Day meet your guide - Richard (he of the red cap) - in London, by the main ticket office of Waterloo Railway Station.
Salisbury is
the most spectacularly beautiful cathedral in Britain. Salisbury is the river Avon and mediaeval streets lined by half-timbered houses with high oversailing upper floors and tall gables and rejoicing in names like Ox Row and Silver Street and Fish Row. Salisbury is Thomas Hardy's Melchester and Anthony Trollope's Barchester - and views over the meadows that Constable painted. That's for starters. In the afternoon we're heading back thousands of years...taking picturesque country roads past the ancient site of Old Sarum and through a lush valley, past old churches and thatched cottages and country mansions. Yes, we're bound for Stonehenge. Stonehenge - "those storm-sculptured stones...that outlast the skies of history hurrying overhead". Stonehenge - observatory? altar? temple? tomb?...to serve strange gods or watch familiar stars. There, on Salisbury plain, under a sky like moving marble, we'll be face to face with primeval Britain.The Stonehenge & Salisbury Explorer Day takes placeevery Tuesday at 10 am from Waterloo Railway Station.Meet Richard at 10 am by the main ticket office -it's opposite Platform 16 - of Waterloo Railway station.

THE BEATLES 'IN MY LIFE' WALK

11.20 am on Tuesdays from MaryleboneTube

"There are places I'll remember all my life", sang the Beatles in one of their most evocative songs. Many of those places are in the "London Town" of this walk...so get back with Richard, "the Pied Piper of Beatlemania" (The Miami Herald), to the film locations for A Hard Day's Night and Help, the registry office where two of the Fabs were married, and the apartment immortalised by Ringo, John and Yoko. We'll also see the house where Paul lived with his glamorous girlfriend, actress Jane Asher. Those were the days...for it was in that house that John and Paul wrote I want to hold your hand. And to cap it all we'll go up to St. John's Wood to see the legendary Abbey Road studios and crosswalk. As the Toronto Globe and Mail said of the walk, "A splendid time is guaranteed for all."


GHOSTS OF THE OLD CITY

7.30 pm on Tuesdays from St. Paul'sTube exit 2
At night the ancient City is deserted...and eerie. Exploring its shadowy back streets and dimly lit alleys we might be in a medieval citadel, in overpowering stone. The very street names - Aldersgate, Cloth Fair, Charterhouse, Threadneedle - take us far back. We're alone...or are we? For this is the hour when the She Wolf of France glides through the churchyard, the hour when the dark figure on Newgate wall rattles his chains, the hour when the Black Nun keeps her lonely vigil, and something inexpressibly evil lurks behind a tiny window. We're on their trail...or are they shadowing us?


LITTLE VENICE

11 am on Wednesdays 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.


OCCULT LONDON & THE DA VINCI CODE

"Researching this I often felt we should be in a Witness Protection Programme..." Brian2 pm on Wednesdaysfrom TempleTube

People have long sensed the high strangeness of London. That some of its nodal points appear to be the foci of arcane secrets; that the Monument and Nelson's column - can it be a coincidence that they're both 202 feet high? - cast significant shadows at the summer solstice; that there appears to be "intelligent design" in London's alignments and angles; that there could well be a secret gnosis incorporated into the architecture of some of our most famous buildings; that a 1960 mural by Jean Cocteau in a hidden little London church suggests that he and Leonardo da Vinci were collaborators across the centuries - and that their religious beliefs were not nearly as orthodox as the history books would lead us to believe. Dan Brown's best-selling novel lifts the lid on some of these matters. As does Gerard de Sede's The Templars Are Among Us. And if they're right...it's a live rail running right through our culture. "Heretical beliefs", the goddess mystery, sexual alchemy secrets, mastery over time itself, gateways where the human and divine worlds meet; a church that's allegedly denied its true roots....Dangerous to touch! Guided by Tom, Brian or Richard III. N.B., do get a 2-Zone Travel Card.Like Sophie and Robert Langdon we take a short tube journey.

THE BEATLES MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

2 pm on Wednesdaysfrom Tottenham Court RoadTube(meet outside exit 3, by the Dominion Theatre)
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. And if you'd like to know something about where you'll be meeting
Richard, well, simply click me!


THE LONDON WALK - St. Paul's to the Tower of London

2 pm on Wednesdaysfrom St. Paul'sTube, exit 2

This is the City of London Grand Tour. It gives you a stunning overview...from St. Paul's Cathedral to the Tower of London. You can't do better than that for a jumping off point and a final destination. But - whisper it - the getting there is the real fun...because we explore twisty little alleyways and piquant nooks and crannies and a secret stretch of shoreline that'll give you a thrilling view across the river to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern.Seeing this London is like hearing music you never would have known to listen for.

GHOSTS, GASLIGHT & GUINNESS
7.30 pm on Wednesdays from HolbornTube
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?


OLD KENSINGTON - London’s Royal Village

2 pm on Thursdays from High Street KensingtonTube Meet 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 two?

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

2.30 pm on Thursdays from EmbankmentTube
"The game is afoot!" It's time to go sleuthing with Corinna or Richard IV and their Baker Street Irregulars! You'll explore an area whose "everchanging kaleidoscope of life" intrigued Holmes and Watson. You'll follow their adventures in Charing Cross, the Strand's gas-lit alleys, and Covent Garden with its Opera House and colourful market stalls, ending, where else? at the superb re-creation of Sherlock Holmes's study. Housed in the building immortalised in The Hound of the Baskervilles and featuring many artefacts donated by the Conan Doyle family, it's a place "where a dream becomes reality". And best of all, it's free to visit!

OLD MAYFAIR - "the best address in London"

10.30 am on Thursdays from Green ParkTube(meet Russell on the corner, just outside the north exit)

Now here's a champagne cocktail of a walk. It's a marriage made in heaven: "the best address in London" and a top drawer guide - a chevalier and a place where Old Masters and old money, Rolls Royces and glamour, titles and butlers are par for the course. It's hob-nobbing with knobs on it - because Mayfair's been home to Clive of India, Disraeli, Handel, Florence Nightingale, Jimi Hendrix, Dodi Fayed, and the Earl Mountbatten, to name but a few. Last but certainly not least, it boasts London's best village within a village - Shepherd Market, a charming little nest of alleys that hasn't lost a jot of its 18th-century scale and village atmosphere, let alone its raffishness.

THE ANCIENT CITY AT NIGHT Take Another Look!

6.30 pm on Thursdays from BankTube(meet Peter G. by the Wellington statue outside exit 3)
If I were going to take Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Dante, Elizabeth I, Adam Smith, George Washington and Claude Monet on a London Walk this is the one I'd plump for. Because of where it goes and what we see. Historically this is the oldest part of London; but it's also the most aggressively modern part. And after hours - which is when we're heading in there - it's transfigured: crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly, submerged in its past. We can peer into its depths. And then rub our eyes and wonder at a church that "transcends originality", at the only private house in the country with its own court and cells, at a lost river, at a jewel box of a market (going there is a little touch of Harry Potter in the night), at Dirty Dick"s, at the architectural equivalent of a butterfly collection. And to see it at night - washed in blue and green light - it's like moving, stunned, through the crevasses of a mountain glacier!. And that's just first impressions, a quick scratch at the surface. The behind-the-scenes stuff - hidden courtyards, dimly lit alleyways and wonderful old pubs* - will take us right down into the depths of London's ancient past. Guided by
Peter G.*Yes, pubs are included on this walk; a post-walk curry is an optional extra (which is by way of saying, the walk ends near that little parade of the best - and best value - curry houses in London!)

APPARITIONS, ALLEYWAYS & ALE

7.30 pm on Thursdays from EmbankmentTube
Dead men walking. Ghosts. Poltergeists. That's what these crepuscular, crooked little alleyways are known for. And that's why Russell speaks in a low voice - lest they hear us and come calling. And best stay close together because stuff happens on this walk. Like seeing a gray procession of headless figures! I don't know whether it's atmospheric conditions or the power of suggestion or Russell's sepulchral voice, but it's happened more than once. Or a creepy churchyard where the gaslights are guttering and the shadows are deeper than they should be. Give it a wide berth. One of our guides had the most terrifying experience of his life in there. Russell gets you safely past it - and if he feels up to it - he just might tell you about it. Ditto the haunted old pub where we'll fortify our - er - spirits...before heading into the spooky "old palace quarter". N.B., Variations on a theme...which is by way of saying this walk is similar but not identical to Monday night's Ghosts of the West End walk. The chief difference being that Apparitions, Alleyways & Ale has a ghost-busting pit stop. Halfway through the walk, Russell will take us into that haunted old pub where things go bump in the night.

ROYAL LONDON & WESTMINSTER ABBEY
10.45 am on Fridays* from Green ParkTube Ritz exit
Kettle drum buildup. Trumpet fanfare. Oh yes! This is the way to do it. Because
Brian and Tom know the best place for viewing the Changing of the Guard...and time it perfectly. And because of the magic carpet of their commentary. It opens those casements.You're not just looking at famous buildings - you're looking into them. Indeed, they've both been in the palace - and not as tourists. One of them - you'll have to guess - is more or less on a first name basis with Prince Phillip! And because the "route" includes two royal parks and a secret royal passageway into London's most perfect Georgian street. And as for the tour inside the Abbey...well, again it's a question of knowing where to look. And how to look, what to look for. And because they'll get you straight in, via a cloister entrance, whereas the "public" often has to queue for an hour or more. (How much is your time worth?) And they get you a huge discount on the admission price. Because? Well, how do you gainsay being treated royally?

HAUNTED LONDON
7.30 pm on Fridays from MonumentTube(meet just outside the Fish Street Hill exit)
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?



SOMEWHERE ELSE LONDON

10.30 am on Saturdays from EmbankmentTube
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.



SPIES' & SPYCATCHERS' LONDON

2.30 pm on Saturdaysfrom 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.



MURDER MOST FOUL - London's Chamber of Horrors

6.30 pm on Saturdays from EmbankmentTubeStrong stuff this. It's down and dirty. Lower depths. Paths of infamy. In short, crime scenes. Murder at the Savoy, death at the Cafe Royale, a body found in a trunk at a left luggage office, a killer identified by a blindman, a woman found holding a smoking pistol over the body of her lover, "silk stocking murders", Dr. Crippen, the Krays and a world champion boxer's "suicide"...welcome to the nightmare factory...welcome to the dark side of "the most civilised city on earth". Good night Ladies. Good night Gentlemen. Sweet dreams!



ANCIENT LONDON - Knights, Nuns & Notoriety

11.30 am on Sundays from Tower HillTube
This is a jolt of the pure stuff...the best sort of London Walks alchemy. The alchemy that results when you mix alleyways that tourists never find with London history that would do the Sorcerer's Apprentice proud. Here we're in an urban enchanted forest, a place where 13 knights performed three deeds of bravery - one above ground, one below ground, and one in the water. A place where there's a centuries-old peep hole - still there - to keep nuns safe from prying eyes. A place of a Maypole and 11,000 beheaded virgins and the most spectacular statue in London and a show-stopping garden with a fountain whose waters mimic the tail feathers of an ostrich. Let alone Bedlam, an outrageous prioress, Bluebell Girls, black magic, Geoffrey Chaucer and traitors" heads.

THE REAL WORLD OF HARRY POTTER -Wizards, Werewolves & Vampires

5 pm on Sundaysfrom EmbankmentTube "Nothing like a night-time stroll to give you ideas"

Let's put the cat amongst the pixies: Harry Potter isn't just kids' stuff. There are very real tales - and real locales - behind the stories of Harry and friends. Those tales, those locales inform this walk. Was there really an invisibility cloak? What's the truth behind the Philosophers' Stone? What place inspired Diagon Alley? Where was the legend of Dracula born? Where in a famous movie did a werewolf go on a rampage? There's good gripping London stuff behind a lot of the Harry Potter goings on - everything from characters' names to the origin of monsters. We'll solve a mystery or two: e.g., where is the entrance to The Ministry of Magic and can we get in? In short, this walk is a serious study of a subject more fantastical than fiction. And, yes, there's even some magic. As one walker put it, "dead brilliant." Guided by Alan.

And there's MORE to do and see in London:

At Greenwich "the Royal Charter" Market you can find a comprehensive collection of unusual, unique and exclusive arts & crafts products from more than 120 stalls. Open every Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holidays from 9:30am - 5:30pm.

Welcome to Greenwich England! A World Heritage site.
The place that sets Time (
Greenwich Mean Time) and Place (Greenwich Meridian). It is truly unique.
It is the birthplace of
Henry VIII and his famous daughters Queen Mary & Queen Elizabeth I. http://wwp.greenwichengland.com/




More later!

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