COVID – We have made changes to the routes and stopping places of our walks to ensure social distancing is adhered to at all times. Any walks where this would prove impossible have been discontinued. And our newest walk – Controversial Statues (we like to keep up with events!) – whilst taking place mostly in Westminster, the route has been astutely devised to keep away from crowds. Sadly, some of our most popular walks such as Talented Women in the National Portrait Gallery, and Swinging 60’s Soho, have had to go as it would be impossible to do these whilst maintaining good social distancing. Our Feminist ‘the Five’ Jack the Ripper Victims walk had to go too. But there is a spacious Whitechapel Crime walk in a different part of Whitechapel which includes a bit of Jack the Ripper social history. We have also completely rerouted Georgian London away from beautiful but busy, tight Bloomsbury to beautiful uncrowded, spacious Georgian areas such as the Inns of Court. Our Intriguing Alleys walk has been rerouted and renamed our Intriguing Spacious Quiet Spots walk. And we have lots of new walks that take in rivers, canals, parks, wetlands, basins, quiet squares, you name it.
And in the past we have tended to start and finish walks at underground or railway stations, because these are easy places to meet. We can still do this, but if you would rather start and/or finish in other places, we can do this very easily. We’ll make arrangements with you when we swop emails whilst taking the bookings. And in the East End we can easily swop an underground station for a DLR station if you wish.
We have 59 private, tailor-made walking tours in London for you to choose from. You choose the date, start time and duration. You can do the walk straight through or if you prefer you can have a break for a coffee, beer, loo stop, whatever. We usually meet you at the underground station that is most suitably located for the start of the walk, but if you prefer we can pick you up from your place of work, a restaurant, whatever. And likewise we can finish the walk at an underground station or drop you at a pub, restaurant, market, wherever. Our usual start and finish points can also be changed so that people who wish to keep the actual walking down to a minimum can be accommodated. Some of our tours can be compacted into a small area. This is ideal for groups of older people. And if none of our 22 present walks are quite what you’re looking for, take a look at our Other Walks section, which has a further 37 available. Or if you would like a completely bespoke walk, just let us know what you would like.
All walks are led by our owner; public speaker, historian and historical novel author, Ian Porter. He’s a Londoner whose enthusiasm for telling people about the history of his home town is so evident in his guiding. And because he does so many walks, he never gets stale from doing the same walk repeatedly.
We think we’ve covered pretty much all of London’s most interesting places and most fascinating history. And we always plan our routes so that our tours are quite simply nice walks. We avoid busy main roads and will take you across a leafy square or down an intriguing alley whenever we can.
We have a minimum charge for our walks of £90 for up to 10 people, with additional people £9 per person. That’s not to say fewer can’t book. If there’s only 5 of you and you’re happy to pay £18 a head, that’s fine.