The Original London Walks

My husband and I(both in our late sixties) spent 11 days in London late May/early June 2009. . This was an extra vacation for us that became available without time to do my usual meticulous type-A planning. I chose London mainly because of the huge number of greatly interesting and wonderfully reviewed tours offered by London Walks. The low price(7 pounds per adult, 5 pounds for us seniors) enabled us to take as many tours as we wanted. My main planning chore consisted of which tour to take when.

In 11 days we managed to do 13 of these tours - 10 regular ones and 3 out-of town trips(Explorer Days). That may be a record. One night we did a pub tour - making that the third of the day. We loved them all. This is the type of tour we always look for - a walking tour with an intelligent, interesting, knowledgeable, and always entertaining guide. Whenever we travel, we look for walking tours. We consider ourselves lucky to find one or 2 in each city and the cost is almost always double or triple the London Walk rates. Very few of the tours we have taken in the many years we have been traveling measure up to the quality of these tours - to say nothing of the entertainment value.

Although most of the tours were very crowded(sometimes 50 or 60 people), we were always able to hear the guide and we realize that the huge participation is what enables London Walks to keep the rates so low.

We got to see parts of London that we would have never found on our own and hear facts and stories that always interested and entertained us. The tours let us have a wonderful trip with very little planning - just a little juggling when it rained. Not having to make reservations ahead is a real advantage. One just meets up with the tour guide at a specified station.

It is very hard to say which tours were our favorites. We would probably never have seen Greenwich on our own and we spent the rest of the day there after the tour - one of our nicest days. We especially loved the beautiful walk through a quiet village in the Cotswolds. Again, , something we would never have found on our own The talk arranged at the Synagogue on the Jewish Quarter tour is something that certainly would not have been available to us without this tour.

Please feel free to email me for more specifics about the tours we took.

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Wife & I took a London vacation 5/15-5/21 & did FOUR London Walks:

Jack the Ripper: guide name I forget?? :(

Richmond & Hampton Court Palace: Hillary was the best!

Salisbury & Stone Henge: Richard was the best!

Central London: Helena was great & best view around for changing of guard!

For really any amount of money these are best deals in town & they happen also to be the cheapest thing you can do in London! I only regret we did not have time to do more of them! Lots of walking but well worth it! Guides were knowledgable, enthusiastic, & easily handled large groups.

The best!

Lots of people don't realise that before going to London (some of them even after been there), that London is a city easily explored on foot! Well, not all the city, but picking up certain parts of the city at a time, it's not difficult to see lots of things in a small geographic area.

London Walks company is great! First of all their system is simple. You don't need to pre book, you just show up. So if you decide to do something else, or you don't fancy going due to weather, or whatever, you may pick up an other day without have to cancel anything, or charged for no reason.

Then, it;s cheap anyway. GBP 7 for a simple two hour walk, is not expensive, and if you plan to do more than 2 walks per month, yopu buy one of their discount cards and you start saving!

Finally and most important of all, their guides are excelent! They fill you with historic facts, add some trivial details and some celebrity or royal gossip depending on the tour, and are friendly and very knowledgable. You could never imagine how many things you can learn, and how many things you can see, that you wouldn't have notice otherwise, only in two hours and in a small area. Their English is very "understandable" too, so if you are a foreigner like me, you have no problem to follow what they are say. And they are willing to answer separate answers and stuff!

I did the "Old Palace Quarter" tour with Angela and the "Historic Greenwich" tour with Ann last month, and they were real stars!!!

Except the Walking Tours Company, even of you are not very fit, study carefully a couple of maps and guydebooks, and take a walk on a park, or other areas of London. You will get a different and more "authentic" feeling of the place, than you would get on a bus tour or travelling on tube!

I loved all the parks I visited, and I walked quite a lot in areas so different, such as Westminster or Camden Town, just soaking the ambience. Trust me, you will love it!