Welcome to My London Walks

Updated: 23 May 2024

I originally started compiling these walks for personal use, but as more and more friends began to ask me for copies, I decided to put them online.

The walks cover some of the more well-known areas of London, as well as those not so well-known, that I find interesting and believe have played a particularly important part in the city’s development, both in the past and still do today.

They are not for the casual tourist who want to visit the ‘top sights’. Instead, they are generally rather detailed, with a lot of information about what you will see on the walk – the sort of information that I find myself wondering about as I walk around London and then spend time researching.

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SELF-GUIDED WALKS FOR INQUIRING MINDS

I’ve called these walks ‘for inquiring minds’ as the aim is to provide a little more information than would be found on a typical tourist walk or sightseeing bus ride around London.

Whenever I have been in a new city – whether it’s Istanbul, Mumbai or Chicago – I love to ‘go behind the scenes’ to discover a little more history and background rather than simply following the main tourist routes.

Which is what I’ve tried to do with my walks around London.

I like wandering up the side streets and lanes to discover what lies behind the glitzy main streets, and then reading as much as I can about what I have seen and its history.

This means these walks are not designed for the casual tourist trying to ‘do’ London in as short a time as possible, seeing just the main attractions.

Whilst I have chosen some of the city’s main tourist areas – Westminster, Soho and Covent Garden for example – here I try to discover the lesser-known sights, and research more of the unusual aspects of their history.

However, I’ve also included some areas of London perhaps not so well-known to many visitors (or indeed often to Londoners), such as Clerkenwell, Farringdon or the East End.

In particular, I have written several walks that include something I really enjoy doing, which is walking beside water. So, there’s Paddington to Camden on the Regent’s Canal and three walks alongside the River Thames, starting from Tower Bridge and ending at, and around, the Isle of Dogs.