DISCOVER LONDON ON OUR WALKS

London walks are an ideal way to experience and discover one of the world's greatest cities. Richard Jones has been devising and conducting walking tours since 1982. He is one of the most experienced and innovative guides on the London walks scene and his tours are widely regarded as amongst the best on offer.

"I have been coming to London for many years and have done almost all the Original London walks.. in all honesty you are truly the best..."

D. Neidermeyer. Maranatha Productions

His were, for example, the first London Tours to offer Jack the Ripper Walks seven chilling nights a week, and it was he who first devised and offered tours around Beatles London. Walks are now a very crowded market but, as the Evening Standard put it:-

"...Richard Jones keeps ahead of the pack with impeccable research, and having honed his performance in more than 5,000 guided tours....."
The Evening Standard

In fact, with very few exceptions, Richard has been conducting and devising his acclaimed walking tours for longer than virtually all of the London walks guides and he has built up a loyal client base of travel agents, tour operators and coach operators, as well as individual members of the public, all of whom have often commented on how Richard's knowledge, enthusiasm and presentation skills really did bring London's past to life for them. As the Daily Express put it:-

"...The joy of walking about with an enthusiast such as Richard Jones is the discovery of a place you thought you knew; not re-discovery, but truly seeing it for the first time..."
The Daily Express

This point has been stressed again by In Britain, the official Magazine of Visit Britain, which had this to say about Richard's ghost walks when reviewing them for the October/November 2007 issue;-

"Walking tours are a great way to get started discovering the spooky side of London...they are great fun and Richard's enthusiasm is catching as we make our way along deserted streets and down narrow alleyways..."
In Britain

But, of course, no matter how good you are as a guide, if the places you take your walkers to aren't up to much then their enjoyment of the tour is going to be very limited indeed!

Fortunately Richard works in one of the most fascinating cities in the world - London, and walks make for a great way to explore the historic backstreets, hidden courtyards and narrow alleyways where time stands still and history was made.

Take the area around the Victoria and Albert Museum for example. One minute you are dodging the traffic on Cromwell Road and the next, A mews in Kensington.providing you know about the cobblestone thoroughfare that leads into it, the sound of the traffic has become a distant murmur and you find yourself in a delightful sequence of mews that only the locals know about. Here you will find lovely old pubs, graceful properties and you feel far removed from the rush and noise of modern London.

Walks are the only way to reach these places because the large majority of her streets were not built for modern vehicles. They go back to a bygone age when people had no choice but to walk if they wanted to get about. Bus tours and coach tours cannot introduce you to this hidden and historic side of London because they simply cannot get into it!

Let's move on now from Kensington to Westminster. Everyone knows about the The Houses of Parliament.Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Indeed on any given day you can feel that the world and its mother has arrived at these wonderful, though crowded, attractions. Yet very few of those who arrive here realise that there is a hidden side to Westminster. Lovely old street so steeped in history that they are often used as film locations for period dramas (on one memorable occasion the film makers really did create the ambience of the 1880's with gas lamps, horse drawn coaches, etc. The only problem was that they forgot to paint out the double yellow lines).

In one of the streets, a stone's throw from Westminster Abbey, you can find the direction to the local air raid shelter still painted An air raid shelter sign.onto the wall of a house. As one of our walkers put it "it's as though they forgot this street was here when peace broke out!" These streets are so special and so atmospheric that you find yourself half expecting a horse drawn coach or sedan chair to come trotting around the corner and an elegant Edwardian lady or gentleman to step out and hurry into one of the old houses.
... this is an eerie, historical site.. and, without a single prop, Richard Jones succeeds in conjuring more potent memories out of the area than from a neighbourhood full of palaces ..."
THE SUNDAY TIMES

Speaking of film locations, London made the perfect backcloth against which the Harry Potter films were shot. Many has been the night when, the Muggles having returned to suburbia, wizards and witches have roamed the streets. It can be great fun to experience the locations you have seen on films of London and walks make it possible to stroll away from the well trodden, well known thoroughfares and get into the old hidden and magical locations where the Harry Potter films were shot.

Kings Cross Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross.Station is of course the location of Platform 9 and 3/4 and a sign to that effect now graces one of the station walls. There is even a luggage cart partially embedded in the wall below the sign, as though a student wizard is en route for the Hogwart's Express.

On one notable occasion Richard was leading his Saturday night ghost walk around the old City of London, which is particularly atmospheric at weekends, when the Knight bus went driving by. They were filming for the Harry Potter film and those on the walk got to glimpse the Knight bus before it had even made its appearance on film! Photographs were taken and the walkers were chatting about their 'magical' experience throughout the rest of their tour of London.

Walks make for a great way to uncover this little known aspect of the capital because, due to the fact that our tours often take place when the City is empty of its daytime populace it is the favoured time for film makers to undertake location shoots and so you literally never know who, or what, you are likely to bump into around the next corner!

"...This is among the most reliable of the many London Walks. Richard Jones is a committed story teller...who shares his enthusiasm with fellow hunters in the dimly lit alleyways, graveyards and hidden courtyards of the City ..."
The Independent.
Remaining in the City of London let's cross to the historic heart of the capital. Standing at the spot where several roads converge - close to the Bank The George and Vulture.of England - the noise of revving, honking cars and busses assails you. Yet, within a minute of this busy intersection, you can find yourself in a magical world of ancient alleyways that have changed little, if at all, since the days when Charles Dickens explored them and wrote about them. It is an area that many people who have joined Richard on his tours have commented that they just wouldn't have known "was here."

That is why walking tours are the ONLY way to explore London and that is why Richard and his fellow guides at Discovery Walks can genuinely claim to be passionate about London. We really do love our City and consider being asked to guide people around it the greatest honour that anyone can bestow upon us. London is a city of surprises and the endless variety that our walks and tours present really does demonstrate this.

Our London walks give you the opportunity to peek behind the scenes at the layers of history that the City has built up. As Scotsman William Dunbar put it in the 15th century, "London thou art the flower of cities all." Or as Dr. Johnson put it:-

"when a man is tired of London he is tired of life."
The following pages detail the London tours and walks that Richard has devised and developed over the last twenty five years. They range from the ever popular Jack the Ripper Tour (not only will you find details of our Jack the Ripper Walk but you will also be able to read the full Jack the Ripper story and take a Jack the Ripper interactive walk) to the ever so spooky, atmospheric and chilling London ghost walks. We offer pub walks and history walks, Dickens and Shakespeare walks, contemporary and historical London walks and tours. Indeed we offer such a huge variety of tours and themes that you will probably tire of life before you tire of discovering London with us! So let London's foremost walking tour guides introduce you to the secret city that hides behind the busy main roads, a city that has spent 2,000 years preparing for you to discover it.