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Our Free London walks - Beyond Harry Potter

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

In 2003 Richard Jones launched his series of free London walks. Since then many people have explored London following the careful step by step directions that Richard has paced out for them.

London walks should be a liberating experience and it is our belief that our customers should have a choice. To that end we are the only London walks company that offers you both pay and join tours of London or the free print off and do it yourself option.

Our Harry Potter London walks have blazed quite a trail across the London sightseeing scene. Thousands of people have asked for the PDF of the Harry Potter Tour and treasure Hunt around London. One family, who were following the route, even had the amazing experience of encountering Daniel Radcliffe and a film grew shooting scenes for the next Harry Potter Film in Westminster.

Indeed this PDF has been so popular we’ve now decided to roll out a whole series of walking tours which will commence in November and which will feature all manner of subjects. Our Riverside London Pub Walk will be the first to go live and will take you to some amazing Riverside hostelries that have changed little in over a hundred and more years.

As we explained back in June the London Pub Walk will include a quiz and treasure hunt as well as lots of fascinating facts and history about the streets through which you walk and the pubs that you visit.

The finishing touches are just being done now and then it will go through are usual rigorous quality control whereby it will be walked several times by an independent assessor to ensure that the route and directions work and then it will be offerred up as one of our Free London walks PDF’s that you will be able to download and do as and when you choose.

Of course, if you are looking for a private group tour or an office social or team building you can book a tour guided tour with us from just £7 per person.

So there you have it, more choice of ways to see London than any other Walks company. So why not get to know us and Experience a Welcome Difference?

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Harry Potter London walks - They’re Free!

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Tomorrow, Sunday, why not enjoy a day exploring London on one of our free London walks.

Our Harry Potter Tour of London will take you on a magical journey all over London.

You’ll see many of the places that were used in the Harry Potter films, you’ll enjoy a wonderfully relaxing walk around London, and you’ll also be able to keep the kids occupied by our London Treasure Hunt that is incorporated into the Harry Potter London walks.

Getting hold of your free copy of the walk couldn’t be easier as the whole process is automated. Simply ping a quick email to

harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com

and, as if by magic, within around 40 seconds are wizards and goblins will spring into action, wave their wands and, lo and behold, the Harry Potter Tour pdf will arrive in your mail box.

The pdf is a 30 page booklet which you then print out and then you head off into central London and simply follow the step by step instructions.

We last checked the route on 8th September so its very up to date and it even features the locations from the latest film Harry Potter and the half Blood Prince.

We’ve had a great deal of interest shown in the Harry Potter London Tour since we launched it in May and many people who have taken it have emailed to say what a great time they had and thanking us for  putting this free resource out there.

We can only send it via the automated system as it takes us rather a long time to up load and send the PDF manually (three minutes to be precise).

So please don’t request the PDF via our contact form as we won’t be able to send it. Simply email us at harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and you’ll get the whole tour as a PDF by return.

We are currently compiling a few more London walks that can be sent by PDF for you to do at your own pace so be sure to return in a few weeks to see what else we have to offer.

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Beatles Walks London

Monday, September 7th, 2009

In 1988 Richard Jones became the first guide to offer Beatles London walks. The tour that Richard devised started at Green Park and took in the sites associated with the fab four around the West End of London.

Today, London walks around the Beatles site are an integral part of the tourist scene. But when Richard started his Beatles Tour it really was an original, so much so that the Sunday Times Magazine did a feature on it and, a much younger looking, Richard graced the cover of that issue showing a group on his London Walking Tour the Beatles former headquarters in Saville Row.

Richard’s Beatles London walk is about to get our free London walks treatment and will soon be available as a requestable PDF that you will be able to download and do at your own pace and in your own time.

Featured on the Beatles Walk of London will be the house where John Lennon and Yoko Ono posed for their notorious nude photo shoot that graced the cover of their Two Virgins album.

The flat was situated at 34 Montagu Square close to Marylebone and Baker Street Underground Stations.

This address has been in the news recently as an application has been lodged with the local council for a blue plaque commemorating John Lennon’s residence at the flat to be placed on the exterior wall of the building.

This will be just one of the stops on the Beatles London Tour which will be one of a series of Free London walks that you will be able to download in the coming months.

Our Harry Potter London Walking Tour is still doing a roaring trade and is due for an update in the next week or two ( we last updated it at the end of July to include the scenes from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince).

Meanwhile our London Ghost Walk is back after its annual “rest” in August. So things are getting back to normal and soon we will be offerring you an even wider choice of free and paid London walks. Watch this space!

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The Harry Potter Tour of London

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

We are the only London walks company to offer a free Harry Potter Tour of London. Some great things have happened to people who have requested our Harry Potter PDF. One family were following the route when they suddenly encountered the filming for the next Harry Potter film - how cool is that! They even saw Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint on set.

Our tour has proved hugely popular and we have now sent out almost 5,000 downloads of the tour.

Until very recently our Harry Potter London walks were manually uploaded per request. Since the PDF itself runs to over 30 pages it was getting to the stage where it was taking nearly three hours a day just to send out the PDF’s in reply to the requests for our London walks.

We have been champing at the bit to get on with our new free London walks the Riverside London Pub Tour and spending so much time a week sending out the Harry Potter Tour meant we couldn’t give the time required to ensure that the free  London Pub Walk was up to the standard our clients have come to expect.

And then, as if by magic, we found the solution! We automated the entire process. Now to request a copy of our Harry Potter London Tour you just have to send us an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and lo and behold within about a minute the entire 30 page PDF booklet will suddenly land in your in box.

This is great for us as we can now forge ahead with our free London walks (all of which will be likewise automated), it’s great for you because you will no longer have to wait for us to answer your email, the whole process works within minutes and is fully automated.

So why not put our new system to the test? Simply ping us an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and the world famous Harry Potter London walk will be with you in no time.

Once you get the pdf you simply open the file, print it off and off you go. We have also started testing it on the Blackberry hand-held and, although the download takes a little longer, it works like magic.

So now you don’t even need to print off our London walks you can download them to a Blackberry (we haven’t actually tested it on other mobiles yet so we can’t say for certain if you can download our London walks harry Potter Tour onto other handsets) and you can follow it on your screen.

Keep an eye out for other London walks that will be going live soon and we’re even hard at work putting together a bus tour of London that you will be able to do yourself for nothing more than the cost of a Travel Card or an Oyster card. More info will follow soon.

But for now send us the email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and see for yourself how we’re about to open up the London Walking Tour scene for free to everybody.

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Walks in London - Harry Potter

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Our Harry Potter London walks are about to be updated to incorporate the locations used in the new film Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Richard and his two boy wizards, Thomas and William, went to see the film on Sunday and noted the London locations that are featured in the film.

Today, Monday July 20th 2009, Richard will be walking the Harry Potter London walks route and making the necessary amendments to include the locations that were featured in the new film.

As mentioned in an earlier blog one notable London scene will feature the Death Eaters leading an attack in London that causes the Millennium Bridge to wobble an awful lot!

So one certain amendment to the Harry Potter Walking Tour of London will be a slight detour from the route along the south bank of the River Thames onto the Millennium Bridge where you will be able to picture the scene as it buckles under the attack from the Death Eaters.

Trafalgar Square and the Gherkin also feature in the film so they will also be featured in the coming update of the Harry Potter London walk.

If you haven’t yet requested our free Harry Potter London walks PDF then you can do so by simply sending us an email request to

harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com

and you’ll get it almost immediately.

The PDF is a 28 page booklet that we send to you as an email attachment and you then download, print off and follow its step by step instructions around the streets of London. It also incorporates a treasure hunt through London to keep the kids occupied between locations.

It is a detailed document complete with photographs of the locations visited. In addition you get a lot of the history of the different parts of London that the Walking Tour of Harry Potter film locations passes through.

So, for example, you cross London Bridge and find out why it was/ is falling down. You go inside the church that features in the ryme Oranges and Lemons and discover the meaning behind the rhyme.

The best part though is that our tour is one of our Free London walks that will only cost the paper and ink to print it off and your travel expenses to the start point.

Richard Jones wrote the tour because he wanted to show parents that they really could enjoy a family day out in London and not end up spending lots of money. In a nutshell that’s exactly what Richard’s free London walks do. They show you that you can, if you wish, spend a day, few days, or even a week in London enjoying some great attractions all of which are free.

So don’t delay. send us an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and we will send you the free Harry Potter London walks PDF within about 5 minutes. Magic or what?

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Harry Potter London Treasure Hunt Walks.

Monday, July 13th, 2009

This week is well and truly Harry Potter week in London and our Walks that cover the Harry Potter London film locations are increasing in popularity with each day that passes.

We put the harry Potter London walk together in December 2008 and have been updating it ever since.

In late April we converted it to a manageable 27 page print off and go PDF tour around the harry Potter London sites.

How it works is very simple. If you wish to take our self guided Harry Potter London walks you can request it via our quick enquiry form at the top right corner of this page. We then send you the PDF as an email attachment which you then print off . That’s it really. Couldn’t be simpler!

The Harry Potter London walk is a step by step full researched guided tour that will take you all over London.

It covers the major sites that featured n the Harry Potter films. Places such as Gringotts Bank, The entrance to the Ministry of Magic, The Leaky Cauldron and, of course, Platform 9 3/4.

With regards the latter site there is a major refurbishment going on at King’s Cross Station at the moment and Platform 9 3/4 recently moved! Not to worry though, our Harry Potter London walk has been updated to include the new location, which isn’t that far from the old location, but which can prove a little difficult to find if you arrive at King’s Cross during the evening rush hour. That is why our step by step directions are so helpful.

Our free London walks and Harry Potter tours are all paced out  with step by step directions that guide you past some of the capital’s most historic sites. In addition our Harry Potter London Film Location Walk is laid out as a treasure hunt in which the children can be kept fully occupied searching for unusual items in the streets of London.

So if you would like to receive our Free Harry Potter Tour PDF please send us an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and we’ll send it by return. In addition we will also send you details of our many other London walks.

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Free Tours and Walks in London

Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Have you signed up for our Free Harry Potter London walks yet?

It really is a great way to see London and, best of all it is absolutely free. All it will cost you is the cost of the ink and paper to print the 27 page booklet off and the cost of your travel into London.

Our free London walks are frequently updated so we ensure that the routes are always up to date and are walkable.

The Harry Potter Tour takes you all over London. As well as visiting the Harry Potter film locations sights you will get to see an awful lot of historic London.

You’ll go past the Houses of Parliament; have a wonderful view of St Paul’s Cathedral from the opposite bank of the River Thames and even see the back of 10 Downing Street, the home of the Prime Minister.

You will see little items of fascinating street furniture such as a Ferryman’s stool that dates back hundreds of years and which is now embedded into the wall of a modern building.

You’ll see the wonderful replica of Sir Francis Drake’s flagship the Golden Hinde. You’ll see the original Globe Playhouse and learn about its associations with William Shakespeare. You’ll even see the street where Charles Dickens sited Scrooge’s House in A Christmas Carol.

And these are just a few of the locations that you will visit on this first of a series of free London walks we will be offering by PDF over the coming months.

Is all you have to do to receive it is ping us an email, you can do it by the quick request form at the top right corner of the page. We then send the PDF as soon as we receive your request.

So, as we said at the start of this article, have you signed up for our free Harry Potter London walks yet?

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Harry Potter Free London Tour

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Our Harry Potter free London walks are proving really popular. Since it went live two weeks ago we have had almost 500 request for the free PDF download, and several of those have now followed the route and have emailed to say how much they have enjoyed it. We have received several emails from parents telling us how nice it is to find something free to do with their kids in London.

Walks are a great way to get around the city. Unlike on coach tours, you can actually take the time to explore the wonderful places that London has to offer in the backstreets and hidden courtyards. Instead of just zooming past an intriguing looking alleyway or passage way you can actually go in to it, look around and see what it has to offer.

This is the beauty of a London walk. This city was not laid out for motorised transport. The streets of this city evolved at a time when if people wanted to get across London they walked.

Coach tours can show you the main sights, but you are always going to be looking at those places from behind the barrier of the coach window. You lose the atmosphere, lose the excitement and the intrigue of true discovery, and - perhaps worst of all - you lose the chance to get away from the crowded thoroughfares of modern London and into those hidden away little nooks and corners where history was made.

So why not download the first of our free London walks? The Harry Potter London Tour is emailed as a PDF attachment which you just print off, head out, and then do at you own pace and in your own time.

Unlike scheduled London walks, you won’t be crammed onto a tour with loads of other people, but rather you will be with your own family or friends exploring at your own pace. If you want to dally at a spot for a bit longer you will be able to do so. If you want to quit and come back to finish the route another day, that will be fine.

So send us your request via out quick submit for at the top of the page and we will respond within 48 hours with a fully researched PDF that will show you so much more of London.

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London Bridge and The Tinker

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

John Chapman - The Swafham Tinker

London Bridge features a great deal on our various London walks. For example we tell the story of theThe Swafham Tinker - London walks origins of the rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down on our Free Harry Potter Tour. We stand on it in our Shakespeare’s London walk and point to the site where Old London Bridge once stood, before it was demolished in the 1830’s.

On our Mysterious London walk we tell the strange tale of the Swafham Tinker, which is the subject of our blog today.

A 15th Century tinker by the name of John Chapman, who lived in Swafham in Norfolk, dreamt three times that if he would go to London and stand on the bridge he would meet a man who would make him rich.

Despite the jeers and taunts of his family and friends, the dream made such an impression on him that he made his way to the capital and spent a disheartening day being stared at by passers - who mistook him for a beggar.

Eventually a man stopped and asked what he was doing there. Wearily Chapman recounted his dream to the stranger, who smiled and shook his head. “You are foolish to follow a dream” he told the tinker “why I myself had one in which I was told to go to a place called Swafham and find a man called John Chapman, because under the only tree in his garden is a crock of gold.” Laughing heartily the stranger walked away shouting back that there was no way he was going to go on a wild goose - chase.

John Chapman could not believe his ears he raced home for all he was worth and began digging under the only tree in his garden. Sure enough he found a crock of gold and on it was written the message “Dig deeper, for under me doth live one richer than I”. Chapman obeyed and found a huge hoard of buried treasure.

From that day forth he lived a life of wealth and privilage, but not forgetting his mysterious dream he endowed the church at Swafham with a grand chapel and his effigy can still be seen carved there to this day.

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