Welcome to London Discovery Tours

Posts Tagged ‘London walks’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Jack the Ripper’s London - A Walk

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Looking for something slightly different to do in London at night? Walks are a great way to see more of London whilst learning something about the history of the capital and also being entertained at the same time.

Our Jack the Ripper Tour takes plave seven nights a week and is led by the real experts on the case. Three of our guides are published authors who have written extensively about this fascinating murder mystery.

We are also the only London walks company to have prodiced an internationally acclaimed Jack the Ripper drama documentary which has been hailed by many as the best ripper documentary of recent years.

We though we’d give you a taster of the guides with the following clip from our film Unmasking Jack the Ripper. This was written and is narrated by our guide Richard Jones. Also appearing in this excerpt are our London walking tour guides Lindsay Siviter and Jenny Philips.

So please enjoy this brief introduction to Jack the Ripper’s London and, if you like what you see, why not join us for a Jack the Ripper Walk?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

Shakespeare’s London - A Walk Through History

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Continuing the little tasters of our free London walks we have added an extra video providing you with a brief introduction of Shakespeare’s London. This is just a brief taster of the free Walking tours we are rolling out this year.

Based on the huge success of our Harry Potter Walking Tour we’re going to be providing lots of ways for you to enjoy our free tours of London.

You’ll be able to watch the video’s, listen to them as podcasts, download them as a printable pdf and generally get to see a side of London that is both intriguing and fascinating in equal measure.

We’ve been filming over 50 London walks throughout the winter. But as you will see from the Shakespeare film, these won’t just be walking tours, but will also provide dramatic reconstructions that will transport you back to the times against which each walk is set.

We’ll also be adding out of London jaunts to Bath, Oxford, Stratford, Cambridge, York and Edinburgh.

It’s going to be a great year for those of you who enjoy expoloring London at your own pace and at a time that suits you. So please enjoy our little taster of the Shakespeare Walk.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

A curse on our London walks

Monday, April 19th, 2010

We’re steaming ahead now with our free London walks and as part of that project we’re ploughing through hours of video that we’ve shot in London over the last two year.

As we did so we came across footage of the routine that Richard used to do on his London Ghost Walks when he would get one member of the group to place a curse upon the other.

Hope you enjoy it!

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

Dickens Walks In London

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Charles Dickens loved London and walks that follow in his footsteps and in the footsteps of his numerous immortal characters can be great fun.

As part of our commitment to bringing you some great London Walking Tours that are absolutely free we will soon be adding the ultimate Dickensian London walk.

Following on  with the format of our Harry Potter London Tour, the Journey through Dickens London will take you through one od the capital’s most magical quarters, an area that Dickens knew very well indeed and about which he wrote many times.

We’ve now created the PDF for this particular tour and it will be available as a free download very shortly.

The Walk will feature some of the many locations that have changed little since Dickens knew them. Chief amongst them will be a wander amongst the quiet and cloisterly courtyards of the Inns of Court of which Dicken wrote “you can read on the gates who enters here leaves noise behind.” This description is still as true today as it did in his day.

We’ve got some great innovations for our new tours which we’ll roll out as the new tours begin to go live in May.

In the meantime don’t forget that it is possible to sample one of our free London walks by taking our Harry Potter London Tour. To get this free pdf you just have to send an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com and our automated system will ping it back to you within moments.

So keep a keen eye on our blog as we’ll be announcing the order in which the new walking tours will be rolled out in the months ahead.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

London Ghost Walks And Jack The Ripper Tour

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Our Jack the Ripper London walk is still taking place seven chilling nights a week and departs from Exit Four of Aldgate East Underground Station.

This is the only Jack the Ripper Walk that starts right in the heart of the area where the infamous murders took place between August and November 1888. By following the carefully laid out route that we have devised you get a much better idea of how the murders unfolded, the effect they had on the area and how they increased in ferocity as the so called “autumn of terror” rolled by.

For the full deatils of the Jack the Ripper Tour can be found at the relevant page on this website.

The other popualr one of our London walks is the London Ghost Walk. This takes place mostly on Friday and  Saturday nights and takes you on a wonderful and creepy journey thorugh the older streets of London.

To book on to the London Ghost Walks please pay a visit to the relevant pages on our website.

Richard has been out today putting the finishing touches to the Free Riverside Pub Walk, which is due to go live in May and which will allow you to visit several pubs that literally face out across the River Thames. These places are steeped in history and we know you’re going to love this and the other free London walks that we’ll be rolling out in the coming months.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

Political London - The walks are on!

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Well the political jungle has well and truly stirred and the parties are going head to head (or should that be banging heads) to try and win our vote.

Of our London Walking tours several take you around the streets of Westminster (although these are only available to private groups at the moment) and the Harry Potter London Tour, which is a DIY Walk takes you along Whitehall, past Downing Street and over Westminster Bridge, affording some splendid views of the Houses of Parliament.

This coming Thursday the three leaders, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg will take part in the first TV debate, which should be riveting!!!

Some great stories are coming out about the various political candidates. When Charles Kennedy was leader of the Lib Dems he toured a hospital with the television cameras in tow and had the good fortune to meet a patient who told him that he’d be voting Liberal Democrat at the election. “What are you in for?” asked a delighted Kennedy. “Brain surgery” came the reply!

But, with  the television appearances by politicians rapidly gaining momentum, spare a thought for poor old Martin Solomon, a 64 year old retired sailor who has just spent two weeks in jail awaiting sentencing for breaching the terms of an Anti Social Behavior order (ASBO) issued against him by Gloucester Crown Court.

What’ was Mr Solomon’s heinous offence?

He can’t stop swearing at politicians when they appear on his Tv at his home in Stroud in Gloucestershire. So frequent and loud are his outbursts that his neighbours complained about the noise and Mr Solomon was issued with his ASBO which he breached whilst wtching an episode of BBC1’s Question Time.

He has now been given a new community order for 12 months, with the first review due to take place on May 6th, the day after the General Election. No doubt the air in shroud will be turning blue and not just for the Tory candidate!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

Take Free Walk In London

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

The free Harry Potter London walk went mad last week. Don’t know why it happened but, all of a sudden our average daily requests rocketed from around 30 to over 200. We’ve had some great feedback from people who have done the Harry Potter Tour and are really looking forward to bringing in our new free London walking tours in early May.

Our Riverside pub walk will be the first one to go live and this will be quickly followed by a Walk Around Dickens London. Since Richard wrote the acclaimed book Walking Dickensian London the Dickens walk is gauranteed to be a great walking tour.

Just like the Harry Potter Tour of London, the new free London walking tours will be downloadable PDFS. You just print them off and off you go. The great thing is that you will be able to do them at any time and on any day to suit you, so you’re not confined to a specific time of departure, nor a specific time limit on your tour. You can go at your own pace and in your own time. How enjoyable would that be? Plus our step by step instructions will ensure that you won’t get lost as you make your way around the route. We know the step by step directions work because we’ve been trialing them for the last twelve months on the Free Harry Potter London walk, and they’ve worked Like a dream. You can, incidentally, download the Harry Potter London tour by sending an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com. Since this is an automated system, within moments you will receive the PDF as an attachment. It’s like magic!

Keep an eye out for our the launch of free walks of London. They’ll be live, very soon.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

Tom Baker To Write Forward For Richard’s new Book

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

We got some great news this week. Tom Baker has agreed to write the forward for Richard’s new book on Haunted Britain.

The book is due out in October this year just in time for Halloween. Richard is currently doing some of the extra photos for the book and it looks great.

London Theatres Project.

Richard is now working on a project with Sir Donald Sinden that has seen him exploring several of London’s theatres. Indeed, they have had unprecedented access to some of the top theatres in London and Richard now has a fund of anecdotes that will, over the next few months be charted on our London walks blog.

Jack the Ripper and Toulouse.

On Wednesday this week Richard flew out to Toulouse to give a talk on Jack the Ripper to the International School. This is the second time Richard has done the trip and it appeared, once more, to go down very well with the students. It’s fascinating how the Jack the Ripper mystery has the ability to hold the interest of people from all over the world. The students were given the assignment of getting together in teams and presenting a case for a particular Jack the Ripper suspect of their choosing. It was interesting to see how the case against such suspects as Francis Thompson, Thomas Cutbush, Joseph Barnet and M.J. Druit was put together by the students.

More details on Richard’s new book will be going up soon. The book does really look great and the true ghost stories included are both varied and fascinating. So keep an eye on the blog for more information on Richard’s project with Sir Donald Sinden, the new book with the forward by Tom Baker, and the project that Richard is working on with one of Britain’s top rock stars.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

This weeks walks news in London

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Well the clocks have done whatever it is they do at this time of year. It’s now British Summer Time (yeah right!) and it’s raining. Don’t you just love these halcyon summer days.

We had a record day on our Harry Potter London walks last week when 89 requests were made in one day. You can still get hold of a copy of the free pdf by sending an email to

harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com

That’s all there is to it. The DIY tour then comes back to you by return.

Of course you can still join us for a Jack the Ripper Tour or for one of our London Ghost Walks.

The Jack the Ripper walks take place 7 chilling nights a week and the Ghost Walks in London are currently on Friday and Saturday nights.

Richard has now finished the writing for his new book Haunted Britain, which will be published on Halloween this year. In addition the Sherlock Holmes documentary is almost completed and will be going on sale in the near future.

Richard has now begun a great new project with Sir Donald Sinden, one of the most respected names in British Theatre. Last week Richard and several others accompanied Sir Donald on a tour of some great properties and the project, when it is completed, is going to be great.

Sir Donald is now in his mid- 80’s but shows no signs of slowing down. He has a fund of great anecdotes (he actually met Lord Alfred Douglas!) and is a true raconteur who still keeps his audiences enraptured with his tales of the theatrical world.

The finished project is going to be absolutely breathtaking and we’ll be posting more information on it on this blog in the coming months.

In the meantime the Free Riverside Pub Walk is now  in its finishing stages and we hope to launch it in early May.  So keep an eye on this blog for it.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

The Harry Potter London walk

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

We recently changed the Harry Potter London walk to incorporate the fact that the photograph of the Harry Potter actors is no longer on display at the National Portrait gallery.
Both the website and the Harry Potter London tour PDF have been updated to incorporate this change, albeit since the tour actually still passes the National Portrait Gallery it is worth popping in if you have the time.

Otherwise the Harry Potter tour of London is up to date as of March 2010 and can be obtained by the simple, magical ruse of sending an email to harry-potter-pdf@discovery-walks.com.

This is now a totally automated system so the owl responds within minutes and drops the downloadable pdf into your mail box. It’s that simple.

The great thing about our DIY London Walking Tours is that you are able to do them at your own pace. You don’t have to turn up at a scheduled departure point, and you most certainly don’t have to be crammed onto a tour with a large group of people.

Our DIY walking tour format has proved incredibly popular and we’re going to be adding a lot more of them this year. The first to go live will be the Riverside Pub tour, which has been mapped out and is now just waiting to be written up. As with the Harry Potter Tour the Riverside London Pub Walks will be laid out in such a way as to provide plenty of history, lots of atmosphere and they will also incorporate a pub quiz and treasure hunt that will keep you occupied throughout!

We’re planning on the London Pub Walks being as popular as the Harry Potter tour, as our DIY format lends itself perfectly to exploring the city’s haunted pubs.

So keep an eye on our blog for more details of the coming Free London walks.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in General Walking Blogs | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »