Bedford Square, from Gower Street
The quickest way to get from A to B in our great city? The tube (planned engineering works permitting). But the fastest way to fall in love with it? On foot. Here we give you seven bespoke itineraries designed to get the most out of the capital’s streets. You get this funny feeling inside of yer, just walking up and down…
Bedford Square, from Gower Street
See listings details of more London walks.
See listings details of organized tours of London areas, attractions and landmarks.
Street art walk
Let Time Out Art
editor Ossian Ward guide you around the outdoor art of the
Shoreditch/Hoxton borders, a kind of transient outdoor gallery where
the exhibition changes constantly as night-owl artists creep out to
obliterate their peers’ efforts of the previous evening. Imagine a
world without museums, where artists are free to decorate the city
democratically with art that belongs to all of us.
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Victorian pub walk
Share a jar or several with
Time Out editor-at-large Michael Hodges as he trudges the mean streets
of south-east London. This area was transformed from sleepy common land
to pub-tastic suburbia by two Victorian innovations – the railways and
Sir Joseph Paxton’s famous Crystal Palace, brought here from Hyde Park
(where it had housed the Great Exhibition) in 1852. Sydenham may seem a
long way south for some readers but, thanks to train stations at either
end, this route is easily reached from Charing Cross, London Bridge and
Victoria. So come south and work up a thirst.
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Feature continues
Film location walk
Let the Time Out Film team take you through the screen into ’60s west
London, where spies rubbed shoulders with gangsters and pop stars fled
from dollybirds while lotharios flicked fag-ends in the gutter.
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Dockside walk
Time Out’s deputy Around
Town editor Natasha Polyviou leads you on a waterside adventure in the
Isle of Dogs and Greenwich, two vastly different locales which face
each other across the Thames. If you want to keep strictly to the
marine theme, take a boat to the start of your walk, getting dropped
off at Masthouse Terrace Pier (www.thamesclippers.com).
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Radical London walk
The joy of a city that has always – well, usually – put a high premium on free speech is that there is never a quiet moment: if it isn’t hungry peasants revolting against their overlords, it’s Chartists marching for electoral reform, or the anti-Thatcher brigade rioting against the Poll Tax. Time Out features writer Peter Watts dons his earplugs and braves the furious crowds.
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Railway walk
Guided by Emma Jackson, a
tutor at Goldsmiths who’s researching the King’s Cross redevelopment
for her PhD, this walk focuses on the area once known as ‘Battle
Bridge’. Nearly 200 years later, this canalside enclave is still a
battleground between the grandiose and dark sides of metropolitan life.
Visit now before the works are complete.
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Medical London walk
With medical historian Richard Barnett as your guide, stroll through Bloomsbury’s elegant squares which, over the past two-and-a-half centuries, have witnessed bloodshed and filth, politics and philanthropy – and any number of medical institutions. The physicians, surgeons and apothecaries who fled the overcrowded city in the early eighteenth century began to take on new powers and responsibilities in the nineteenth and wound up being NHS practitioners by the twentieth. Who knows where the next century will take them?
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7 comments
My girlfriend and I have done most of these walks over the years and the Film location walk was probably the most disappointing- most of the locations were very well hidden and if you haven't seen the films mentioned, there's pretty much no point doing it. However, we picked a day when the Portobello Road market was on and that single-handedly made up for it. I lost count of how much we spent on food there and we've made plans to go back next week.
The route: Crap. Discovering another area of London to explore: Priceless.
In the info for the Silver Screen Saunter", you mention Gainsborough Studios as being in Lime Grove, it is actually over in the Islington/Hackney area.
http://www.britmovie.co.uk/studios/gains/biog00.html
Also an exterior location for one scenes in the Powell and Pressburger film "The Red Shoes" (1948) is the "Mercury Theatre" in Ladbroke Road
http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/n/nottinghill. html
http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/p/performance. html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/entertainment/films/lond onfilmlist.shtml#kensington
What a fantastic feature! I am an avid fan of the Timeout guide and have used them for every city I have ever visited. I recently moved from London to New York and now buy the TONY weekly. I'd love a 'Great Walks' feature every week. Or even a great walks book - top ten for all major cities in the world! Keep it concise and as user friendly as this layout, other 'walk' books get too detailed and hence boring. It's too impractical to be reading long prose while trying to walk and soak up the surroundings.
May i finally add i am not someone who ever comments on websites but this feature was just what i've been looking recently!
Cheeseman, you'll probably remain uninterested in the 'environment' until you're knee-deep in water and choking on fumes. But don't worry, it'll all start to make sense then.
Agreed, cycling is always speedier in any part of London I've tested it in than any form of public transport or car on short or long journeys. In fact the tube is often substantially slower. Being uninterested in the so-called 'environment', I hanker for a motorbike, which could be the supreme solution.
Great as cycling is, many more people are able to walk. To discover London on foot for free, visit www.walklondon.org.uk for over 580km of easy to follow walking routes, with free maps and leaflets for download. You can even search by Borough to see exactly what's in your neighbourhood. Happy walking!
I think you'll find that (as proved by those geniuses at Top Gear!) cycling is the quickest way to get from A to B in London. AND you get the benefits of exercise, sunshine (if you're lucky) and being environmentally friendly!