Walks

Fantastic festive walks for all.

Christmas Lights Walk
We’ll start on the Strand, where London’s love affair with festive glow first flickered into life. Then on to Trafalgar Square, where the great Norwegian spruce takes its stand from 4 December – the nation’s thank-you note in tree form. We’ll wind through St James’s Street (another tree, maybe even a glimpse of Father Christmas himself), past Piccadilly Circus to Sir Christopher Wren’s only church outside the City – yes, another tree! You'll end the walk in Soho.

Christmas Lights Photography Tour
Explore night photography and learn to capture stunning Christmas lights photos by mastering some of the most creative elements of photography. Whether you are starting off, a hobbyist or an experienced photographer we will have superb photographic opportunities for all kinds of interests. Guided by a professional photographer in this immensely enjoyable night tour we will capture a variety of impressive sight in the city, with the best locations for Christmas Lights Photography. We will capture the incredible main displays in Regent Street, Piccadilly, Soho, the Strand and some of the stunning landmarks of this city. Through demonstration and a personalised photography practice you will develop your own creative vision while receiving expert advice on shooting in low light and long exposures.

Meet David – who’s a professional photographer – just outside the Villiers Street exit of Embankment Tube.

The Christmas Canal Cruise: Through Islington Tunnel
There’s London above ground. And there's another London altogether down on the water. For this Christmas Special we explore the extraordinary world of the Regent's Canal, its history, its people and the remarkable engineering that made it possible. Your London Walks guide brings the story to life as we make our way through this hidden strip of London and towards the adventure at the heart of the outing. Because this one has a wonderful extra. We board the London Canal Museum’s Long Tom for a mince-pie cruise along the Regent’s Canal and, best of all, straight through the great Islington Tunnel.

Meet by the taxi queue outside King's Cross.

The Christmas Lights Pub Walk
T’was the  Saturday  before the Christmas weekend and all through the streets the walkers got ready for the festive treat. This Christmas Season Pub walk unwraps London at its most inviting. Let alone most historic. Our town turned out in its sparkling best – seasonally festive, all dolled up for the Big Day. And part of the weave, part of the walk – lots of Christmas connections and seasonal traditions. And as per normal with London Walks, the secret ingredient(s) – the see the unseen magic. The “didn’t know that, never would have seen that” trimmings. Let alone lashings of conviviality and general hail-fellow-well-met-ness! All of which will of course set you up very nicely in the plenty-to-talk-about-over-the-turkey-on-the-day lists. So, in sum, since Christmas is almost here it’s streets laced with lights and twinkling with cheer and (just maybe) sequined with snow. (You don’t get more Christmas Card Christmas than London when she’s donned the ermine!) But to make sure we keep Jack – and his frost – at bay, will put in at a couple of fine old hostelries for mulled wine or hot cider or ale or sherry. But, hey, it’s Christmas time – no excuses needed to be merry, get merry, keep merry, make merry!

Meet at Embankment underground station, London (Villiers Street exit).

Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol & Seasonal Traditions
All the delights and delicacies of a London Victorian Christmas with Charles Dickens’s famous story A Christmas Carol as your route map and inspiration. We’ll deck the streets of London with balls of jolly. Scrooge and Marley and the Cratchits… they’re all here. This was where Dickens’s imagination took wing and where the characters did their thing. And as we make their acquaintance we’ll spice things with warming seasonal stories of turkeys and boars’ heads, Christmas puds, mince pies and pantomimes; cards, crackers, Christmas trees and mistletoe. Let alone the bells that rang out on Christmas morning to wake Scrooge up, a much-changed character.

The meeting point for the Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol & Seasonal Traditions walk is just outside the exit of Tower Hill Tube. Meet by the Tower Hill Tram coffee stall.

The walk takes about two hours and ends across the street from St. Paul’s Cathedral and St. Paul'sTube Stop.

Eating Christmas
Learn all about our traditional Christmas food. Turkey, stuffing, bread sauce, Brussels sprouts. Xmas pudding, Xmas cake, mince pies…you’ll be eating them soon. Pick up all sorts of titbits to astonish your Xmas dining companions – the turkeys that walked to London, the chequered history of the sprout, the rise and fall of the goose. Salivate over grand pudding recipes, shudder over workhouse Xmas fare. And the meaty past of the mince pie – make sure you eat 12 of them next month…and we end at that feast for the senses, Borough Market, where you can stock up on Xmas supplies.

Meet at Bank Underground Station (exit 3).

Christmas Music Walking Tour With Singalong
A Musical Walking Tour with Singalong and FREE Mulled Wine! A West End Christmas Lights tour featuring traditional Christmas songs plus locations from the movie Last Christmas inspired by the music of George Michael. This walk sells-out every year! Booking & prepaying is essential. It’s not your average Christmas Lights Tour...

Meet at Tottenham Court Road tube (exit 1).

The Sherlock Holmes Christmas Walk
“Compliments of the season!” A goose and a hat are lost in a scuffle at a street corner. But where? Which street corner? A suspect spends time in a museum. But why? An investigation leads to a famous market. But how? We follow the crisscrossing paths of Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson as they solve their only original Christmas-time case, and Arthur Conan Doyle as he reaches a crisis in his professional life. Where did the detective acquire his famous Stradivarius violin?

Where was the ‘Alpha’ public house which briefly hosted a hidden jewel? Where did Holmes himself live before he moved to 221b? Throw in a film location which links a silent screen Holmes and modern-day Sherlock, a fine house where one of Conan Doyle’s greatest friends lived, a theatre where the sleuth made a triumphant return on stage in the 1920s, and you have the recipe for this affectionate festive offering from the glory days of the Great Detective. Guided by , who “specialised in early detective fiction at university, played Dr Watson on stage, contributes to the Sherlock Holmes Journal, is the Audiobooks reader for the Dr John Watson series.”

Meet at Goodge Street Tube.

The Christmas Trees of London
Welcome to London’s most glorious constellation of Christmas trees. This is the tour you don’t just like – you love. Claire takes you to the trees that matter. The iconic ones. The hidden ones. The jaw-dropping hotel ones. The “oh-my-word, I’d never have found this in a million years” ones. What you get is not just a walk. It’s a rich, warming, full Christmas feast – a London Christmas lit up tree by tree. Visual mood music. A sparkle at every turn. And, best of all, the shining eyes of Claire and her troupe performing that old London miracle on our merry band of walkers – turning strangers into delighted companions.

Meet at Bond Street Tube, Marylebone Lane exit, by the Disney store.

Christmas in the City
Let’s deck the halls, lace up the boots, and step into the City of London at its most magical. Because if Christmas is anywhere, it’s here. It’s in the air, it’s in the lights, it’s in the bones of this ancient Square Mile.

Your guide? Alison. A top-flight Blue Badge Guide. She’s so good she was tapped to be an instructor on the Blue Badge course itself. Which is a way of saying: this isn’t just a walk, it’s a masterclass in guiding. Only wrapped in tinsel and tied with a bow.

Meet at St Paul's tube, exit 2.

Christmas Morning, 1660 – Samuel Pepys’ London
Yes, Christmas Morning 1660. Everybody knows that 1660 was the year of the Restoration. But it wasn’t just the monarchy that was “restored” in that year. What’s not so well known is that Christmas was banned between 1652 and 1660. The Ebeneezer Scrooge of that era was none other than the Protector himself, Oliver Cromwell. He certainly didn’t protect Christmas. He shot it down and shut it down. Hard to believe isn’t it – no Christmas in England for eight years. Talk about doing hard time. Cromwell and Co. put the boot in because, according to them, Christmas was a farrago of pagan traditions and popish nonsense. And as such it had to be extirpated. And so it was. But, happily, that all changed in 1660. Cromwell was kaput. Royalty – in the person of Charles II – was rip roaringly replevined, not to say rampant. Puritanism was purged. And part and parcel of all that was we got Christmas back. So Christmas morning 1660 – must have been pretty special, wouldn’t you say? And what’s neat is that – well, you weren’t there, but you can be there! This time round, I mean.

The meeting point is by the big Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square

The Christmas Day Charles Dickens’ London Walk
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me [Charles Dickens]" Our afternoon walk is all about the man who some think invented Christmas – he didn’t! He re-invented it! Before Dickens and his stories came along Christmas was a rather small celebration on the Christian calendar. It was Dickens whose words plumped, fluffed and sprinkled Christmas all over the world. So on Christmas afternoon we celebrate him, his words, his life, his London and his Christmas. A Christmas before Cola turned Santa red. A Christmas in the gaslight. A Christmas in London – Dickens’ London.

The Charles Dickens Christmas Day walk starts at 14.00. The meeting point is by the big Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. The walk ends in Covent Garden, very near the Strand and Trafalgar Square. And yes, there are cafes and restaurants in the area that will be open on Christmas Day.