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Rivers of London Walking Tour
London

Walk with PC Grant through the London that tourists never see, where river gods are real and every old building has a story it would rather keep quiet.

7 stops · 3.3 km

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GPS-guided · Works offline · No signal needed

Every Stop Has a Story

The Folly

The Folly is entirely fictional, but the real Georgian terraces on this early-19th-century square, never quite as prestigious as Grosvenor Square, fit Peter's description exactly.

Peter Meets Nicholas Walpenny

England's first purpose-built Protestant church has a portico that leads nowhere: it faces east, where the altar traditionally sits, so the real entrance had to be built around the back on the west side.

The French House

Charles de Gaulle and the French Resistance met here during WWII, when this pub was still called the York Minster, decades before it was renamed and became the spot where Peter Grant first tunes into Soho's spirit.

Peter Eats at Wong Kei

Soho's Chinatown, where Peter eats his late-night dinner, is actually London's second: the first grew up in Limehouse in the 1880s among Chinese sailors who settled in the Docklands.

Peter Navigates the Vestigia

London's home of film premieres started life as a field beside a 1630s manor house, and didn't become an entertainment destination until theatres and galleries moved in during the 19th century.

The Court of Mother Thames

Keep an eye on the bronze lion heads along the Embankment wall: legend says that if the Thames ever rises high enough for them to drink, London will sink.

The Threshold of the Mundane

Scotland Yard takes its name from a long-gone palace that medieval Scottish monarchs once used when visiting England, a name the Met has carried through three different homes since 1890.

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