Book a London at Dawn Photography Tour

One morning last month, your author rose at an ungodly hour to spend some time at the invitation of professional photographer Anthony Epes and black cabbie & certified tour guide Nick Mortimore touring the City of London. Joined by a small but determined ragbag team of London writers and journalists, it was an interesting way to observe the City as it woke to face another day.


Unlike many such things, the tour was both interesting and rewarding, with Mortimore a very knowledgeable London guide with plenty of information and London insight - gleaned from 25 years driving London's streets from North to South - and Epes brimming over with photography skills. The tour left Tower Pier and made its way up past the Tower of London and on into the City, past Bevis Marks and the Gherkin, and off towards Spitalfields before your author had to break away to bike into work.

Yes, the tours are expensive, and yes you have to get up whilst it's still dark and travel across London as the birds are only just beginning to stir, but seeing London in the early morning is a great experience, and often motivating oneself to do so needs a reason, so it helps to have the passion and interest that Mortimore and Epes offer in bags.

For more on their tours, see http://www.londonatdawn.com/

Take a tour of the Mansion House

Home to the Lord Mayor of London, the Mansion House is a grand Georgian town house at the centre of the City of London, brimming over with grand interiors and elegant furniture, and today you can get inside on a regular tour.


Tours of the House are taken by City of London Guides at a cost of £6 per person, every Tuesday at 2pm, and last about an hour. As so often, your author can't take the credit for discovering this fantastic opportunity and read about it on IanVisits but thought it well worth sharing over here.

For more information, click here.

_{^Picture © RachelH_ used under Creative Commons^}

Take the London Duck Tour

We've all seen them thundering around central London, and splashing down ramps into the river, but how many of us have ever actually taken the London Duck Tour? Your author must admit he has never got round to it, but he hopes to take one of the tours, which depart from Chicheley Street in Waterloo daily, one day soon.


If you've never heard of them, the tours use 'DUKWS' amphibious vehicles, which were first used during the D-Day landings in Normandy, to conduct tours taking in London landmarks like Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square on land, before launching into the River Thames from a slipway in Vauxhall, and conducting a water-borne tour of central London.

Around 21,000 'DUKWS' vehicles were built to take the D-Day troops ashore, designed following a partnership between the General Motors Corporation and the New York yacht designers Sparkman & Stephens. The idea of using them for tourists was pioneered by the Boston Duck Tours, in the USA, and was only fully established in London as late as July 2003.

The vehicles depart from Waterloo roughly every 15 minutes during peak days with 30 passengers, and tours take 75 minutes and cost about £20. For more, see http://www.londonducktours.co.uk/

Take the London Insider Tube Tour

Your author was treated to a free tour on the London Underground recently by the good people at Insider London, and it was very pleasant. Their two hour tour takes participants through 150 years of tube history, teaching them about various aspects of the construction and development of the world's first underground railway.


The downside, however, is that at £34.50 the cost is steep and your author isn't sure it is worth that much, even though you do get to learn some interesting titbits along the way, and even get the chance of spotting a 'ghost station' or two along the route.

For the money, the tours are also private, held in small groups, and they run whenever you want, beginning at Farringdon and ending at Westminster. For real enthusiasts there is also a six hour option which costs £79.50, and doesn't include lunch because they 'like to let guests choose exactly what they would like'. In truth these tours are both prohibitively priced for anyone but the most ardent cash-rich underground fan, and your author suggests you might be better off buying a book and doing it yourself.

For more on the tour, see http://insider-trends.com/london-underground-tours/ or to book email contact@insider-london.co.uk.

_{^Picture by Axel Rouvin^}

Take a tour of the Emirates Stadium

Emirates Stadium is located in Holloway, in Islington. It is, as many readers will probably be aware and is the home of Arsenal Football Club and has been since July 2006.


For £15, you can take a tour of the stadium, taking in such highlights as the players' tunnel, and the first team dressing room.

For an extra £20 you can take a tour led by a former player from the club, including 1971 FA Cup hero Charlie George, Arsenal centurion and Double winner John Radford and 1987 League Cup winning captain, Kenny Sansom, amongst others.

For more, see http://www.arsenal.com/emirates-stadium/stadium-tour

_{^Picture by wonker^}

Catch the Number Eleven - TFL's Tourist Bus

For new arrivals in town a bus tour can be a great way to acclimatise, but you can pay a lot of money to catch a tourist bus around London. Sure, you get an open top and a running commentary, but it can cost as much as twenty five times as much as getting on an ordinary bus and sitting on the top deck. Plus you have to put up with someone shouting fact in your ear.


If you're on a budget and willing to give it a go, the Number Eleven begins at Liverpool Street and takes in the Bank of England, St Pauls Cathedral, Fleet street, The Strand, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Number 10 Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. From there, it passes near to Buckingham Palace and you can get off and forget about all those nasty bus smells with a nice walk in the park.

So why not give it a bash? At least you'll be able to tell all those Big Bus Tour people thrusting leaflets in your face to p*ss off. For more information on central London bus routes, visit http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/central_bus_map.pdf, or for something a bit more twee, see this old post about heritage routes 9 and 15.

_{^Picture of bus interior from Flickr courtesy of chelmsfordblue^}

Take a Barbican Architecture Tour

Good news! The Barbican has started doing architecture tours on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays as part of their 'explore barbican' series.


As the literature notes, the Barbican has long been a source of controversy but your author, for one, is a fan. On a recent day off he took another of his regular wanders around the estate, gazing into the tropical conservatory which sits atop the arts centre, visiting a deserted St Giles Cripplegate, the ancient church in the heart of the concrete jungle, and popping into the shop at the Museum of London to browse the books.

The centre is a maze, but it has a great deal to offer if you take the time to examine it. An hour and a half with a guide certainly sounds like a perfect way to truly get to know this brutalist masterpiece. If any generous soul at the Barbican is reading your author is busy for the next couple of weekends but could probably squeeze something in in September.

Architecture Tours cost £8 and run until December. For more information, and to book online visit http://www.barbican.org.uk/education/event-detail.asp?ID=9526

_{^Picture from Flickr courtesy of Simiant^}

Tour Linley Sambourne House

18 Stafford Terrace, or Linley Sambourne House, is the home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne. It is now owned by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and is open to the public as a museum.


When Sambourne and his wife Marion died, the house passed to their son, then on his death in 1946 it then passed to his sister and then to her daughter, Lady Rosse. During this time the house was largely unchanged, and Lady Rosse, a founder of the Victorian Society.

The the Victorian Society eventually opened the house to the public in 1980 and in 1989 passed ownership to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is now open for guided tours only on Wednesdays at 11.15am and 2.15pm, and tours by guides in period costume on Saturdays and Sundays at 11.15am (not costumed), 1pm, 2.15pm and 3.30pm, at a price of £6. There are also evening tours in December.

For more information, visit http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/linleysambournehouse/

Click here to see the location on a map.

_{^Picture courtesy of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea^}

Tour Wembley Stadium

Sat under a large arch in North West London, Wembley has been the home of football since the original stadium was built in 1923.


The original stadium was, apparently, built in exactly 300 days and finished three days before the 1923 FA Cup final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United. Whilst that stadium cost £750,000 to build, the new Wembley Stadium cost £798 million and was delivered ten months late. It was due to open in May 2006 but the new stadium was not completed and handed over to the FA until 9 March 2007.

Tours of the stadium are a little expensive at £15, and run daily from 10am - 4.30pm, except on major event days. The 90 minute tour, includes visits to the England changing rooms and the Royal Box.

To book a tour, visit http://www.thestadiumtour.com/Home.aspx.

Click here to see the location on a map.

_{^Picture from Wikipedia^}

Take a tour of BBC Television Centre

Shepherd's Bush isn't really an area of London you associate with major landmarks, but nowadays it has a few major ones. The Westfields Shopping Centre is only streets away from BBC Television Centre, and west of that is Loftus Road, home of Queens Park Rangers FC.

BBC Television Centre (or "TVC" to meeja types) was opened in June 1960, and has been home to a great deal of BBC Output since then.

Back in 2007 it seemed like Television Centre's days were numbered, when it was scheduled to be sold off by the Beeb by 2013. However, more recently the credit crunch has meant it simply isn't be worth as much, so it looks as though the BBC will retain it.

Interestingly, plans to sell off the building have led to it potentially being scheduled for listed status by English Heritage, who had previously agreed not to list it unless the BBC disposed of it, so the BBC could make adjustments, so perhaps their indecision may cause them problems in the future.

The BBC offer an award-winning tour of Television Centre six days a week, Monday to Saturday. Booking is essential, however, and it costs £9.30. Clearly the telly tax doesn't stretch this far. You can find out more about the tours at http://www.bbc.co.uk/tours/details/details_tvc.shtml and they can be booked on 0370 901 1227.

^{^Picture from flickr courtesy of Phillie Casablanca^}

Tour the oldest surviving Music Hall in the world

Wilton's Music Hall, just off Cable Street in the East End, is the world's oldest and last surviving grand music hall.

Though it now hosts regular theatrical and music-hall events, parts of the building are still derelict and only 60 percent of is safe, and in use.

As part of the drive to preserve this important part of London's history, the music hall offers tours of the building for just £5.

They're fairly irregular, only held approximately once a month, and must be booked in advance but they are sure to be an interesting introduction to the history of London's music halls, which were once a key part of life in our city.

Wilton's Music Hall is a 10 minute walk from Tower Hill or Aldgate East.

For more information visit the website here, or if you're more interested in taking in a show, have a look at what's on offer here.

^{^Picture of the Wilton's Music Hall Entrance from Wikipedia under Wikimedia Commons^}