Best Books on Walking London
 

Looking for recommendations. Plan to go on a few organized group walks, but still want to do a few on my own.

Open to other subjects, but primarily interested in old churches (especially Wren), victorian buildings, streets and houses, markets, and garden/parks.

I'm doing my planning now using two books by Andrew Duncan: Walking London and Secret London. Both good, but the directions are a bit hard to follow. Anybody know of some other good ones?

Hi Degas. I posted this on your Guildhall thread, also:

Some other books that might be of interest while you're researching your trip to London:

Little-Known Museums in and Around London by Rachel Kaplan

Undiscovered Museums of London
by Eloise Danto

Eccentric London by Benedict le Vay
(this is a Bradt Travel Guide)

BrimhamRocks, thats for the input. My eyes are strained from reading the small print on my map. Might be time for new glasses.

I really like the Time Out book of London Walks, by the people of the magazine with the same name.
The walks cover all sorts of themes across all areas of London, and each is written by a different journalist, author, historian, etc. The maps are clear and easy to read, and they include information on interesting shops, pubs, markets along the walk.
As an added bonus, they are interesting to read even when I am just pining for London instead of planning an actual trip!
Annette

Degas, I've put two paperback, pocket-sized books to good use (in combination):

The "Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guide" measuring 4"x8". Containing a concise description of the top 10 sights of a given neighborhood/area, each one could be a self-tour.

The "Penguin London Mapguide" measuring 5"x8". Handy and thin, with very legible (for your poor eyes) maps with the goodies well illustrated.

Have you seen Ben Haines' London historical walking guide, http://victorianresearch.org/Haineswalks.pdf ?

The Eyewitness Guide to London has some basic walks by area. My daughter and I did the Mayfair one and enjoyed it. You could look at the book at your library or bookstore to see if it would interest you.

Thanks so much for your feedback. Its exactly what I was looking for.

The Perfect London Walk by Roger Ebert (the film critic) is unusual. It covers one long walk through mostly Hampstead and Highgate. It is a great walk.

A couple of other good walking books:

"Slow Walks in London" by Michael Leitch. It includes over 30 walks all over London - plus some out of town ones like Windsor, Oxford, Canterbury and Stratford.

On Foot Guide's "London Walks". This one only covers about 15 walks mainly in major tourist areas. But it has really good easy to use map/illustrations which are drawings of the routes w/ the buildings/features drawn in sort of 3-dimensional.

"London Walks" by Anton Powell. This one only has five walks. it really goes in depth re the history and architecture. My edition of this one is a 1991 revision and I'm not sure if it has been revides or is still in print.

Andrew Goodman's _Gilbert and Sullivan's London_ (2000)is available in paperback and a lot of fun for those with Victorian interests. If you like to track down the haunts of favorite classic authors, the very best guidebook is out of print but well worth getting hold of through your local library: George G. Williams, _Guide to Literary London_ (1973). It beats all the others hollow. Since you're going to be in Bloomsbury, if you're interested in the Woolfs, et al., you might also try _Bloomsbury at Home_, by Pamela Todd.(2000). I also like the Time Out London Walks, the 2nd volume of which I only discovered a couple of weeks ago at my local library. And Ben Haines's historical walks on the VRW travel guide are, indeed, splendid.

Cuttle

George Oakes' "Turn Right at the Fountain" has 53 walks through 21 European Cities, including four in London and one each for Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

I have the 5th Edition published in 1996 and udated by Alexandra Chapman.

The web site www.londontransport.co.uk/ , then Out and About in London, then at bottom left search for Walks, then Real London Outdoors ? Walking London, gives you five suggested walks, eclectic, but I think a good sample. I am glad people like my own web note on historic walks.

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You'll never find the perfect walk, as there's no such thing. All the recommendations above are good though.

But the product I find invaluable is the London Encyclopedia. Every proper city should have one, and I've been frustrated not to find an equivalent for Paris or New York.

Far too heavy to carry on a walk, it's really worth having in your hotel room to check out what you've seen today that the guidebook didn't explain, and to research tomorrow.

And great inflight reading on the trip across. Some people can't understand how you can read encyclopedias. But surfing this one is seriously addictive. Infinitely more fun than watching Terminator 73 on a matchbox-size screen.