What IS it about London Walks
 

The company London Walks seems to be mentioned often on this forum. We have seen these huge groups of people go by and I, for one, would not want to pay my money to be a part of them. I think that we did try them once or twice. We like another company which has all the same walks but draws a more intimate group, for the same price. It has excellent guides. I have mentioned this name on the forum in the past but won't now as I'm being uncomplimentary at the moment. But really, you'd think that L.W. is the only walking tour company in town!

London Walks is the best known. Many of their walk leaders have semi-celebrity status among travellers.

I think it is because of their "Ripper" walks that they get mentioned so frequently. Anyway, I did a couple of their out of town trips when I was travelling by myself in London and liked them very much. To each his or her own.

Hi daph,

I agree with Rufus that LW is more well known than other walking companies. That's why I used them. However, based on posts of other walking companies I'm going to try different groups next time I'm in London.

The walks I took with LW didn't have large numbers of people. The number of people varied from about 10 to 20. I took 3 walks with them and found them quite satisfactory.

Thanks for your feedback on alternatives.

adrienne

I bought a Jack the Ripper tour from Golden Tours at Fountain Square on Buckingham Palace Rd. It was $31.00. Has anyone taken this tour before? I'll be going on it in August.

Daph, I have taken one of John Muffty's walks, and agree that he is a good leader. Interestingly, the one walk I took was the Chelsea Pub Walk. I had taken a couple of years earlier, and enjoyed very much, the London Walks Chelsea Pub Walk and was interested in doing it again and seeing the difference. There were more people on Muffty's walk than there were on Mary's London Walks walk, the pubs visited were the same and the script was not a whole lot different.

So you never know.

Ten years ago, Original London Walks was not as dominant as it is now in this market. But I think OLW achieved that dominance by capturing the best guides, by advertising effectively (Its 2003, Muffty lives in London and he has not yet built a website!!!), and offering a tremendous variety of walks.

daph,
what was the company that you used instead of London Walks? We're leaving in a week and would like to take some walks around London, but we'd rather do it with smaller groups.
Thanks!

Ron- You're right. John should definitely have a website going. When we spoke to him last summer he said that he had someone helping him on it so I don't know what the problem is. Perhaps he's too busy giving those great walks. When we wrote him last year he sent us is schedule in a file via e-mail.
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