Walk of the Week: Along The #Thames Pub Walk

Every Sunday we’ll pluck just one walk from the vast London Walks repertoire and put it centre stage.

You can check out the full schedule at www.walks.com.

But if you only take one walking tour this week, why not make it…

THE ALONG THE THAMES PUB WALK

7 pm on Fridays from Blackfriars Tube

There's no need to book. A London Walk takes about two hours and costs £10 or £8 for concs. Kids under 15 accompanied by their parent[s] go free.

"The most exciting walk in London...it can do more to interpret the city than anything else, a real skeleton key"

If you only have time for one walking tour, this is the one to go on – it's the classic London pub walk. It takes in London's last remaining galleried coaching inn, its best riverside walkway, its oldest market, the most sensational art gallery in the world (it's open on Friday night so when there's something spectacular in there we hang a right and walk right through "the Turbine Hall" and hey presto the Tate Modern's flagship exhibition becomes part of our route, part of our itinerary!), the church where Harvard University's founder was baptised, and an 18th-century pub that brews its own beer – plus lashings of Shakespeare, a jot of Dickens, lots of pub lore, and London's best skyline panorama.

It gets better. Because there's also the recently discovered remains of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (and its sister playhouse The Rose)...and the thrilling, thatch-roofed reproduction that's risen, Phoenix-like, only a stone's throw away. Let alone the astonishing replica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde, the ship that the great Elizabethan mariner sailed around the world over 400 years ago. Anchored there in the murky Thames, its timbers creaking eerily in the misty London night and The Globe just yards away...it's a ghost ship lost in time.

LISTEN: Katy reads from David's chapter on the Thames in the London Walks book London Stories 

The Along the Thames Pub Walk takes place every Friday at 7 pm

Meet Katy or David just outside Blackfriars Tube

A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.