The #London Walks One Club

DC Editor Adam writes…

Gently steaming at my desk after a sodden but lovely Hampstead walk (step count HERE) followed by a school pick-up that would have been better handled by boat on an afternoon when the powers that be decided to keep the class back for making noise while the waiting parents and siblings drowned in the playground outside (!!!!!) I opened up Twitter to find this just in from David out in the field down Kensington way…

Unabashedly proud of this. Just finished the soggiest Kensington Walk ever. Had just one walker. But we went. We say we're gonna go we go!

— London Walks (@londonwalks) January 12, 2017

It was the rainiest afternoon of the winter so far and one hardy soul turned up on the Kensington walk, and David kept his end of the bargain.

He's joined what I'm going to call The One Club - London Walks with only one walker.

Last time it happened to me was on the Rock & Roll London Pub Walk a couple of years back. It was a Wednesday night and one woman from Japan turned up for the tour… and no one else.

But we pressed on.

I started as I usually start my Rock & Roll London Walks - by asking the London Walkers what music they like.

"I don't like Rock & Roll," was my new pal's smiley reply.

"Oh?" I replied, "What music DO you like?"

"I like One Direction."

Perhaps she'd imagined the tour was going to be a bit like the video for One Direction's One Thing, with the boys "doing a Monkees" in Battersea Park and touring Whitehall, Embankment, Lambeth Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Chelsea Embankment and St Paul's Church in an open top bus.

Here's the vid…

The tour, of course, was nothing like that. The combined age of 1D is only a marginally greater number than the age of your correspondent. The last time I jumped around in pants as tight as THAT the year began in a 1.

But I think we both ended up having a nice time regardless.

I am constantly asked, "Do you do your London Walks in the rain?" My answer is always the same - doesn't matter a stuff what I do, YOU seem keen to join me whatever the weather.

In tribute to this two-way street of wild eccentricity, I put together this little film - about this time last year - in the aftermath of a wet and wooly Ghosts of the old City Walk…

I'm sure David will have something to add, but in the meantime, you can catch up with my earlier thoughts on rain and "bad" weather walking HERE.

To those in peril on the pavement, rainy day London Walks guides and London Walkers alike… WELL DONE!


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.