Walk Around London & Other Cities For Free - Guided, Self-Guided, Grimsdyke

Names in London suggest its history. Shepherds Bush. That's in the centre. Back in the days when one walked around what is now central London.

Now we have a new initiative to get Londoners and visitors walking more around the city. London already had maps showing walking times between some central stations. So did Singapore. Now London has issued some walking maps. 

They are only for the centre. However, out at Hatch End station on the Lioness line, Euston to Watford, you will see a map on the platform by the ticket office, showing you a walking route called the London loop, around London, linking landmarks in the countryside of outer London. 

London Loop sign. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Grimsdyke Road

Near Hatch End station is a road called Grimsdyke, running from the main street, a wide street with wide pavements, accurately named the Broadway, parallel to the railway line.

Why Grimsdyke?

An Indian friend of mine from Toastmasters meeting two Monday evening each month near Harrow on the Hill station, erroneously mispronounced it as Grim's Dick. Very funny, since in English dick is slang for male organ.

I was able to enlighten her that the pronunciation is dike, rhyming with Mike. A dyke was originally a border, build up like a dam exaggerated with a shallow from the dugout earth. Keeping people, animals, wanderers, friends and foes, to know where one area started and another ended. Perhaps it was like the camber on a road, helping to keep rain on the crops and off the walking and riding areas.

Grimsdyke Hotel

The loop runs along the original dyke, which passes Grimsdyke Hotel, which was home to Gilbert, who wrote the words, the librettos, for the popular Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. 

Angela Lansbury with Map In The Entrance To Grimsdyke Hotel. Photo by Trevor Sharot.

The house is now a hotel which has afternoon teas in summer, magnificent trees and plants, the historic timbered interior, and operattas seasons. A good place to start or end your walk. (Or for those who would rather sit than walk. Park granny or grandad with a gammy leg there, while you take your walking enthusiasts off for a walk.

London, like many British cities, also offers free or paid for walking tours around trails, such as historic, ghosts, Shakespeare, the Beatles.

If you take the train from central London across to Europe, many European cities offer free walking tours. Sometimes the free tours are run by companies which offer other paid for tours. They hope that after taking the free tour you will sign up for a second tour with the same guide or another guide. You are given a free city map which lists all the tours. Sometimes a few, some or most of the walkers give the tour guide a tip. The tour guide might be practising their foreign languages. Or they might be promoting their city. Or getting a free drink from a cafe where you stop for a break. 

Or running their own paid for private tours on the side. They might even have to pay the company to take the tour, rather than being paid!

Photograph Maps

If you want to be sure of a free tour, just take a map and guide yourself. If you don't want to waste paper, photograph the map on your phone. If you have a foreign phone and cannot link to the local network without running up a charge, you can photograph the map on the phone of somebody else who had a phone with a local connection.

We did this in London. My husband returned from a trip to Singapore and accidentally took his Singapore phone with us into central London. I downloaded the TFL tube map, and he was able to photograph it onto his foreign network phone for no charge.

If you are out hiking, and cannot be sure of a WIFI connection in the mountains, photograph the local map, or download it when you have a connection in the local hotel, or your home before your travel trip. Then you can see it in your photo gallery. Or share it with others in your group.

Useful Websites

https://harrowonline.org/2025/06/03/new-tfl-walking-maps-aim-to-get-londoners-out-of-the-tube-and-onto-their-feet/

http://grimsdyke.com/history/

Please share links to your favourite blog posts.

Gilbert's glamorous Restaurant in historic Grimsdyke Hotel, and the meaning of Parfait, and Prosecco Wine Labels

  Grimsdyke Hotel is a Harrow Weald landmark, being the former home of Gilbert who wrote Gilbert and Sullivan operas, which are still performed there. The hotel has turned into a Best Western, which we used when we lived in the USA, as it was a collection of individually owned places with joint marketing, always a surprise, a mixture of delight and occasional disappointments, rather than the blandly predictable and reliable chains. Gilbert's restaurant has always been an elegant venue for dinner, and has a long history of two star rosettes from the AA, as shown by the plates on the wall in the entrance lobby.

   The hotel has periodic renewals which have to leave the fabric of the magnificent gabled building intact. Gilbert's restaurant is to the left of the main entrance. Since I last went there the interior seems to have been repainted with mixed results. I like everything clean. I am not keen on the brown colour scheme. I prefer clean white to contrast with brown beams. I once read that the fashion for black and white was Victorian, previously beams were natural brown rather than black.

   I can't help it, I like lots of clean white. The napkins were white. The crockery was white. Some new incongruous overhead modern lights provided extra light. But the wonderful mythological animal carvings around the fireplace did not have the impact they used to have on summertime lunchtimes and I did not see anything about the history of Gilbert & Sullivan and the hotel in the restaurant menu.

  What did I like most about my meal? The service was great. Helpful and friendly. Best of all, when I dropped a piece of cutlery, a new piece was presented wrapped with the handle in a napkin, no risk of the waiter's hands and perspiration going all over the handle - or worse, the part which touches your food, like at some other places, so well done!

   Drinks by the glass which we tried included a red rioja, and my reasonably priced sparkling white Prosecco. 

What Do Wine Labels Mean?

   I was able to enjoy a consumer's discussion of Prosecco. One member of my family is studying for the WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) diploma exam. I am shortly doing the first level, a one-day course. Diploma level is much higher, level four, taking two years, taken by sommeliers, wine suppliers and connoisseurs. (After that comes Master of wine, usually taken by people working in the wine  trade.) 

What Prosecco Means

Prosecco was originally both the name of a region in Italy and the grape grown in that area. This caused confusion to the consumer. As the Prosecco wine grew more and more popular worldwide, a rival to Champagne, like Champagne, the Prosecco producers wanted to protect their reputation. Wine growers and makers in the Prosecco area thought that growers and producers of wine from other areas could take the prosecco plant and pretend that the wine was produced in the Prosecco region. It's easier to change the name of the grape than of the region. 

So if you were to buy a really old bottle, and read the label, both the grape and wine might be Prosecco. But nowadays Prosecco tells you the region. The grape is glera. If you are not into wine, you do not need to remember the name of the grape. All you need to know is that prosecco no longer identifies the grape, but refers to a region of Italy.

Chicken liver parfait. Delicious creamy parfait. The word parfait is French for perfect. It can mean a creamy pate (or a creamy cold dessert). 

I liked the dinky little holders for individual butter portions. I typed in D inky and the spellchecker turned the word into K inky.

Note the candle on the table. 

The white bread contains onion. Even better, the brown bread with walnuts. Top marks for the bread.

Beef with dumpling. Potato. Vegetable.

I loved the quilted, scented toilet paper.

You can get a loyalty card for lunch time.

I am a happy soul and I've tried to write a cheerful account of my evening out which I enjoyed. Unfortunately Mr Grumpy thought the meal was hardly better than a Harvester, hence my less than enthusiastic review on Tripadvisor. However, if you've never been to the Grimsdyke hotel and Gilbert's restaurant, you should certainly try it once. And it's the only decent place, in a grand historic hotel, for miles around which is conveniently open on a Sunday evening.

In The Area

  Before or after your calorific lunch or dinner, in summer or on a sunny day you can see a fine view over London including the Wembley Arch, from the car park opposite the hotel. 

   You can also walk, stroll or jog (mind the tree roots and mud) along the centuries old Grim's Dyke way, an extensive pathway through the trees which is marked by sign posts and on maps. 

More information from the hotel website: www.grimsdyke.com