Kintsugi at Fishmongers' Hall

 The Fishmongers' Hall offers guided tours.

https://fishmongers.org.uk/contact/

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.

'Find it' tracker for travelling - for passports, or people and more?

I could do with trackers when travelling. What for? My phone of course. What we need as a travelling couple of relatives or friends is find each other's phones - and thus find each other.

What have I lost?
PASSPORT
My passport at American security.

I LOST MY HUSBAND
My husband - when he stopped to change his camera lens in the guided tour of the cellars at Rheims, France.

Missing TIMING
You can avoid missing lots of appointments by setting a timer on your phone or watch.

TAXI
In India I lost my taxi. I remembered my drive had a moustache and I noted the last two digits of the number plate. When I came out of the building, I found it has not one entrance but four. All the car parks had tai drivers who all had moustaches. The car number plates all ended with the same two digits which signified the city, and the fact that were taxi.

FLIGHT
Check the departure gate, even if you are with a group, especially if you are with a group.

My flight - the bossy group leader took all our tickets to the check-in desk. After a twenty minute wait I asked the girl on the desk when our flight was leaving for Washington DC. She told the flight was direct to London, not stopping at Washington DC.
Dinner with friends in Singapore on Saturday night. A relative knew our flight left London on Saturday. He forgot that we were on the overnight flight and would not be arriving at dinner time but breakfast next day.

1 My coat.
2 My passport
3 Items left behind in boxes as you go through security
4 My hat
5 My umbrella
6 My husband - especially at duty free in airports. Also in the lounges when he says, "If you are not back from the toilet in five minutes I am leaving for the gate. I can't afford to miss this flight. Where is he? Ahead of me? Gone to the Gents? Having a final coffee?
7 How about find my check in desk, or boarding gate?
8 Leaders of groups of schoolchildren and groups on guided tours.
9 Children. Those people who get on a plane with five children instead of their usual headcount of six.

10 What about find my waiter? They all look alike. They all wear glasses, or have moustaches, or black hair, or black tee-shirts.

Or find my cruise ship. Once, in the Bahamas, we left our big white cruise ship which was the only one docked, at dawn. When we came back in the evening, at dusk, we saw a line of about ten cruise ships!

Useful Website (advert)
https://getxyfindit.io/blog-xy-find-it-never-lose-your-valuable-possessions/?lpid=1159&utm_source=9171&utm_medium=ad1&utm_term=64004&utm_content=1516&utm_campaign=GU&aff_id=9171&camp_id=64004&sub_id=ad1&req_id=363546888&contract_id=859&oid=516&guvertical=42&gusalespopup=0

Other Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Find_My_Phone

Cemeteries, Mausoleums and Memorials You Should Visit

Who goes to visit mausoleums? Actually a lot of people. The Taj Mahal is one of India's prime attractions.
Some of the best known and popular graves and cemeteries and memorials for tourists to visit include

Taj Mahal, India. Photo from Wikipedia.

places I have visited - these include:
Hampstead and Highgate cemeteries in London;
The Menin gate in Belgium;
Normandy battlefields and cemeteries and memorials (each time we drive through);
Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland.

Even without intending to, you pass the hilltop cemetery in Hong Kong.

On my wishlist:
El Alamein in Egypt where my mother's first husband is commemorated. (I am the daughter of her second husband. Yes, I checked the dates to be sure.)

My Favourite Fun Gravestone:
Spike Milligan's humorous reproachful, "I told you I was ill".

Here's a handy list of popular places:
UK
London, England:
Highgate Cemetery (Karl Marx and tours)
Kendal Green Cemetery
Hampstead Cemetery
Scotland
Glasgow hilltop cemetery
St Ives peaceful hilltop cemetery

Austria
Graves of Musicians in Vienna.

Belgium
Menin Gate.
Lists the missing with no known grave. Last post played at sunset.

France
Paris:
Pere Lachaise
Montmartre:
Heinrich Heine
Normandy:
Take tours of battlefields and memorials

India
Taj Mahal

USA
Washington DC
Arlington.
Al Jolson.
Elvis, Graceland.
Cowboy graves in the Wild West.

Germany
Belsen:
Anne Frank.
Mendelssohn

Hong Kong
Seen from the airport train, hilltop Chinese cemetery.

Poland
Auschwitz
Huge statue of Chopin in Warsaw park.

Photo by Arne List in Wikipedia.

Turkey
Gallipoli

Egypt
El Alamein memorial and cemetery

Useful Websites
Find a grave
https://www.findagrave.com/
El Alamein
https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1966588
visitbritain.com

Tips
www.ancestry.com

https://www.ancestry.com/dna/

http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records-in-census-land-and-surveys/and_census

https://blogs.ancestry.co.uk/cm/diary-of-a-dna-test/

Singer Freddie Mercury of Queen, a Zoroastrian:

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/02/freddy-mercury-brookwood-cemetery-and.html
German-Jewish Poet Heinrich Heine

https://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2019/02/where-to-see-statues-and-memorials-to.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.