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.

Ghosts? Real Terror or Fun Tourism?

A man in the USA declined to move into a house on property which is reputedly haunted. Often the house where a murder took place is pulled down and another property is built there.

I don't believe in an afterlife so I don't believe in the power of ghosts. What can ghosts do? Throw things about? If you are worried, here are some thoughts to help you sleep at night.

Nerves, Negligence, Negatives and Positives
Belief in ghosts is negative belief that something bad is out to get you. But if the ghosts of the unhappy or vengeful haunt a place, surely the ghosts of helpers will also hang around to help you.

Shadows
Trees make shadows through windows. Thunder and lightning will wake you.
Shadows can be created by fluttering curtains and large objects within a room.

Sigh Problems
My late father was an opthalmic optician. After he died I read through his professional journals. One of them carried an article about diagnosing a sight problem. My father used to say he could predict the problems of a customer who walked in the shop from whether they wore glasses already and their age.
For example, after 50, most likely wanting reading glasses. Already got glasses, distance glasses, probably want bifocals.
Like him, the writer of the magazine article suggested certain things aid by a patient suggest a possible problem which you should then test for. A patient who starts, 'I hope you wasn't think I'm mad - but I keep seeing people with large heads, and large hats ....' That was caused by a sight problem. It's an after-image, with distortion.

Spills
Objects will probably fall off shelves because you are a nervous hoarder and pile things up high and put up shelves which slope. Or the land is over a railway or earthquake fault which shakes things down.

Chills
If you don't have proper draught proofing, rooms are chilly. A hotel manager told me that worrying chills vanished after he installed double glazing.

Animal Noises
The patter of tiny feet means you have squirrels or pigeons or rats in the attic. Call in the exterminators. Otherwise you will have a fire. Not set by ghosts. If you have insurance, they will find that your wiring was chewed by a pigeon or squirrel or rat or your escaped tortoise or your neighbour's.

Insects
I remember hearing noises in a guesthouse in Greece. We were terrified. We turned on the lights and found insects in our leftover chocolate bar wrapper.

Even spiders can make a noise or build a web. Wasps build nests. Flies buzz against windows and zoom around. If you are a light sleeper, you will wake.

Evil Smells
Dead bodies make evil smells. Not just humans. Rats. Pigeons. Drains. Gas leaks.

Haunted By Good
Angel on my shoulder. What about all the places haunted by good people? Why don't your dead ancestors throw life belts into swimming pools to help the drowning?

If you think evil people haunt you, it's because you are nervous. Having a bad day. Find sone jolly people. Play jolly music.

Evil and Good
 Even if there were an afterlife - no need to be afraid of the dead.  What harm can they do? Even if you die of shock you'll survive in the hereafter anyway. They should be more scared of you as you will be coming after them.

Bridges and Stately Homes
If you think the dead haunt us, then most of Northern France and Belgium are haunted by ghosts of WWI.
The whole of the USA is haunted. The old parts are haunted by people who died at home in their beds.
Every bridge where you see the plaque to the men who died building it. (We saw the plaque on that long one - is it south Carolina?). Some bridges are notorious for people who jumped off.

Stately Homes
Haunted homes? So are most stately homes. Where did the owners die? In their beds.

Battles and Bombs
Every battlefield. Every museum. Bombed cities. The East end of London.

Department Stores and Offices Worldwide
Many department stores should be haunted. (Whiteleys in Queensway, now gone, where the owner was shot by his son. One of the Knightsbridge stores where a member of staff was killed by a boyfriend.)

Singapore
Those skyscrapers, all modern, can't be haunted. In Orchard Road one of the department stores was built over a cleared Jewish cemetery.

In the UK in York when digging foundations they found deep down a Viking city. That has now been preserved as Jorvik Museum, chief tourist attraction.

Transport - Airports

Ships
Ships which sank and have been restored as museum sites for schoolchildren. Mary Rose. The Titanic exhibits, the Titanic relics and exhibitions. The Titanic museum in Belfast. Nelson on The Victory.

Transport - Roads and Cars
The car museum with the Kennedy car.
Murders have been committed on London buses.

The Mafia museums.

Hospitals
Every hospital has a morgue. Operating theatres where people died. And wards and rooms where people died. Beds people died in. Sheets people died in.

Every ambulance has transported people who killed or were killed.

Trains and railway lines
Ever heard of McGonagal's poem about the Tay Bridge disaster? Read your history books. Your local papers. There's been a murder at most train stations. People pushed on the line. Jumped.

Most airports have had a fatal crash.

Most historic houses, whole cities from civil war days, don't bury your ancestors in a cemetery or go to a funeral, and never go to a hospital or shake hands with a doctor or nurse, as for crossing the road, people have died on the main road or most cities, and dig up buildings for a skyscraper and you find a cemetery or at least one body.

Heirlooms
Every piece of vintage jewellery was worn by somebody now dead. Your own family heirlooms. Most people think their own parents and grandparents died untimely deaths. It was the negligence of the hospital or doctor or nurse. He lost the will to live - lost soul - suicide. He died suddenly - struck down by unseen forces.

Life-Saving Items
But what about the good things? One family has the bullet which saved the life of their WWI ancestor. (At the time before WWII, WWI was called the Great War).

Earthquakes and Tsunamis and Volcanoes
San Francisco suffered an earthquake. Two earthquakes.
Don't cross a bridge in San Francisco. How far do you want to go back?
Niagara. Keep away from the Falls. People have fallen in them. Deliberately.

Animals
Dinosaur bones? Dinosaur killers? Then the natural History museum must be haunted. Most non-vegetarian animals ate something else. Alive.

Many humans eat live oysters. Vegetarians should avoid cities - full of meat eaters.

As for wildlife safaris. Avoid lions. What about birds? Cats bring bad luck. Cities are full of them. Both my neighbours had cats. For twenty years I never left my house unless I was accompanied.

Ghosts?
Ghosts. I don't believe in them. But if they exist, those who don't believe in them will haunt everybody who admits to being afraid of ghosts.

Who needs ghosts? We have enough trouble from living nutters.

Good Ghosts
My house is haunted. By my mother. She says, Don't worry about other people's lives and problems. It's not your problem. Get on with your own life, dear. You've only got one life. Enjoy it.

Price
Want to buy or rent a house at a cheap price? Says it's haunted.

Tourism
Who else is haunting good for? Ghost hunting weekends.
Want to get guests at a hotel? Get the local paper to write a story about it's being haunted. Sceptics will drag along their scared friends.Yes, ghosts are good for tourism.

You can go on ghost tours of cities such as London and York. Walking tours and bus tours. Jack the Ripper tours in the East end of London.

Ghost Tours - Frightseeing, they say!
You can take ghost tours by bus in Edinburgh and London.
The latest London novelty is the humorous ghost tours. I love their puns on London tube stations.  Deathnal Green. (Bethnal Green.) Notting Hell. (Notting Hill.)
Tours at 7.30 pm and 9 pm (arrange your ticket earlier). Leaving from Northumberland avenue near Trafalgar Square.
Prices: Adult £20. Students/concessions less £14. Family ticket for 2 adults 2 children £55.
Tel: 0844 5678 666
In case you are having trouble remembering the number, 666 is the number associated with the devil, 5678 is a sequence.

theghostbustours.com