Roughly following the line of the Greenwich Meridian from the Bow Back Rivers at Pudding Mill Lane , this east London walk traces the industrial heritage of lower Lea Valley from fine porcelain in the 18th century, through gasworks, gin, cosmetics and explosives to film studios. As we go we follow part of The Line, London’s first dedicated modern and contemporary art walk. We finish at the now green oasis of Cody Dock with the chance for refreshments before the a short walk to Star Lane DLR station.
Date: Monday 31 August 2026 1:30pm
Guide: Sue
September
Dorothy L Sayers’ Bloomsbury
Dorothy L Sayers, one of the “golden age” crime writers between the first and second world wars, lived and worked in Holborn and Bloomsbury – as did her alter ego, Harriet Vane and other familiar characters from the novels and short stories.
See places from which she took inspiration for her detective fiction; find out more about Sayers’ characters and about the woman who brought them all to life.
Date: Sunday 13th September 2026 2pm
Guide: Sue
Carpenters Road: Industrial Powerhouse to Cultural Quarter
When industrial Hackney Wick declined the artists moved in. Across the River Lea institutions including the V&A, Sadlers Wells, BBC and Universities are transforming the area. Our walk follows Carpenters Road from Stratford through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to Hackney Wick. On the way there is sculpture and street art, a memorial to the victims of 9/11 and intriguing glimpses of the area’s industrial past.
Date: Saturday 26th September 2026 11am
Guide: Sue
October
Barking: from Fishing Fleet to Feminist Icons
This circular walk around Barking takes us past landmarks associated with its medieval abbey, its once huge fishing fleet, the noxious industries and civic pride of the 19th and 20th centuries, right up to today’s riverside regeneration.
Along the way we learn where Capt. Cook was married and where a local suffragette entertained Mrs Pankhurst. We find out what links prison reformer Elizabeth Fry to Barking’s stunning Sikh temple and why there is a memorial to the victims of asbestosis.
Date: Sunday October 11th 2pm
Guide: Sue
Waterloo in Fiction
A literary walk around Waterloo exploring locations that feature in novels from Victorian times to the present day.
This walk explores the Waterloo of historical fiction. Tracy Chevalier’s Burning Bright brings William Blake’s Lambeth to life, Michael Sadleir’s Forlorn Sunset and Renton Nicholson’s Dombey and Daughter explore its seamier side in Victorian times, while for Sam Selvon’s Lonely Londoners of the 1940s, the station is a place of nostalgia. Above all, it is a place of arrival and departure.
Date: Saturday 31st October 11am
Guide: Sue
November
What’s Behind the South Bank?
In an area that offers so much to see and do it’s easy to overlook some of its most intriguing features. This walk from Waterloo to Blackfriars Bridge highlights hidden gems; some tucked away and others hiding in plain sight. We explore new developments alongside remnants of its industrial past; see monuments and mosaics; learn about a former warehouse that became a military hospital, a cooperative housing development that thwarted the developers and finish in an area once famed for hat-making.
Date: Sunday 22nd November 2pm
Guide: Sue
December
The Trollopes of Bloomsbury
Both Anthony Trollope and his mother Fanny were proliflc and successful writers
Anthony, born in Bloomsbury is best known for the Barchester Chronicles and Paliser novels where Catherdral towns and country houses often overshadow the place of Bloomsbury. But this area which “cannot be called fashionable” and is “not much overlooked by nobility” offers lodgings and temptation to young clerks like Johnny Eade and affordable accomodation for impoverished women like Lady Anna.
We follow the links between Anthony Trollope’s own life as a civil servant at the Post Office, his fiction with its Bloomsbury locations and the influence of Fanny Trollope’s writing on her son’s work.
Date: Sunday 6th December 2pm
Guide: Sue
Capital Walks in London 