There is a new revolution spreading around Europe lately, thanks to a new company called Sandeman’s New Europe. They offer FREE walking tours of 8 cities as of now, including London, and as someone who’s done 5 of the tours personally, including the London one, I can tell you they are all excellent.
First off, it’s important to clarify that they are not exactly FREE, but instead they are “tips-only.” This should help explain how they work, and should help ease your mind that they are not some timeshare-style sales pitch disguised as a free walking tour.
How the company operates
In each city they now cover, Sandeman’s recruits enthusiastic guides who love the city and like to show it off to visitors. Interestingly, nearly all the guides are actually from somewhere other than the city they give tours of, but that doesn’t lessen the experience, and it probably helps them stay enthusiastic. The guides gather the group together at the designated meeting point at the designated time, and explain the situation. Basically, they have a great incentive to give a fun and memorable tour, because the better it is the better their tips are likely to be. They point out that when you sign up for a prepaid tour from a bus company, they have your money and don’t care much if guests enjoy themselves.
The FREE London Walking Tour is their most popular tour, unsurprisingly, but they also offer:
- The Old City of London Tour
- The Grim Reapers of London Tour: The East End’s dark secrets
- Sandeman’s New London Pub Crawl
These other tours cost money, and they do explain the other tours and encourage people on the free tour to show up for the other ones, but the sales part is very minimal and not objectionable at all.
The FREE London Walking Tour
Visitors meet at the designated time at the Wellington Arch just next to the Hyde Park Corner tube station, and after a short explanation of the tour and the sights in that area, the group moves on toward Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Churchill’s War Cabinet Bunker, 10 Downing Street, St. James’s Park, and continues to the grounds of Westminster Abbey in sight of Big Ben. The group stops every few hundred meters and the guide will explain what you are seeing and tell interesting and well-researched stories about the location.
At the end you’ll get the fascinating in-depth story of Guy Fawkes, and then another mention that this was a tips-only tour. How much you end up tipping is completely up to you. If you are a student on the tightest of budgets then the guide will certainly appreciate a pound or two, but if you are a normal tourist then you might give £5 or more. It’s easily worth that much, especially considering London is an expensive city and any other tour will cost much more than that, whether you’ve liked it or not.
Tour length: 3 hours or so
When: 11am, 365 days a year, with more tours added during busy seasons. A tour in Spanish also leaves from the same place. If more than 40 or so people show up for any given tour, then the groups are split into manageable sizes, each with its own guide.
More information is available on the New London Tours official site
Why I encourage you to take this tour, and give a decent tip
This is a new and somewhat risky business model Sandeman’s has developed. They’ve literally set it up so they could lose money every day even if the crowds are good. They have a great incentive to do a really good job, and they went above and beyond on each of the 5 tours I took in different cities. Most people find out about the tours from the handy city maps and brochures found at most popular hostels, so even though the overhead is low, there are costs that need to be covered in order to pull this off.
The common alternatives to most of these tours are fixed-route buses that usually charge €20 on the continent and at least £20 in the UK. Seriously, as long as you can walk a couple miles, then these are much better, and if you reward them for their hard work everybody wins and the company will continue to expand this idea to more and more cities. If people concentrate too much on paying as little as possible, then the whole thing will collapse.
Take the tour, and tip what you feel it was worth.
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I liked the article on the “free” Sandeman walks (although they were far from free) but I suggest that you look at
http://www.strollon.com
These Guides download onto your iPod or mobile and then off you go to see the city. No timetable no hassle. Go where you want, when you want. They are written by local professional guides and so they are interesting as well as good to listen to.
Some of these really are FREE.
Give it a go. They’re great
There are many other extremely cost-effective options in this wonderful and diverse city, that enable visitors to have a walking tour with a Blue Badge Guide – All of whom have successfully completed an intensive course on London, run by The Institute of Tourist Guiding. Their extensive knowledge, communication and group management skills are all rigorously examined at the end of the course. They are also the only external guides permited to guide in such landmark sites as The Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St Paul’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court.
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