Someone out there is funding free walking tours all over London this weekend! I do generally default to the underbelly so might try and drag myself out of bed on Sunday for the 10.30 subterranean one…:
The Cobra Room, Secret Tunnels, Bomb Shelters, Crypts, Lost Rivers, Trains & Drains: ‘Nowhere else is the tangle of infrastructure – new and old – with history and geology more intriguing or problematic’. (from Beneath the Metropolis The Secret Lives of Cities Alex Marshall). The London we know is just the crust: there’s another world down there. Everything from the squat, camouflaged, granite-hard redoubt where the last stand would be made against the Nazis to the ultra-secret Cobra Room. Find out what’s under your feet with a guide who can show you the tell-tale ripples on the surface: vents, secret doorways, emergency exits, the “last stand” redoubt. The old familiar London will never look the same again.
But there are so many more for those who might want to take a lighter route.
