Rambling London

Rambling London Professional Blue Badge Tour Guide based in London. Contact me for tours of Classic London, Art Galleries, Street Art, Oxford + more!

I offer general overview tours or more bespoke ones, finding the hidden gems of London!

22/05/2026

Chelsea in Bloom 2026 🌸 Until 24th May!
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I was there about 9am on Monday (opening day) and it was nice and quiet, but it was jam-packed by 11, so I would recommend getting there earlier rather than later!
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This might now be a Pizza Express now, but there’s also a lot of history here!This building has had many different uses ...
21/05/2026

This might now be a Pizza Express now, but there’s also a lot of history here!
This building has had many different uses over the years. In the late 19th century it was taken over by Amédée Joubert & Son, an interior designer which specialised in upholstery, gilding, the importation of tapestry, silks and carpets, and the manufacture of French furniture. You can still see their trade signs on the outside of the building! They were also the ones who added the elaborate archway at the front in 1881. The Jouberts continued operating here until 1932. By this time it was a Mr. Felix Joubert and the business was only occupying the basement, but they were still doing some important commissions, including some of the furniture for the Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House (1924)!
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After the Jouberts moved to the basement, the building was also used as flats (tenants included model and actress Eleanor Thornton) and from 1916, it was a ballet school! 🩰 It was called the Russian Dance Academy and was run by Serafina Astafieva. You’ll see she also has a blue plaque on the building, marking the time that she lived and worked there. She was the great-niece of author Leo Tolstoy and part of the Russian nobility and it was her school which trained some of the greats, like Margot Fonteyn.
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On top of all of that, this building also became a drinking club, frequented by actors and artists including Francis Bacon, and it had a basement nightclub in the 1970s where Queen played some of their early gigs! 🎶
What a life!
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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Had to check out the new statue before my tour this morning!•I like the idea that it’s a commentary on ‘blind patriotis...
01/05/2026

Had to check out the new statue before my tour this morning!
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I like the idea that it’s a commentary on ‘blind patriotism’. In an area surrounded by military and imperialist statues, this piece by Banksy shows a person blinded by a flag, stepping with the utmost confidence off the plinth. Let’s just say, it’s not going to end well! Some have also mentioned that the suit makes the figure look like a politician or some other official, possibly commenting on the rise of the right wing in our current political climate.
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It appeared overnight on Wednesday into Thursday and sparked lots of speculation and excitement as people started to notice it! My first chance to see it was this morning and I was happy to find it was still there (if surrounded by barriers). Westminster City Council seem happy to leave it be for now, but I anticipate it will be relocated at some point (as has happened with similar Banksy installations, like the City of London police box covered in piranhas in 2024, which will now be featured in the new ).
Have you seen the new statue yet??
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I was in the right place at the right time for what describes as one of the rarest moments in the plant world! (It’s no...
30/04/2026

I was in the right place at the right time for what describes as one of the rarest moments in the plant world! (It’s not every day that you feel super lucky to experience something very gross! 😷)
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This is the first Titan arum (or co**se flower) to bloom at Kew this year and it only happens for 24-36 hours. And it stinks!
It’s one of the smelliest plants on Earth (I can confirm) and it smells like rotting meat because it’s trying to attract pollinators that like to eat and breed on flesh. The inside of the plant is also that reddish, burgundy colour so it looks a bit like meat too! Not only that, but it can create its own heat to try and distribute the smell as far as possible, attracting pollinators from up to half a mile away!
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It only grows wild in the tropical rainforests of Sumatra and the first one to flower outside Sumatra was here at Kew in 1889. In 1926, when it bloomed for the second time, there were such large crowds, the police had to come to maintain order!
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Some other facts I love:
📈 This Titan arum was growing about 8cm a day in the few weeks before it bloomed!
☘️ Between flowering cycles, they produce the largest leaf in the world.
🪰 To prevent self-pollination, the female flowers in the base of the plant open before the male flowers.
😂 If you’ve read this far, here’s a bonus fact: the Latin name Amorphophallus titanum loosely translates to “ginormous misshapen 🍆”!
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My Tate interactive tour is becoming one of my favourites because I just love seeing what kids come up with when all the...
19/04/2026

My Tate interactive tour is becoming one of my favourites because I just love seeing what kids come up with when all the rules are thrown out the window! That’s what’s great about modern art. Colour outside the lines, make a multicoloured animal collage, draw a surrealist landscape where the world is turned upside down. Anything goes!
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I had such a lovely time with Rachel and her family last week. Felicity and Reese were the best!! We learnt that a reindeer nostril can heat the air by about 80 degrees Celsius and I was informed by Reese that she knows a dragon called Turtle (I promise we did learn some stuff about art too!!). We were even evacuated from the gallery for 45 minutes (not ideal!), but the kids were so patient and we managed to do a few more activities to pass the time.
Thanks for spending the morning with me and I hope you enjoyed the rest of your time in London!
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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This house is looking lovely with all its blooming wisteria! 💜 It was also once home to Frank Bridge, a composer and mus...
15/04/2026

This house is looking lovely with all its blooming wisteria! 💜 It was also once home to Frank Bridge, a composer and musician.
He was born in Brighton and learnt violin from the age of 6! His father was a violin teacher, who could be quite strict, insisting that Bridge practise regularly for many hours and Bridge said that his father “ruled the household with a rod of iron”! Already as a teenager, he would perform in his father’s pit bands and would even conduct in his absence.
From the 1890s, he studied at the Royal College of Music and it is the RCM who still hold the largest single collection of his manuscripts. One of Bridge’s most popular works was the orchestral ‘The Sea’ (1911), but he is perhaps most well known today for his chamber music. His expressive style helped bridge the gap between late Romantic and early examples of more modern classical music.
He moved here to Bedford Gardens in 1914. This was also the start of the First World War and Bridge, like many others, struggled with the horrors and violence of the war, which, in turn, influenced his music. He composed ‘Lament (For Catherine, aged 9, ‘Lusitania’ 1915)’ in memory of a young girl who’d drowned when the passenger ship Lusitania was hit by a German submarine and wrote ‘Three Improvisations for the Left Hand’ (1918) for the pianist Douglas Fox, who had lost his right arm in 1917.
He was close friends with composer Benjamin Britten and also taught him composition. When Britten moved to the US in 1939, Bridge gifted him his viola and wished him “bon voyage and bon retour”. Sadly, Bridge died a couple of years later and never saw Britten again. Britten described Bridge as “a great teacher” who “taught me to think and feel through music.”
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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06/03/2026

A fascinating visit to Shoreditch Town Hall on Monday! One of the largest and most expensive town halls in London when it was first opened in the 1860s.
Thanks for the invite!
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Did you know that it was used as a filming location for Baby Reindeer? Or that, in the 1960s, the notorious East End Kray twins supposedly held an illegal card game in the men’s toilet??
It was also a chance to learn about some of the amazing women associated with the building, from Mayors to Suffragettes! Watch the video to find out more 👀
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Today, Shoreditch Town Hall is an events and community space with a great programme of performances, classes, and talks. They’ve also got some events coming up to celebrate International Women’s Day! Check it out!
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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This is ‘Breathless’ by Cornelia Parker (2001) and I love it because it’s such a striking installation in the V&A Museum...
05/03/2026

This is ‘Breathless’ by Cornelia Parker (2001) and I love it because it’s such a striking installation in the V&A Museum, especially when you notice that all the instruments are squashed flat!
Not only that, but these instruments were crushed by the one of the behemoth 22-ton accumulators of Tower Bridge, part of the bridge’s original hydraulic lifting mechanism 🤩
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These are all instruments taken from the back rooms of the British Legion, Salvation Army, collieries and other organisations. Forgotten and unloved.
Parker sees the brass band as the musical equivalent of the British “stiff upper lip”, here squashed and in limbo - literally suspended between two floors of the museum.
It represents the last gasp of the British Empire.
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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‘Cadogan’ by Tamsin Perrett - a comprehensive history of the Cadogan family and, as a self-professed nerd, I particularl...
29/01/2026

‘Cadogan’ by Tamsin Perrett - a comprehensive history of the Cadogan family and, as a self-professed nerd, I particularly enjoyed all the maps and family trees (especially as they’re all called William, Charles and Henry..!). In this first photo, I went to find the same view of the embankment and Chelsea Old Church from the early 1850s.
I spend quite a bit of time talking about Chelsea and it’s a popular part of London. The Cadogan family still own 93 acres of Chelsea, including over 3,000 houses and flats, 15 acres of gardens, 9 hotels and 5 embassies. It’s quite the estate!
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What I took away from the book:
🌳 Chelsea Physic Garden was leased to the Society of Apothecaries in 1721 by Hans Sloane. To this day, the lease is still £5 a year!
⛪️ William Bromley Cadogan was also a Reverend and in 1775 he became chaplain of Chelsea Old Church. He could become quite impassioned when talking about religion and once got into such a heated discussion of Christian doctrine over dinner “as to finish the debate by throwing the salt-cellar into the face of his opponent”!
✍️ Jane Austen drafted ‘Pride and Prejudice’ while staying at her brother’s at 64 Sloane Street.
⚽️ The lion of Chelsea football club represents Elystan, a 10th century Celtic chieftain and Cadogan ancestor. And for a time, the club was nicknamed ‘The Pensioners’ as a reference to the nearby Royal Hospital Chelsea!
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I was gifted this book by a very long time ago and it has taken me a hideously long time to post about it. My humblest apologies 😅
Thank you again!
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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The stained glass of St. Martin’s Kensal Rise, including none other than nurse Mary Seacole! ⛪️•The church was built bet...
20/01/2026

The stained glass of St. Martin’s Kensal Rise, including none other than nurse Mary Seacole! ⛪️
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The church was built between 1899 and 1900, but this window is a more recent addition from 2016. It was designed by Andrew Taylor and is dedicated to the current vicar, Reverend Graham Noyce to celebrate 20 years of ministry here. It features Mary Seacole, who cared for soldiers during the Crimean War in the 1850s. The War Office rejected her request to go and help, so she funded her own trip and established her own hospital, known as the British Hotel. The window features Jamaican and Scottish flags to represent her mother and father respectively. She learnt her nursing skills from her mother and, in fact, some of the ingredients which she used in her treatments are featured in the window: sage (at her waist) to treat fevers and kill germs, lemon grass (in the bowl) used as a tea to cool fevers, aloe vera (to the left and right of the bottom battlefield scene) to help heal cuts and wounds, and ginger (in the bottom left corner) for painful joints and diarrhoea.
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Reverend Graham is featured in the window as well. In the sun at the top is a labyrinth. I was told that this references an activity Graham introduced to the church: every Lent, he lays a circular labyrinth down on the church floor, they move all the chairs out of the way, and the congregation can walk around the labyrinth, allowing time for reflection.
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There’s lots of other historic glass in the church from the early 20th century - windows featuring people like nurse Florence Nightingale and St. Oswald - and the spectacular East Window designed by Henry Payne in 1908! It’s dazzling. I especially love the little lion and tiger in the bottom left corner 🦁🐯
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To stay up to date with me, my tours and general London content, follow me 👉 ! I’m a professional Blue Badge tour guide and I run bespoke private tours for Londoners and visitors alike 🔍
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