A Thames Odyssey

A good Tour guide who can educate, amuse and engage all at once is a rare beast. Take Billy Beefeater, for example, an ex-soldier from the Irish Guards who insults large groups of tourists at various scenic spots around the Tower of London. The man is a comic genius. He knows his audience; he knows his subject inside out -lopped off heads and disembowelled traitors-  and his delivery is split-second. He’s so good, he’s making a useful living as an in-demand after-dinner speaker outside of his Beefeater duties. If you ever decide to visit the Tower, find out what time his tour starts. You won’t regret it.

A bad tour guide can turn any tourist attraction into 30 minutes of living hell. Fascinating history can be rendered anemically dull, and amazing architecture becomes mere detail, lost in the background as you’re herded from one boring stop to another, learning nothing in the process. But every so often, I’ve come across guides who are so spectacularly bad, so completely uninformed, you can’t help but admire them for trying, even though you know full well it’s going to go hideously wrong at some point.

Listless Teens & River Boats

A couple of summers back, my wife and I were back in the UK, herding our listless teenage sons around the capital. Our eldest had disappeared off to Bristol for a couple of days to visit his best friend. In a vain attempt to engage and educate our youngest on the faded glories of London, we went first to the Tower, which was a roaring success because of Billy, and then took a river cruise from Westminster to Greenwich. The brochure promised an historical commentary on the sights of London as we drifted casually down river to Greenwich, supping on a delicious pint of Fuller’s London Pride. We paid our money.

The river boat was just setting off from Big Ben, across from the London Eye, when the captain politely informed us in a thick east London accent that, sadly, the regular guide was sick, but not to worry, because he’d be taking over the guide’s duties and because ‘e was a real Londoner, everyfink would be pucker.

At first, there was a lot of basic pointing and naming. Over to your left, Charing Cross station. Over to your right, the Royal Festival Hall. Up ahead, Tower Bridge. All very nice, all very uninformative and all so familiar to any regular visitor to London. It wasn’t so much a tour as an aquatic version of google maps.

When we got to the Globe Theatre –the replica of Shakespeare’s original on the South Bank- the tour started to go off the rails. He clearly knew nothing about the Bard other than his name, and I seriously doubt he’d ever seen any of the repertoire of plays.

And over ‘ere, on the sarf bank, you can see the modern replica of Shakespeare’s Globe featre, where they perform ‘is plays.

There was a long thoughtful pause as our captain attempted to exercise mental muscles he’d never developed in the first place.

Yeah, like… like…

There was another lull in the soundtrack, broken only by the dimly audible sound of frantic whispering from the bridge, broadcast over the captain’s intercom. Outside on the observation deck, all of our fellow passengers had stopped what they were doing and were staring in horrified fascination at the speaker, knowing full well that a car crash was coming. Which it did.

Where they perform ‘is plays, like…like..(more whispering) Romeo and Juliet and all ‘is uvver good stuff.

All his other good stuff. As he said it, every tourist on board burst out laughing. Go on name, another play…

It got a little more engaging as we headed towards the docklands in east London. Somewhere around Limehouse Basin, where the grand old Regent’s Canal meets the Thames, he finally told us something interesting.

The restored canal network now extends to the Lake District in northwest England via 320 miles of winding, placid water. If you don’t fancy the stressful drive from London to the north, why not spend a leisurely two weeks on a canal boat? Transport yourself back to the glory days of the Industrial Revolution, when thousands of barges, manned by salt-of-the-earth crews in hob-nailed boots and flat caps, ferried the spoils of Empire from England’s ports to the dark satanic mills of the Midlands. Iron ore, coal, timber, rubber – anything that hurts when you drop it on your foot- was shipped to factories to make things for the voracious homeland.

Except it wasn’t quite phrased like that.

’ere’s where you can join the canals what’ll take you all the way to Manchester. It’s abart free ‘undred miles wiv roughly one pub per mile on average. Me and me dad did the trip once. It took us free mumfs cos we stopped at every pub on the way, all free ‘undred of ‘em.

Brilliant. Two pissed-up Cockneys on a canal boat for three months. I think that could well be a better story than the actual history of the canal. Bless..

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