The Great Monopoly Walking Tour of London
As I am currently part of the ‘in between jobs’ categorary I seem to have a lot of free time on my hands. I am trying to look at it from the point of view that is a great time to see and experience London before I am working. Hence why I decided to practice my map reading skills and walk 20km’s one day!
The monopoly board game was always a favourite in my family from buying the little red hotels to driving the wheelbarrow/boat/horse/dog/thimble around the board. During my preparation for the walking tour I actually learnt a lot about the game that I didn’t know, this famous board game actually has a history! The concept of the game (buying and selling properties) started way back in 1903 by an American, in the 1970s world championships were held and in 1990 it was actually a television game show.
So I equipped myself with a free map from the tourist office, a bottle of water and some on-the-go food (when I do finally land that dream London job I will definitely be re-doing the tour with copious amounts of pub and café stops – it was oh so tempting!). I also had my nike+ going to record the exact distance.
As I am currently staying in North Finchley I needed to make a route that allowed me to tube/bus to and from the first and last points on the tour otherwise I would have had to take on a good few more hours just to start the tour. I choose to start at the most southerly point on the map, which meant tubing to Borough station. From here I made my way through the south of the river streets to my first pinpoint – Old Kent Road. It is one of the cheapest properties on the board, a brown property.
I then proceeded to follow Tower Bridge Road up to the next 4 stops on the tour; Whitechapel Road (Brown), Liverpool Station, Vine Street (Orange – there are actually 2 Vine Sts on the London map, the other is in by Piccadilly) and Fenchurch Station. This was a cute area where I came across a clothes and food market on Wentworth Street – definitely a place to visit again when I have some money in my pocket.
Next up I started heading into the heart of the city, which is where most of the properties are located. I hit them in this order; Fleet Street (Red) Strand (Red), Bow Street (Orange), Northumberland Ave (Pink), Whitehall (Pink), Trafalgar Square (Red), Pall Mall (Pink), Leister Square (Yellow), Coventry Street (Yellow – you must stop off at M&M World on your way past – 5 stories of chocolatey goodness!), Piccadilly (Yellow), Regent Street (Green), Marlborough Street (Orange – this was actually Great Marlborough St however the other one was a good few miles away by itself so I figured I could settle!), Oxford Street (Green), Bond Street (Green), Mayfair (Navy Blue) and finally the gorgeous Park Lane (Navy Blue). I would definitely want my hotel to be on the latter.
As all the above properties are concentrated in such a small area you can really have a good look around the place. The squares you could spend hours in from watching the street performers (I met Shrek!) to having a picnic in Hyde Park, which borders Park Lane, or why not go shopping in the Aston Martin showroom on Park Lane.
It was now time to do the most northern properties on the map which included; Marylebone Station, Euston Road (Blue), Kingscross Station, Pentonville Road (Blue) and finally Angel Islington (Blue) to finish off the tour having covered 20kms over a 5 hour period.
It’s a long walk, however you get to see many different suburbs of London which is a lot of fun – you see street performers everywhere, come across markets, see some awesome graffiti artwork on buildings and if your lucky enough to have good weather like I did, then you can top up that tan too. It was definitely a fun day out however next time I will be scheduling in a wine bar or two along the way.