Audio tour of the old road from the south into London, following the route of pilgrims to Canterbury and debtors, staged from The Shard.
The Borough Audio Tour: Pilgrims, Debtors and the Doctors of Guy's kicks off at The Shard on Thursday 12 November, and it's a walk that takes you right through the old road into London from the south. If you've spent any time around Borough, you know the area is a strange mix of the ultra-modern and the deeply old, and that's exactly what this tour plays with. It follows the route pilgrims once took on their way to Canterbury, and the same ground where debtors were locked away, layering that history of faith and punishment over the streets as they are now.
The tour starts at The Shard, at 32 London Bridge Street, which is a bit of a landmark in its own right. It's the tallest building in London and Western Europe, standing 310m across 95 storeys. It opened to the public in 2013 and houses a fair few organisations inside — Al Jazeera Media Network, Warwick Business School, Matches Fashion and Kraft Heinz are all based there, alongside three restaurants and the privately-run observation deck, The View from the Shard, right at the top. It's a sharp contrast to the pilgrims and debtors the tour is actually about.
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From there, you'll head out on the walk itself. The focus is on that old southern road into the city, the one that carried pilgrims towards Canterbury and held debtors in its grip, so the whole thing is built around the area's history of faith and punishment. It's an audio tour, so you'll have the stories in your ear as you move through the neighbourhood, letting the old layers of the place sit alongside the modern streets you're actually walking. Tickets start from £3.99, and it all gets going on Thursday 12 November from The Shard.
