Category: London

Follow destinations, publishers and your feet with VoiceMap Pepys

We published our 100th tour in London a few days ago. VoiceMap now covers close to 3,500 locations there, spread across intersecting routes over 250 kilometres long – or 165 miles, if you prefer. 

In total, we now have roughly three days of audio about this one destination. When you consider that VoiceMap has grown to offer tours in 450 other destinations, you’ll probably agree that the new features in version 13 of the app, codenamed Pepys, are particularly useful.    

With VoiceMap Pepys, you can:

  • Follow destinations and get a push notification or an email when there’s a new tour in London, Ljubljana, Los Angeles or the Liwa Oasis.
  • Follow your favourite publishers – from history teacher Sam Brearley, who published our 100th tour in London, to Context Travel, which has tours in 15 countries by an incredible network of destination experts.
  • Subscribe to our newsletter “Senses of Direction”, which celebrates curiosity and the human connections that make travel meaningful. 
  • Get push notifications to help you save battery if you stop to get a drink, grab a meal or take in a panoramic view while you’re out doing a tour. 

Why Pepys? We normally give app releases destination names, but we used London for version 5, back in 2019 when we had 50 tours there. 

Some previews of version 13, showing the options to follow destinations and publishers as well as a sample notification

Samuel Pepys was a diarist who chronicled London before and after the Great Fire of 1666. His personal recollections about ordinary life – along with art, plagues, politics and war – are still considered one of the best guides to the city.  

Pepys’ diary entries add up to over one million words. VoiceMap’s London tours come in at a little under 650,000, so we’ve got some work to do.  Pepys is also a reminder that the personal perspectives behind all our tours – shared by nearly 800 publishers from all walks of life – are at least as important as our growing list of destinations.

You can download version 13 of the VoiceMap app for iOS or Android by going to the Apple App Store or Google Play.

Charles Dickens’ great great great granddaughter launches a downloadable GPS audio walk of his London neighbourhood

On 25 September, Charles Dickens’ great great great granddaughter and acclaimed author, Lucinda Hawksley, will launch her own downloadable GPS audio walk of Dickens’ London. Listeners can walk in the beloved author’s footsteps, exploring the neighbourhood where he drew inspiration for his novels, many of which were strongly shaped by his childhood.

The immersive audio experience was created in collaboration with VoiceMap, the international walking tour app that released a theatreland tour by actor Ian McKellen earlier this summer. The Charles Dickens from Furnival’s Inn to Doughty Street audio tour was designed to be done at your own pace at any time of day, but this Sunday, walkers will have an opportunity to meet Ms Hawksley during an open discussion at The Charles Dickens Museum, where the walk finishes. The museum is the only remaining house of Charles Dickens in London, and a 25% discount on admission will be offered after the event.

Continue reading Charles Dickens’ great great great granddaughter launches a downloadable GPS audio walk of his London neighbourhood

London Calling: My Second Home

Blogger and theatre enthusiast Shaun Nolan traces his inspiration for creating an audio walk through London’s theatre district right back to his earliest childhood memory of the city.

I love London. I’ve loved London ever since the first time I visited. I don’t remember exactly when or why that was, but my earliest memory of London was a trip around Buckingham Palace. As someone who lives in a town that isn’t the most exciting place on Earth, London managed to offer me a place where everything was happening. I’m a child of the internet generation and I can remember using dial-up when I was as young as 5, so I’ve always had the ability to access more than I lived with, which drove me to want even more.

I think that day at Buckingham Palace has stuck with me all this time because it was a clear reminder that there is life outside the small circle of my hometown, and London is the hub of a lot of it. Inside, Buckingham Palace really is as stunning as people say it is, and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I can vividly remember listening to the audio walking tour my Grandma bought me, getting to learn even more details about the ornate carvings and beautiful paintings I was looking at. Social history has fascinated me from a very young age – it comes hand in hand with a love of everything that the Arts has to offer – and getting to explore it in such an aural and practical way amazed me. I didn’t have all too many other memorable trips to London though, until I saw my first West End show, Hairspray, about 8 years ago.

Continue reading London Calling: My Second Home

Miranda Diboll relives the height of BritPop through her VoiceMap audio tour

Audio Producer, Geolocation Enthusiast and VoiceMap Storyteller, Miranda Diboll, provides some insight into her BritPop audio tour of Camden. For her, creating a VoiceMap was a way of reliving an exciting past with an “older pair of eyes”.

VoiceMap: Do you see potential for apps and other new technology to engage new audiences in music from the past?

Miranda: There’s a lot of interest in music from previous decades. Anyone who loves music will tend to look back at the influences of their favourite bands and listen to those influences. Britpop is a case in point — it was very much influenced by the 60s, Northern Soul and Mod. Some people wrongly labelled it as a mod revival which it wasn’t, it was much more diverse than that.

Now people are seeing Britpop as much more than just a music craze or some kind of revival. Twenty years have passed and the music stands the test of time. The 90s was an interesting decade, it was a time of hope and celebration of British culture. For young people at the time, like myself, it was the first time we could see the end of years of Tory government. The internet was just round the corner and so was a Labour government that promised us so much. We had so much hope for music and politics! It didn’t last.

So yes, I think people are keen to engage with the past and a VoiceMap tour is an incredibly immersive way to do that.

Continue reading Miranda Diboll relives the height of BritPop through her VoiceMap audio tour

8 London Walking Tour Apps to Bring Your Trip to Life

When I last visited London, I decided to take a guided tour. Strolling along the banks of the Thames, I came across the famous London Plane Trees. It was September, and they were stunning at that time of year: their bark was peeling off to reveal mottled, grey-green trunks. I stopped. Touched the bark; took out my camera. The tour guide smiled obsequiously: “Come along, plenty to see”. I put my camera away and was herded over to a curio shop. Plane Trees just don’t pay the same commission as mini-Big-Bens.

A great tour guide is irreplaceable, but sometimes you just need to stop and look at the trees. You need to get off the beaten track, and explore the hidden, lesser-known side of a city. Sometimes, you need a tour guide with a pause button.

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Get the perfect shot with self-guided photography tours of London

Location-aware audio has an endless list of applications, but self-guided photography tours often seem like they were made for the medium. Having your hands free when a professional photographer suggests you pause in that exact spot to best capture a vista, getting advice on which settings to adjust, and then being led to another seemingly secret – and oh so photogenic – spot takes location-aware audio tours to a whole new level.

London is the first city where we’ve seen real demand for self-guided photography tours, and so far five have been released on VoiceMap’s walking tour app by two London-based photographers.

Continue reading Get the perfect shot with self-guided photography tours of London