Mid-range · 3-hour walk · London
Bloomsbury and King's Cross in three hours
The Rosetta Stone, the garden squares of the Bloomsbury Group, Dickens's house, the Gothic front of St Pancras and the canal at King's Cross.
Bloomsbury is London's university quarter, laid out in the 18th century around garden squares, and in the early 20th the home of the writers and painters of the Bloomsbury Group. This route starts at the British Museum in the morning, crosses the squares to Dickens's only surviving London house, and ends at King's Cross, where the old railway goods yards have become one of the city's best new neighbourhoods.
The route, stop by stop
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British Museum
Free, and far too big for one visit. On a short one, see the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures and the Assyrian lion hunt reliefs.
60 min here Walk here → -
Russell Square
One of the largest of Bloomsbury's garden squares. T. S. Eliot had his office at the publishers Faber and Faber on its west side.
10 min here Walk here → -
Charles Dickens Museum
The house at 48 Doughty Street where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839 and wrote Oliver Twist. It is the only one of his London homes still standing.
35 min here Walk here → -
St Pancras International
Behind the Gothic front of the old Midland Grand Hotel is an iron train shed of 1868, where the Eurostar leaves for Paris under a statue of two lovers.
15 min here Walk here → -
Granary Square
The old railway goods yard behind King's Cross, now home to the art school Central Saint Martins, with fountains in the square and the canal below. Coal Drops Yard's shops are next door.
15 min here Walk here →
More walks in London
Cutty Sark · Painted Hall · Greenwich Market · Royal Observatory · General Wolfe statue
Old Spitalfields Market · Christ Church Spitalfields · Fournier Street · Brick Lane · Redchurch Street · Columbia Road Flower Market
London Eye · Southbank Centre · Shakespeare's Globe · Borough Market · Tower Bridge
Buckingham Palace · St James's Park · Fortnum & Mason · Burlington Arcade · Royal Academy of Arts · Savile Row · New Bond Street · Claridge's
Tower of London · St Dunstan-in-the-East · Sky Garden · Leadenhall Market · Royal Exchange · Guildhall · Postman's Park
Westminster Abbey · Houses of Parliament and Big Ben · Trafalgar Square · Covent Garden · St Paul's Cathedral · Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern
British Museum · Chinatown · Victoria and Albert Museum · Natural History Museum · Royal Albert Hall · Serpentine · Primrose Hill · Camden Market
Tower of London · Tower Bridge · Borough Market · Tate Modern · St Paul's Cathedral · Covent Garden · National Gallery · Houses of Parliament and Big Ben · London Eye
More in London
Every walking route in London, the full London guide for where to stay and what a day costs, or walks in other cities.