Photo: Colin (CC BY-SA 4.0)
An unofficial self-guided audio walk through the real streets behind Mick Herron's Slough House novels and the Apple TV+ series made from them, in two parts. At each stop you hear why the place is on the walk, which characters are involved and what happens to them there, and then the real place's own history. Part 1 walks the City, about 5 km: from Leather Lane and Smithfield to the row on Aldersgate Street filmed as Slough House, the Barbican, Bunhill Fields, Gresham Street and St Michael, Cornhill, ending at Petticoat Lane on the City's eastern edge. Part 2 starts about 6 km away, so take the Tube or a bus between the parts, or do them on different days. It follows the Regent's Canal from Cumberland Basin to Camden Lock, then King's Cross: Granary Square and the Lighterman, St Pancras International and King's Cross Station, where the first novel begins, and ends in Islington at the Rheidol Terrace café of the very first episode, the Caledonian Estate and the Shaftesbury Tavern on Hornsey Road, about 12 km on foot. Spoilers up to the sixth season. Not affiliated with Apple or with Mick Herron.
17 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 613 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 432 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Leather Lane Market, Smithfield Market, Slough House, Aldersgate Street, Barbican Estate, Bunhill Fields, Gresham Street, St Michael, Cornhill, Petticoat Lane Market.
Regent's Canal, Cumberland Basin, Camden Lock, Granary Square, The Lighterman, St Pancras International, King's Cross Station.
Rheidol Terrace, Caledonian Estate, The Shaftesbury Tavern.
The real row on Aldersgate Street that the series films as Slough House, and the run-down building on Mick Herron's walk to work that started the books.
Season three's chase across the estate's bridges and passageways, and the estate built where the Blitz had all but wiped out the area.
William Blake's grave, where the slow horses meet in trouble, in the burial ground of London's Protestant dissenters.
The stretch of towpath where, in the series, Jackson Lamb and Diana Taverner, MI5's Second Desk, meet in secret.
The fountain square on an old canal basin where season four ends with a grenade, River Cartwright and a splash in the canal.
Lewis Cubitt's terminus of 1852, central to the opening of Mick Herron's first novel, the exercise that sends River to Slough House.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 17 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 8 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Slow Horses London — Slough House, the Barbican and the City, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
17 narration points, including Leather Lane Market, Smithfield Market, Slough House, Aldersgate Street, Barbican Estate and Bunhill Fields. That is about 47 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Yes, from Dover, Southampton (about 114 km in a straight line) and Tilbury, but it is a long day. The safest way is the ship’s own excursion, which waits for its passengers: play the guide on the coach and at the site.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~5 hours, in two parts total, but you walk at your own pace. 17 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.