Charles Dickens Walking Tour for Kids – 23rd October 2019
Kent is a wonderful county in which to live. It is bursting with historical features, beautiful landscapes, and interesting towns and villages. Despite living here for almost eight years, however, we had still not made it to the historic city of Rochester, so when a good friend suggested a Charles Dickens walking tour of the old town I jumped at the chance. I must admit a couple of things at this point. The first – that I have read Oliver Twist, once, about 30 years ago, and, despite a degree in English Literature, that is, embarrassingly, my complete knowledge to date of Charles Dickens. And two, my children were not particularly enamoured by the idea of a walking tour, even with the promise of a nice lunch afterwards. Nevertheless, I dragged them out of the house, wrapped them up warm, and we headed into Rochester for the 11am talk.
The Cathedral and old centre of Rochester is truly stunning. Bursting with old buildings and history, it is a wonderfully picturesque and interesting area to wander around. The tour started at the heart of this, just outside the castle, itself another imposing structure, directly opposite the generously proportioned Cathedral.
Our guide, Shane, was immediately welcoming and engaging – no mean feat when surrounded by almost twenty children all waiting with great expectation (see what I did there?!). It was a canny idea of Shane’s to introduce a quiz element to the tour – if my children are anything to go by – children love finding out answers, and are also more likely to remember some interesting facts if they are involved in the quest, so the quiz element was definitely a plus point from me. Along the talk Shane cleverly dispersed answers to the quiz questions without being too obvious about it, so the children were engaged and listening throughout as they tried to complete the questionnaire in full.
Shane’s commentary as he took us around certain spots of Rochester was fluid, thoroughly interesting and genuinely funny. Whilst we didn’t actually walk that far, we saw many interesting buildings and sights, often with direct links to Charles Dickens’s novels, or his upbringing and life. For me, seeing the gothic, almost spooky Restoration House (Dickens’s inspiration for Satis House in Great Expectations) was truly inspiring and Great Expectations has now been downloaded as my next read on my Kindle. Becoming immersed in Dickens’s surroundings in Rochester has made the novels seem so much more real and I am hoping that for my children especially, seeing the buildings and area will bring his literature to life for them that much more.
At the time of our tour (October 2019) Shane wasn’t charging a fee for his time (almost three hours on our tour) and astounding knowledge. He simply requested a donation of “…whatever you can afford; I don’t want to stop anyone learning because of lack of funds”. Unfortunately due to the large number of no-shows, Shane has informed me that he will have to charge a small fee from 2020 for weekend walks, but he will be keeping weekday walks running on a donation only basis as long as he can. Rochester Tour Guides (www.tourguiderochesteruk.co) is a super organisation with a truly good heart. I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone wanting to find out more about Dickens, and with the 150 year anniversary of Dickens death next year (another fact I learned on the tour), I expect interest in Rochester History Walking Tours in 2020 will, deservedly, be at an all time high.
Sarah Barnett Oct 2019
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