Big Ben Tour | Essential Hidden London
When people think of London and British landmarks, what top three come mind? People normally say Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge.** updated information March 2024 ** 
Mr Kiwi, my brother-in-law, a very good friend and I played London tourists for the day. It was awesome. I think I’ll have to split the day into 3 posts, or you may curse me for the sheer length of time it takes your computer to load!
It doesn’t look THAT tall.. I think..
Firstly we climbed about 210 feet high (the total tower is 96.3m, roughly 16 storeys) tower, by way of of a 334 step spiral staircase. Not just any fly-on the wall, blase turn-of-the-century run-of-the-mill tower, but up the big daddy.
Elizabeth Tower (previously St Stephens Tower and renamed in 2012 to celebrate ‘er madge’s Diamond Jubilee) is known to the World at large as Big Ben. You can see the fascinating mechanism and clock face that comprise the world-famous icon, as well as the enormous bell itself.
With this looming, I’ve been in secret training for this, and it’s had me on the stair machines in the gym for a while, building up to 10-minute sessions (you may think ’10 minutes? That’s nothing!’ try it, I dare you. It’s surprisingly hard!), and I am so glad I have been. As a bonus, our guide said we were a rather fit group, and because of such, we were up there in double quick time, meaning we spent more time listening to the beautiful bells up close. I’ve never been called ‘fit’! The guides do this climb 3 times a day and 15 times a week – they definitely aren’t gym Turkeys.
We got to watch all of the mechanisms at work, see the famous pennies keeping the pendulum ticking regularly, check out the 32-foot clock faces, and, best of all, see Big Ben himself. It was such a fantastic thing to do, a moment that you never forget, I think.
I’m not going to bore you with all of the geeky fun facts, like the bell is a bit cracked, all 13.7 tonnes of it was winched up the Tower by 8 men, taking them a total of 32 hours, and the E note Big Ben is famous for is now E flat. Go, I implore you. Or, check out Big Ben‘s official website for more info than you can shake a stick at. Big Ben also has Twitter. Awesome.
They are (as of writing) free, and you can book your Big Ben Tour here, but it’s so easy to do. Check-out their website and let me know what you think. Do it, it was amazing. I was only able to take a couple of very very sneaky pics, but we left grinning ear to ear.
Did you also know you can tour the Houses of Parliament?
