How to Become a London Blue Badge Tourist Guide

To become a registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide working in London, you will need to take a course and gain accreditation from the Institute of Tourist Guiding.

The Course

The course typically lasts about 18 months and involves lectures in London and practical site visits, along with periods of self-study. Its main focus is London, but it also covers the major tourist destinations across the South East, so it helps to have a reasonable knowledge of London and destinations such as Windsor, Oxford and Stratford. It can also be useful to have language skills as a large number of guides provide tours in more than one language.

Applying for the Course

There is lots of interest in the course, so candidates are assessed by exam and interview before being awarded a place. You will find further information on the course fees and timelines on the Institute's website.

Programme Content

As part of the course, you'll learn how to develop and present highlighted tours of London's major attractions, together with a City of London walk and a panoramic coach tour. The practical side is matched by lectures covering a wide range of topics related to London, the various regional sites and the techniques of guiding.

Exams

During the course you'll take a number of written and practical exams and if you're successful you'll be awarded a Blue Badge, which is the industry's recognized symbol of professionalism in tourist guiding. It is also possible to take the exams without doing the course, but there are many benefits to doing so, not least the opportunity to meet and work with guiding colleagues.

When British musician Paul Barton performs in central Thailand lately, his energetic listeners react wildly. Some pull his hair or jump on his piano. Others steal his music. The behavior is normal, however, because these crowds are truly barbaric-monkeys to be exact.

Barton plays often to the animals in Lopburi, an area known for its populations of macaque monkeys. The pianist hopes the music shows bring calm to the animals during the coronavirus crisis. The disease has caused problems for the monkeys, too. They are hungry. The "restrictions on tourism mean fewer people come to see the monkeys and feed them.

“We need to make an effort to make sure that they eat properly. And when they eat properly they will be calmer and will not be aggressive, ”said Barton.

Barton has played at four sites in Lopburi, including at an ancient Hindu temple, a store and an old movie theater. The macaques quickly surround Barton when he plays Greensleeves, Beethoven's Fur Elise and Michael Nyman's Diary of Love. Some of the creatures sit on his chair, while others climb up his body and touch his head.

“A wonderful opportunity to see the wild animals just being themselves," said Barton, from. Yorkshire in northern England. Barton keeps his attention on his performance, even as a small monkey runs over his hands on the instrument Other monkeys take control of his music papers. However, he added, “I wasn't going to let those things distract from the project which is to play the music for these wonderful macaques. In fact, I was surprised to find that they were actually eating the music as I was playing it.”

The monkeys are Barton's latest animal fans. Past wildlife audiences included elephants living in special protected areas.

Barton hopes to raise awareness of the monkeys' hunger. At the same time, he hopes to study their behavior as they react to- classical music. "It's possible that the music can play a part in the treatment process,“ he said.

A large conch(海螺)shell brought little attention in a French museum for many years, but it is now quickly gaining attention. The shell is thought to be the oldest known seashell instrument. And it still works, producing a deep sound, like a foghorn from the distant past.

The shell was found during the exploration of a cave with prehistoric wall paintings in the Pyrenees Mountains in southwestern France. It was believed to be a ceremonial drinking cup. Scientists from the University of Toulouse in France recently took a fresh look at the conch shell. They now believe it was changed thousands of years ago to serve as a wind instrument. They also invited a French horn, player to play it.

The researchers estimate it to be about 18,000 years old. Conch shells have been used widely in musical and ceremonial traditions, including in ancient Peru, Greece, Japan and India. The shell instrument found in the Marsoulas cave is now the oldest known example. Earlier, Gilles Tosello, another archaeologist in Toulouse, said a conch shell instrument found in Syria was estimated to be about 6,000 years old.

The latest discovery was made after a recent inventory at the Natural History Museum of Toulouse. The researchers noticed some unusual holes in the shell. Especially important is that the end of the shell was broken off. That created a hole large enough to blow through. Inspections with a microscope showed that the opening was made by humans. "It was not accidental breakage or wear,“ Tosello said.

This discovery reminds us that ancient people's lives were more complex than making stone tools and hunting large animals. "Marsoulas cave is not near an ocean. So the prehistoric people must have either moved around or traded to get the shell," the researchers said.

A sheet of transparent new material at a University of Maryland lab looks like it might be plastic. But it's actually wood — and it could eventually be used to make energy efficient windows or even see-through buildings.

Compared to glass, wood has lower thermal conductivity(导热系数),and it's lighter, stronger, and more environmentally friendly. The idea is to employ the material in buildings. With a window made from transparent wood instead of glass, for example, a building would take less energy to heat and cool. Because of the structure of the wood, the windows could also reduce glare from the sun while allowing in natural light.

Researchers have experimented with transparent wood in the past, but the new method is more sustainable. Other methods usually soak the wood into a chemical compound to remove lignin(木质素),part of the wood that gives it structure. But this can weaken the wood, and it produces waste that is hard to recycle. The researchers adjusted the process so it doesn't fully remove the lignin. By brushing hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂)over the wood and leaving it under a UV light, they removed only the parts of the lignin that give it color. The result is transparent wood that can be coated in epoxy(环氧树脂).

It's just one o£ a number of ways scientists and engineers are rethinking how we can use this renewable resource in construction. Skyscrapers made entirely out of wood are gaining popularity in cities around the world. And scientists recently discovered a technique to grow wood in a lab, opening up the possibility of using wood without having to chop down a forest.

The transparent wood is 50% stronger than previous transparent wood and could even be used to build load-bearing walls in a building. It could also potentially be used in other ways, such as layers used in solar cells. A new spin-off company called Invent Wood is working to commercialize the technology.