Coventry Audio Tour: Hands to the Work

Explore Coventry at your own pace

Coventry's spires and ruins belong to history. The streets between them belong to a different city - the narrow-loom weavers who lived and worked in the same three rooms, the dyers who produced a blue famed across Europe, the watchmakers who crowded Spon Street with their outworkers and their jewelling benches, the guild drapers and merchants who built almshouses for the elderly poor, the medieval craftsmen who staged mystery plays on wagons through the streets as an act of both worship and civic glory, the friars who put their names to a surrender document, the ward watchmen who rotated civic duty by trade, the cyclists and motor workers who made Coventry the workshop of the modern world, and Jock Forbes the cathedral stonemason who walked the roof on the worst night in Coventry's history and made a cross from the charred beams. This is the city that wove, wound, built and forgave.

Photo: Jobin Bennykutty, Unsplash

Tour details

• Duration: 1 hour 12 minutes, entirely at your own pace
• Distance: around 3.4 km (2.1 miles)
• Stops: 10 landmarks, including St Mary's Guildhall, Bayley Lane, Coventry, Coventry Cathedral Ruins and New Cathedral, Priory Street, Coventry, Whitefriars Gatehouse, Much Park Street, Coventry
• Audio: up to 25 minutes of narration
• Starts at: St Mary's Guildhall, Bayley Lane, Coventry

Map data by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

How it works

• Book here and a redemption code arrives by email within minutes.
• Download the free AudaTours app on your phone and enter the code.
• Download the tour once and the whole thing works offline.
• Walk to the first stop and press play. The audio for each landmark starts automatically as you approach it, so your phone can stay in your pocket.

There is no fixed date and no start time. The date you pick at checkout does not matter, and the tour stays on your phone permanently, so you can use it whenever you next visit and walk it again as often as you like.

What is included

• Professionally narrated audio that plays automatically at each stop
• An interactive map showing the walking route between landmarks
• Full offline access once downloaded, so you need no data or signal
• Freedom to start, pause and resume whenever you like
• Lifetime access - your code never expires

Where you will stop

• St Mary's Guildhall, Bayley Lane, Coventry
• Coventry Cathedral Ruins and New Cathedral, Priory Street, Coventry
• Whitefriars Gatehouse, Much Park Street, Coventry
• Ford's Hospital, Greyfriars Lane, Coventry
• Holy Trinity Church, Coventry
• Cook Street Gate, Cook Street, Coventry
• Coventry Transport Museum, Hales Street, Coventry
• St John the Baptist Church, Fleet Street, Coventry
• The Weaver's House, 121 Upper Spon Street, Coventry
• Medieval Spon Street, Coventry

Image: AudaTours

What is AudaTours?

AudaTours turns a walk through a city into a story. Our guides bring landmarks to life with the history, the scandals and the detail you would never get from a plaque.

• Immersive: real stories about the places in front of you, not a dry commentary
• Offline: download once and use it with no data, anywhere
• At your own pace: start, pause and resume whenever you want
• Accurate: every story is built from verified historical sources and checked before release

Good to know

• This is a self-guided audio tour on your own phone. There is no in-person guide.
• It does not include entry to any building or site along the route.
• The landmarks on the tour are not affiliated with AudaTours.
• You need a smartphone with Android 7.0 or later, or iOS 16 or later.
• Bring headphones and start with a charged phone.

Who it suits

Solo travellers, couples, families and small groups who would rather explore on their own schedule than follow a guide and a fixed departure time. It suits a first visit, and it suits anyone who has already seen the famous sights and wants to know what actually happened in them.

Image credits

Photos: Ebun Oluwole, Jobin Bennykutty, Oscar Mucyo (Unsplash).