London in 50 Walks: Walks 2, 3 and 4

Another weekend that Jackie isn't working, another weekend with no rain so another weekend exploring London.

This time we combined Walk numbers 2, 3 and 4 which cover part of east London. The map below shows the 3 walks on one map. They all started and finished at two tube stops which is why it was easy to link these walks together.


View London in 50 Walks in a larger map


So if I start with walk 2 where we started and run through some of the big sites.


We started at Old St Tube. The start of the walk was next to a big busy road that wasn't particularly scenic. 

Old Street

The first interesting bit though was just a short walk off this busy road to Hoxton Square which had some trendy looking cafes, bars and restaurants, including the Breakfast Club which had a queue out the door. There was also the White Cube Gallery which is apparently famous. 

Sign outside the Breakfast Club, might explain the  queue.

Time is wrong

One of the fashionable bars on Hoxton Square, there were lots of these that didn't look like much during the day.

 From here the walk took us along a familiar route for us up Kingsland Road, which is a hub for Vietnamese restaurants, up to the Geffrye Museum which we visited last year. The Geffrye Museum (http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/) "shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day" - it's not as boring as it sounds, one of our favourite museums in London. We didn't go inside this time but sat in their garden for a bit, had a tea from our thermos and a cookie time cookie courtesy of a friend of ours that just returned from NZ. After our morning tea we had a look around the Geffrye herb garden.

View from our morning tea spot, quite tranquil.

Jackie exploring the herb garden

Jackie striding out in the herb garden

From here we went made our way back to Old Street past a few more interesting places...

That's the 'Gherkin' poking up above the shops. The Gherkin is one the the more modern iconic buildings in London.

We walked past this coffee shop, I've been in before, it's amazing on the inside but the coffee wasn't good enough that I felt the need to go in again. Although in saying that I would like to go again just for the experience, it really is a gem on the inside, shame the coffee isn't the best. 

20 Years of Beats 'n' Pieces, thought Rua might like that. This is the 333 Club, another  unassuming building during the day but an "ultra hip" bar by night according to our card.

We popped into one homewares shop and that was pretty much the end of the Walk #2.


Walk #3 started from Old St Tube and headed down City Road. 


First site was the Wesley Chapel and Museum which is where John Wesley, the founder of Methodism began his movement in 1738. The church that we went to as kids was a Wesley Methodist church so it was interesting for me to see this. 


Opposite the church was Bunhill Fields, a cemetery with some famous people buried in it, and there was no entrance fee! We found the graves for Daniel Defoe and William Blake easily enough, they were kind of out on their own. Thomas Bayes was also buried here which might be of interest to mum and Jill and anyone else of a mathematical/statistical bent - we couldn't find his grave though. 

Wesley Chapel, I guess the statue in the middle is John Wesley

Jackie paying her respects to William Blake

Grand grave of Daniel Defoe who authored Robinson Crusoe

From here we headed towards the concrete jungle of the city although came across the HAC ground, which is an oasis amongst the buildings with an immaculate cricket ground and a Georgian mansion. After a bit of research we found HAC stands for the Honourable Artillery Company, the grounds and mansion can be hired. For £2,750 you can hire the cricket ground for the day, they have 6 dates set aside for cricket in 2011, 5 are booked already. 

The HAC ground

Photo taken from the same spot as the previous photo but I've turned around to look the other way, what a contrast.

From here we walked through Finsbury Circus...

Jackie at Finsbury Circus

Another shot of the Gherkin at our lunch stop

A well earned lunch towards the end of walk #3

After lunch it was just a short walk to Liverpool St Station, the end of Walk #3 and the start of Walk #4.


This was the most exciting walk by far. First of all we hit Spitalfield market, which has been done up recently so is now quite a modern covered market with lots of boutique clothes stalls along with the usual knock off clothing and food stalls. From here we found our way to the Sunday Up Market which was a bit more interesting. It was less organised, more sprawling and just had more interesting stuff. Jackie picked up a wrap from one of the stalls there. 

Jackie with her wrap

From here we exited on to Brick Lane, famous for few reasons including the 2003 novel and 2007 movie of the same name...

One end of Brick Lane is famous for curries, the other is like a 24hour music festival with market stalls, music, dancing and general mayhem.

Some shots of the sights around Brick Lane below...

Supposed to have the best Bagels in London, we didn't try one but might have to make a special trip back to try them. 

Nothing special about this balti house, it's just standard. 

After Brick Lane we passed the White Hart pub which was a hang out of Jack the Ripper, this area was his hunting ground.

We then moved on to Petticoat Lane which is famous, although I'm not sure why. After a quick check on Wikipedia it seems to have been famous as a market for lace and petticoats. Now I think it sells a lot of ethnic clothes and fabrics and cheap clothes. We were actually too late for the market but were there to see the mess that was left and it was terrible.

Some of the rubbish left by the Petticoat Lane market stalls

The Gherkin again as seen from Petticoat Lane. 

More rubbish from the Petticoat Lane markets, there was  a big group of council cleaners clearing up which must happen almost every day, seems like a waste, why can't the stall holders clear up after themselves?

From here we were back to Liverpool St Station and the end of Walk #4.

Our Royal Wedding

So with much hype and expectation the Royal Wedding came and went over a week ago now.

As with everywhere in the world there were some that didn't want to know about it while there were others who camped out for days to get a good spot to see the bride and groom. To see the most committed though check this guy out... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVWKlUi2avo

If you can't view that video search for John Loughrey on YouTube

Jackie and I were in the middle of that spectrum although I think I was a bit more excited in the lead up than Jackie, but then the day before Jackie got into the spirit, buying us ingredients for a breakfast fit for a prince and princess (or Duke and Duchess as it turns out).

The night before the wedding we headed down to Clapham Common to have a look at 'Camp Royale' a temporary camping ground where people were believed to be going to stay and party over the weekend.

Camp Royal was a bit of a let down but we did see a guy riding a penny farthing which made the trip worth while

Camp Royal

A sneak peak inside camp royal confirms that there is nothing royal about it. 

Our Royal Wedding went something like this...

I woke up early, excited and woke Jackie up, we had to get packed for our night in Henley, have our Royal Breakfast and get somewhere to watch the main event.

Our Royal Breakfast

I had the computer streaming the BBC first thing so we could watch everyone turn up to the wedding as we got ready.

Jackie with the red and blue on for the wedding.

After breakfast and packing we took our bags and headed in to Balham, the first pub we went to we couldn't get a seat, everything was either taken or reserved  - at 10:30 in the morning! The next place we tried was all but empty so we settled down with a drink, they had an ale called 'Perfect Union' so I had to have one of those, and this is where we watch the ceremony.

Our spot for watching the wedding, it's a sports pub so there was booming sound for the 6 people that were here. 

Around midday we left to go to Heathrow to pick up my parents.

We decided to walk to nearby Wandsworth Common train station to give us the chance to see any street parties, we saw a couple, including one with a bouncy castle, but I think most people were still glued to their tvs so there wasn't so much going on to see.

Signs of a Street Party, road closed but the partly taking place around the corner.

St James Street Party, Bouncy Castle and Hog Roast were going to make this a doozy I reckon.

From Wandsworth Common our route took us through Victoria train station which was tantalizingly close to Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, I told Jackie she might have to hold me back in case I made a break for it to join in with the million or so people. I managed to restrain myself though and we got on the tube to Heathrow, finding my parents and picking up a rental car all went well and we were on the road to Henley.

Our first stop though was Danesfield House for a Royal afternoon tea that Jackie had organised. I don't have any photos but the website (http://www.danesfieldhouse.co.uk/) gives you a fair idea of how nice this place was. We all ordered the Royal Afternoon Tea which included scones with clotted cream and jam, sandwiches and cakes and pastries. It was a ridiculous amount of food and we were never going to finish it all but I did my best to get through most of it.

From there it was on to Henley were we were staying in the Rowbarge Pub accommodation. After spending about 5 minutes trying to find the hand brake to park on the hill we moved on to the pub which was too busy to check us in to our room so we had a drink while we waited to be checked in. The other patrons had clearly been there since the start of the wedding, there were several people that were worse for wear which gave us plenty of entertainment while we waited.

After getting checked into our rooms, and watching some of the highlights of the wedding we went for a walk around Henley, which is a beautiful English town and had a great meal and a Greek Mezze restaurant, although I really didn't need any more food after the huge afternoon tea.

So that was about it for our Royal Wedding. Jackie and I were kept up into the wee hours by the noise of the pub including various arguments which we could here in a lot of detail. That combined with Pride and Prejudice on the tv was entertaining enough that we didn't mind staying up later than usual.

The next day, after a poor breakfast we went for a walk along the river, stopping for a while at Henley Lock watching all the boats go through. Lunch and an ice cream was all that remained before getting in the car and heading back to London.

London in 50 Walks: Walks 16 and 17

Beautiful weather in London doesn't come along too often, especially not coinciding with a long weekend so to make the most of it Jackie and I decided to do a couple of our 'London in 50 Walks' walks, we chose walk numbers 16 and 17 to do together as they shared a common start point.

The map cards for walk 16 and 17 overlap making it a good opportunity to do the two together

We started with walk number 17, doing the walk in reverse from Archway tube station to Highgate tube station. Doing the walk in reverse tested our abilities to follow the walk instructions in reverse, we managed alright.


View London Walks #17 in a larger map

The start of our walk at Archway was reasonably uneventful, other than the fact that we start off walking up quite a steep hill. At the top of the hill we turned in to Waterlow Park.

Getting our bearings in Waterlow Park

We promptly decided to have a slightly early lunch, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the day, not that the rest of the day wasn't great but the lunch was exceptional .We had packed left over orzo salad from the night before, it was great the first time around and even better the second time as we sat in Waterlow park, overlooking a pond and a beautiful hilly, green park.

Jackie modelling a very summery outfit at our early lunch stop

We moved on past a hoard of kids ensconced in Easter Sunday activities. After strolling around the park we got to the Highgate Cemetery  where Karl Marx is buried, however it was with great disappointment that we found there was a £3 charge to enter the cemetery, which we objected too, so we carried on walking along our path, up another steep hill.

As often is the case in parks there were many benches in memory of people, this one however was just a one person seat, I'm not sure if that says something about the budget available for this memorial or if it was symbolic of their lack of friends, either way it was out of place in amongst all the 4 person benches around the park. 

Photo of Highgate cemetery, as much as we could get for free. Disappointing that we couldn't go and see Karl Marx's grave but I'm sure we'll get over it. 

At the top of the hill we were at Pond Square, which lacks a pond these days but which had a great looking pub called the Flask. Unfortunately it wasn't time for another stop yet.

The Flask pub, unfortunately too soon after our lunch to stop here.

We carried on along North Road, past a petrol station with an inviting menu including smoothies and Monmouth coffee (one of the better coffees to be found in London). Here we missed our turn off, possibly distracted by people asking us for directions.

There are loads of blue plaques around with obscure famous people, at least we'd actually  heard of Charles Dickens, although the fact he stayed there in 1832 is hardly a claim to fame, I'm sure he stayed in lots of places over his life, it wasn't as if this is where he wrote one of his books.

We backtracked and found our turn off, just in time to see a volley of oddballs, starting with a cross dresser, followed by a jogger who was panting so hard we were worried whether he was going to make it home and finished with a generally odd looking girl. All quite peculiar given the suburb seemed especially normal, if slightly fancy.

Onwards, through a narrow lane way which I'm sure claims its fair share of side mirrors of cars and into the homeward stretch.

We started walk 16 with a coffee and Portuguese tart from a coffee shop called Laos. Despite using Monmouth coffee and having a flat white on the menu, what I got was a milky drink with a hint of coffee flavour, not particularly satisfactory. The tart was good though which almost made up for the poor coffee. A bit of a disappointing end to walk 17 and start to walk 16.

Laos cafe, bad coffee, don't go there.

Map below shows walk 16 in blue, our walk back to the tube in red.


View London Walks #16 in a larger map

One of the most interesting parts of the walk was the section which was through a wooded walkway which is a disused railway line. The tracks have been taken away to create a long thin park, which is mainly a walkway. It was pleasant in the shade, just before we had to turn off the walkway there was another Easter egg hunt underway with lots of raucous kids.

Parkland walk, along the route of a former railway track

Jackie on the Parkland Walk

After a brief return to the footpath the walk took us along another narrow, wooded walkway.

Jackie checking we're on track

 After the walkway we turned back onto a regular footpath. From here we had a view of Alexandra Palace.

Alexandra Palace in the distance (you can't actually see it when the picture is this size) but we had a half decent view

We then walked down the hill into Crouch End, where the walk finishes. We did the loop of Crouch End to complete the walk as required by the map and then settled at a cafe for a smoothie and cake as a reward for our efforts. Unfortunately the cakes weren't particularly special, a bit dry, which was a shame as we deliberated long and hard about which of the numerous cafes to go to and we both agreed this one looked like the best, clearly we were wrong. Nevertheless it was still good to sit down and rest after our walk.

Banner's cafe/restaurant in Crouch End where Bob Dylan had a regular table in the back

We decided to finish off by walking back to Highgate tube which was a nice walk in itself through rather swish  residential suburbs. We were lucky that the tube took us all the way back to Balham, the final challenge was staying awake on the tube to avoid missing our stop.

Three walks done, 47 to go.

Coming soon.... our Royal Wedding update.