While in London I will need to figure out how to get around. Mostly I use the tube or the underground. I have never figured out how to use the bus system which is very extensive and I’m sure probably more efficient than the underground for short trips. My last time here was when I had my bike stolen and I began to use the street bike system which was wonderful for me at that time. This time I will also try to figure out how to use the bike system but for my first couple of days I will mostly walk a bit and use the underground. I have only a few things to do before heading out.
I will have to initiate my esim for Britain and I need to activate my Brit Rail Pass. These are the two primary electronic systems that I will use extensively while here. Only a few days before I left I discovered that Fujikina, a photography show, was being held in London while I am here. There is one session now and one session in the week I’m in London before I go home that I am interested in. So I have enrolled. Finally I have to figure out the train system and get to the right station for my first train booking which is to Bath in Southwest England

Sept 24

I arrived at Heathrow on time, about noon. It took 3 trains to get to Kennington Station and 10 minutes to find the Lotus guesthouse in the Buddhist temple a little South of the Thames. The new London underground system that I used involved setting up Google Pay . That done, you touch your bank card to the reader when you enter and leave the underground. I believe when you reach some maximum for the day it stops charging. I probably used the wrong train out of Heathrow. My first day’s charges were about $55. I headed out and found a pub meal. Early to bed. Walking Heathrow and the underground gavww me my 10k steps.

Sept 25 London

I was awake about 4 o’clock and finally got up at about 6. It was still dark but i was on my way heading north toward the centre. After close to an hour I saw a nice looking hotel with people eating. It was now about 7:00 and so I went in and had a buffet breakfast, but did not do it justice. Continuing on I joined walkers bikers and runners in the stream of people heading in all directions on their way to join the day. The sun was going to shine today, but it was still 10C chilly. I crossed the Thames with many others crossing equally in both directions. I was surprised to see many Bromptons among the bikes. I think I should buy one.

Entering Covent Gardens, most street level businesses are restaurants and such serving business and tourist customers. I just kept walking Back down along the Thames for a while to Big Ben, then reversing again to Trafalgar Square. Spent some time in the National Gallery. Meandering continually into various of central London districts, I had a late lunch near Leister Square, the theatre district. Mid afternoon I ran out of gas and returned by tube to my guesthouse. Another pub dinner and bed. This had been a 25,000 step day connecting a few places very distant in memory, mostly preparing for my visit in a few weeks. Underground charges for one train and about four stops was about $5.

Sept 26

This was Fujikina day, but I was in Covent Garden where it was held early enough to have breakfast and walk some of its photogenic streets. Notable amongst these is an area called 7 Dials where 7 roads meet in a little circle. I am moving on after the show so I have my pack with me. My little shoulder bag with camera and what I need for the day weights 6 lbs. My pack with all my stuff adds 15 lbs. I can walk around all day without much problem as many of my days will be like this.

The photo show was ok. The first session was 5 photographers talking about mostly their youtube efforts. The sound system didn’t work well for me. The second was a presentation by Thomas Heaton who gave a slide type show on the filming of a National Geographic show featuring him on a railway trip from Kunming in China to Laos. This was better, and I could discern most of the presentation. I had a chance to talk with Thomas a little.. After the show I plunged back into the underground popping back up at Paddington station for my first official train trip, to Bath about 90 minutes away. My underground charges for that day were about $11, for three trains about 1 hour of travel.

My flex rail pass will give me 15 days travel over the next 2 months. I click on the link I was given, choose the travel day and a pass is sent. I store it on my phone. During that travel day I wave it in front of a reader entering and leaving stations and to conductor’s hand readers as many times during that day as I wish. There is a different pass for each day.

Sept 27 Bath

I am staying at Bath for three nights. During my Friday to Monday time here at my chosen pub I watched the Europeans narrowly beat the US in the 2025 Ryder Cup. Coincidentally on my last trip here the 2011 version had the same result. Of even more interest for me, with less satisfying result, the English women beat their Canadian counterparts in rugby. The pub crowd was quite raucous during this game, drowning out the lone, but one, Canadian supporters.
My first full day in Bath I just walked, appreciating the mammoth Cotswold Limestone buildings reflecting the time of the Romans. I didn’t enter the old Roman bath or the Abbey. I walked the Avon canal for a while and headed in for the early rugby match.

Sept 28 Stonehenge & Avebury

The main reason for the Bath visit was to pick up an all day but tour to Stonehenge, Avebury and two scenic villages. Trains do not go everywhere, but as I really wanted to visit the two prime Neolithic sites in Britain and as local bus connections are sporadic after much deliberation at home, I chose the tour. It turned out to be a very good choice. There were 18 of us on a full bus, the driver-guide was very good and most importantly, his sound system was perfect. I could even follow his jokes.

The tour meandered through the rolling hills of the Cotswolds and the flatter Salisbury Plains covering parts of the counties of Wiltshire and Somerset. Almost always on quiet back roads, lined with stone walls and hedgerows, through small villages, accompanied by Dan’s stories from history, geography and nature intermixed with his eclectic music and pretty humorous jokes.

There were thousands of visitors at Stonehenge. Shuttle buses took us a km to the mammoth stone circle, where we walked well away from the stones around the outside. A few of my photos were of the antics people went through to have their pictures taken holding up the stones in their hands or other such poses. It takes half an hour to walk back along the road. My walk took a bit longer because there was a forest to visit, some birds to pursue and a barbed wire fence to climb. The new visitor centre is a great improvement apparently on the one Bill Bryson writes about in “…Small Island”

Avebury has hundreds of standing stones in possibly three circles, the centre of which is the village with shops, houses and a pub. While the stones at Stonehenge are up to 4 metres high and 25 tons and are shaped into square pillars, at Avebury they vary significantly in size, up to 3 metres high, much less weight and are not shaped. Still you can walk amongst them. Like the stone circle I went to outside of Keswick on my last trip a couple seemed to have moved in and were having a séance of some sort. There are lots of mystical stories about stone circles, no doubt beneficial for those more attuned to the earth’s vibrations than I.

The Cotswold villages of Lacock and Castle Coomb have acted in numerous films and TV shows, and were no doubt scenic sites for British travelers before film days. We had a out an hour to amble in each.

Sept 29

It took three trains for me to get to Okehampton on the northern edge of Dartmoor National Park. I changed trains at Bristol and Exeter, both large cities that have many attractions. Oakhampton’s attraction are: it is a small town, on the railway, with a hostel, on the edge of a place that I can go for a walk in the hills.

I arrived a bit after noon. The hostel is almost part of the train station, and they let me check in at that time, something that rarely happens in bigger places. And up I went, on a rough trail, across a trellis bridge over the busy highway, through fields of ferns and sheep, through gates that allow walkers to cross all land in Britain. I did not know how I was going to enter Dartmoor when I headed out, but the land soon opened up. I was on a small road system leading into hills that would do just fine. I wandered a bit on this first day, entered a military reserve and got to the top of one of the smaller hills. I also picked out a possible hill for the next day.

The nearest pub to the station and hostel is about a km downhill into the town proper, which added to my hill walk made for a good walking day. I had one room mate for my two nights here.

Sept 30 Dartmoor

Another fine day found me back up to the military reserve, but now there were red flags flying and an old guy at the gate told me there was shooting in the reserve. After some negotiations he let me head on up a bit west of where he thought the training was going to happen. Not far on I could see about 8 soldiers marching up the road on a neighbouring hill. I was not really sure about this, but on I went.

Coming to a pass the gravel road petered out and so I headed straight up. Soon I was navigating through larger rock outcroppings, and it was a bit steeper. Now this was not steep but I was getting a bit fatigued, I had not stopped for about 2 hours, and so I felt shaky. If I fell the only thing that could happen is hitting a rock badly. “Canadian Mountain Man Killed on Darmoor Fall”. That would be too embarrassing.

The “Dartmoor Tors” are granite outcroppings left behind as the softer rock wore away over the millennia. There are hundreds spread out across the moor, often at the top of the hills. I was wandering around the Tors at the top of my hill, looking for pictures, camera in hand, when I tripped on a rock that jumped out of nowhere. On the way down I spotted soft grass where I threw my camera and found another grassy spot for my body. Still very embarrassing, but at least I kept it out of the news. I have promised myself not to walk around rock fields head in the air. I was now hearing a rat-a-tat-tat, that normally I would attribute to a woodpecker, but as there were no trees and as I wanted to stay out of the news I thought that I would had down on the opposite side of my hill.

Back down I had a nice coffee, a bit of a rest, a walk along a river valley and mysteriously a 7 pound beer and fish and chips. A pub meal and beer have always been more than 12 pounds so far. . This was a great two days for me.

Oct 1

Moving on west I took 3 trains to get to St Ives, in Cornwall. I just wanted a look and I could get there by train. I was hoping I could walk out of town along the cliffs. Not to be. St Ives is a beach town, with hotels, guesthouses and restaurants rimming each of its beaches. Very pretty but the steep cobble streets make for poor walking, and I could not find an easy way out of town. After a beach side fish& chips I was back on 2 more trains to Penzance for two nights.

Oct 2 Penzance

My day in Penzance was marked by a bit of change in the weather. It was not raining when I left for my walk, but I was prepared. I walked back down through town past the rail station and onto the seaside walkway that leads to Saint Michaels Mount. This is an island castle in the Penzance Bay. Given the grey day it was not very scenic but it was mostly about the walk for me. I shared the walk with bikers runners dog walkers and even one or two optimistic fishermen. It was about a 2 hour walk. At low tide there is a causeway that can be used. I arrived about 2 ½ hours before high tide and there was no sign of the causeway. Boats cross over, but I didn’t plan on spending 36 pounds to visit the castle so I hopped a bus back to Penzance where I walked for a few more hours. I also had coffee at an old historic sea water pool that has been upgraded recently.

I have headed as far west as I am going, I have averaged about 14,000 steps a day so far, hopefully I will continue to find good walking.

I will try to send this off now. ..