This is being written mostly on my laptop at home in Calgary. It is a bit more wordy than my other posts from this trip, in reaction to the struggle of writing on a 15 year old tablet that I used for the other posts. It is just not fun, I’m sure it showed.
Oct 20-26 London
Arriving
The train from Stratford-upon-Avon to London’s Marylebon station was direct with only a few stops. I had a good seat with a table, the advantage of getting on early; each station added more passerngers. Marylebon Is one of the smaller London train stations, but the architecture still places it’s existence in the 100 year plus category. As usual I had some time to kill before my guesthouse check in time.
When I left Marlebon it was raining which confuses my sense of direction, so I flailed a bit getting to the Wallace Gallery; chosen because it is walkable from the station and free. I am sure the rain contributed to the number of visitors on this day. As I was struggling to stuff my bag into a slightly too small locker and figure out how to set a combination a young, possibly 10 year old, boy left his friends and patiently helped me. I love these little interactions that have kept my faith in people, often young, everywhere I go.
I was most attracted to the 18th century Dutch and Flemish but the collection is broader than that and is very extensive. I am always amazed when I stumble into yet another gallery that I have not known about to find it filled with incredible art from centuries ago. There is, seemingly, a long list of people who had the inclination and resources to gather these collections, usually in the 100s of pieces. I guess that is still going on today. A double good experience killing a few hours on a rainy day.
To cap it off I happened into an Asian food chain, Wagamama, and had a great curry. I was able to find another Wagayama some days later and had a pork belly ramen, equally as enjoyable.
Lotus Guesthouse
I was unaware that my London guesthouse (two days to start, six to end the trip) was attached to the Jamyang Buddhist Centre, which is an active temple with monks in residence and aspirants who come to learn Buddhist ways and attend prayer sessions in a variety of prayer areas.
A few Buddhist images as I approached and keyed in my entry code was my first clue, the next was my room. Tiny, space for only a few things, a single bed, a picture of the Dalai Lama on a book shelf and white brick tiled walls and ceilings. It was a place for meditation. Over my time here I came to really enjoy it as a place to return to from my day out and about in London. I read a lot, wrote a little, drank a little red wine (not encouraged here) and planned my next day. These are my monk things. The bed was great as was the shared bathroom and shower, and I frequently used the kettle and fridge in the hall. My cell mates, who I rarely saw, were all women I think. The security here was very high. I attended one prayer session, but I don’t think any of the others were guests. They all seemed to be regulars. I had two underground stations about 10 minutes away, but I did walk in or out of London’s centre a number of times. Most would probably not do that as it took an hour or more to walk.
The British Museum
My six day London itinerary was pretty loose, but one thing I have almost always done while here is to spend some time in The British Museum. It is the fourth most visited museum in the world and was my first significant museum, 61 years ago. On that visit, I was in the first few days of what was an open-ended world walkabout. I was interested in everything and my visit to the museum would help me figure out where my walkabout might go. After having been up and down all the corridors and into so many rooms stuffed with antiquities gathered, often nefariously, from every corner of the world, I staggered out at closing time completely exhausted. I’m sure I learned a lot, but I think the most important thing I learned that day was to have a specific plan when doing big museums. In my wanderings I have visited the three more visited museums (The Louvre, The Chinese National Museum and the Vatican) and others that I would put in the same category, but The British has remained my favorite.
On this visit I decided to just walk the halls for a while, not stopping to study many things, with no particular area of concentration. I did slow down a bit in the Prehistoric Europe area because of my visit to Stonehenge and Amesbury, and I always stop and have a look at the Lewis Chessmen and the Hutton Soo Helmet. My walking cadence stuttered a bit as I passed in front of the French Impressionists, still my preferred painting genre. I spent three hours, which I think is a good limit for me and it was relaxing because I didn’t have a specific topic to study. A part of my enjoyment came from sharing my experience with 100s of kids, mostly in school groups in their school outfits being shepherded about by teachers or parents. They were having no end of fun, even though they obviously had study assignments which they were usually doing in groups. How fortunate to have a resource like this.
The Natural History Museum
I came up out of the underground into sun backlighting a 15 m high dinosaur standing among semi tropical plants. Rising behind and above the towering 150 yr old Natural History Museum shone golden in the morning sunlight. The picture stopped me in my tracks. There are countless 150 yr old stone large buildings in London. You must go to see this one. It has been termed a cathedral to nature, and my ability to describe it obviates any attempt to do so. It was built to house the natural history items of the British Museum 150 yrs ago and spun off at that time as its own museum. The main entry area, rising about 4 floors to an open vaulted highlight with balconies, a flying buttress arch and wide sweeping staircases attracts people to just walk or sit as in an amphitheater. 100s were doing so the whole time I was there. Birds, animals, plants are carved everywhere into the columns, balustrades and walls. Anywhere you stand if you look closely a 150 year old gargoyle will be staring back at you. Everything appears to be beige sandstone. It is actually brick covered in terracotta. Terracotta was chosen to better resist the horrendous coal dust that choked everything in London at the time. It also meant that more nature caricatures could be made much more quickly. It worked very well, it looks like well-preserved carved stone to me.
Here again you can only absorb so much. In my three hours I spent time with whales, with coral, with birds and at a showing of this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year. In a large room, illustrating size differences, a Blue Whale, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, African and Asian elephants, hippos, and various porpoises among other large animals were suspended from the ceiling so you could walk around underneath them or look at them from all sides on the two levels of balconies that carried other sea life. The bird area probably had much less than 1% of the museum’s collection on display. This might be said of all the areas, but I will share a story on the bird side of things in a bit. Notable for me was a good look at the Dodo bird and a pair of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers, both very extinct. I also took a picture of a 2-D tree about 1.5 m square that had many 100s of hummingbirds in all activities filling every sq cm.
The Wildlife Photographer of 2025 competition just finished. The competition is on the web – check it out. The event I went to displayed the top 100 and the winners of about 5 categories of the 60,000 submissions. I spent a lot of time here.
Like the British Museum there were tons of kids here. I was reminded of the things that attract most excitement at those ages. There were crowds of kids at things gross or scary such as a tangle of snakes or a truly aggressive shark’s gaping mouth.
My bird / Natural History story comes from a book called The Feather Thief. An American student at Oxford was a world class fishing fly-tier. The elite fly-tiers will use bits of feathers from exotic birds to tie the ultimate fly. It is illegal to trade in these kinds of feathers, and so these elite fly-tiers cannot tie the iconic flies of history or create new masterpieces. In the book our protagonist found his way into the ornithology section of the Natural History Museum, which due to the millions of carcasses of 95% of the world’s bird species has been spun off to a separate museum in Tring, UK. At the time of the book’s publication the feathers of just one bird carcass of a bird-of-paradise could be sold (illegally) for about $2,500. The museum had 100s of carcasses of that bird, and similar numbers of the 100s of other exotic bird species of interest to the fly tying world. Yes he did break in and get away with 100s of carcasses. He used a few feathers himself to tie some very special flies but did get caught when he yielded to temptation and began selling them. These museums have a lot of stuff.
Tate Modern
The final museum that I visited, out of the close to 200 in London, was Tate Modern. It is in a spectacular modern building on the south bank of the Thames, close to the Globe Theatre that I passed without checking to see if my bike, stolen there 11 years ago, had returned. My attraction to modern art is like my attraction to early European Art – about 10%. That is I am attracted to about 10% of what I see. But in these great museums the skills on display are exceptional, and my level of attraction increases. I am mostly attracted by the imagination and ingenuity of the multimedia type pieces, which at the Tate can be very large. But mostly here I turned out to be attracted to the juxtaposition of the visitors with the art and with the building elements itself. At least that is what my photos indicate.
Matilda
My intention had been to go to one play while in London. I would rather have gone to a play at Stratford, but that did not work out. On the day I visited the British Museum I walked into the West End Theatre District. Without having planned to do so this was the area I ended up returning to more than any other of the central London districts. On this day I was looking for a ticket office. There are a number of kiosks, mostly around Leister Square, selling tickets. I just asked “Do you have any tickets for tomorrow afternoon?” The vendor showed me a list, only a few out of the dozens of shows on. I picked Matilda, in part because I had already walked by the Cambridge Theatre a number of times. I paid 50 pounds, that with commission and I do not know what else turned out to be a bit over $100 Cdn on my visa.
The next day, after my Natural History visit, I made my way to the theatre and stood outside in line for about 10 minutes with mostly mothers and kids. My ticket took me on stairs round and round up to the uppermost balcony, so dark that I actually had to just stop. An old man probably not too many decades younger offered to help me up the very steep steps to the very last row. It is an exaggeration to say that I watched things looking between my legs, but that is what it felt like. There were no empty seats that I noticed. I do not know what you have to pay for a better seat at night or on the weekend, but my seat was fine and I enjoyed the afternoon a lot. During the play I did worry a bit about how I was going to get down again, it felt like I should rappel down, but I made it without plunging over the balcony edge.
I had no idea what the play was about when I chose it, other than that it was a musical. Gradually the story began to emerge, as the set evolved and the actors, mostly kids, flew on and off the stage. I understood very little, and nothing the kids said. It was loud enough but with the music, the speed of speech and things happening, the constant verbal support from the audience the sound hitting my old brain was as if coming out of a mixmaster. I just enjoyed the production, the action and the howling reaction to everything by the hundreds of kids in the audience. Gradually I recognized the play. Matilda, about 9 years old, has at best neglectful parents, attends school where she has a wonderful teacher, Miss Honey, but the Principle makes life for the teachers and kids a nightmare. Finally after 2 1/2 hours the Principle runs off into oblivion, the parents are taken away by authorities and Matilda gets to live with Miss Honey happily ever after.
The play, by Roald Dahl, has been running for 14 years and apparently there are 4 sets of child actors at any given time. My appreciation was enhanced by finally recognizing the story from a Netflix version I had seen not too long ago. Great afternoon. It is not hard to see why theatre is a large part of the tourist attraction but also life for Londoners, who I think were in the majority on this day.
Winchester
Winchester is a bit more than an hour SW of London’s Waterloo Station, the closest train station to my guesthouse. I went to see the Cathedral, visit the town and possibly a friend’s brother, which didn’t work out. I used my Britrail Pass to get there. The cathedral was booked by the University of Winchester for graduation, so I didn’t get inside but I had a good look at the outside. I talked with some of those waiting outside for their turn, which made up for not getting inside. As I didn’t pay to access the cathedral I walked up the hill to visit Winchester Castle and have a look at King Arthur’s round table. Some people question Arthur’s existence, but here is his round table; what more do you need. For further support there is a great statue of Arthur near the end of their High Street, at one time the longest high street in England. You can research the use of the term high street if you like, but in Winchester it is in part a nice market street where I bought a slightly warmer hat for the crisp autumn days.
The Parks
The parks running through London are like pearls on a string. I learned 11 years ago on bike that you can link Hyde, Green and St James Parks together, and with only a little street walking add Regent’s Park. Ok maybe the last is best done on bike. On my last Saturday I set out from my little Kennington guesthouse early and walked past Waterloo Station, deviated to Westminster Bridge, past Big Ben, found my way to St James Park and Buckingham Palace, into Green Park and then finally to Hyde Park. Once in Hyde Park I had to scuttle off to find a WC which I found in a Hard Rock Café, where I had a lovely inexpensive late breakfast.
Now very much more relaxed I ambled around Hyde Park for quite a while. It was a sunny 12C day and the parks were being enjoyed by many. I did a little photography trying to catch a little of the ambiance that these parks add to my appreciation of London. The water birds on The Serpentine drew my attention. The Mute Swans, the Moorhens and Coots, the gulls, all floated over to see if I would violate the request to not feed the birds. The Cormorants and one Grey Heron ignored me on their perches. The most attractive to me were a pair of Great Crested Grebes busy searching the foliage on the edge of a small island. I had only one distant picture from Australia, so this was a good addition to my birds, I guess my only new or improved bird photo of this trip. Not that I came prepared to really find new birds.
With all the people out, finding a free Santander bike was a bit of a challenge. I finally snagged one from the same rack at the North end of the park that I usually used when I stayed close by 11 years ago. There are now a number of other suppliers of town bikes, mostly electric. They all seem to run off cell phone apps. I used my visa card and for one 30 minute ride I paid about 1.5 pounds. For less than 4 pounds for a day I could have as many 30 minute sessions as I wanted. I only needed one. I wanted to ride back down through my parks and drop the bike off near the Waterloo Bridge. In part I just wanted to enjoy the bike ride and in part I didn’t have the time or energy to walk back. Some of the paths through the parks are pedestrian only, but there are plenty for bikes. There is some navigation as you cross the intersections between parks and there was a little road riding to get to the Thames, but it wasn’t long before I was used to the bike and the way things move here. I wish I had more time to do more bike riding in London, but I am going home tomorrow.
Walking London
Not much to add here. I love it. It is very easy as long as you always look both ways. Many others are walking, there is always a place to stop for coffee, a beer, a meal, some window shopping. I go into a lot of bookstores, and sometime search out one using google. I didn’t find any good used bookstores this time, I think because I didn’t try enough. I went in to a Brompton store to look at their new 20” version. If you are a bike nerd you know what a Brompton is. You see more Bromptons here than anywhere else. Big men (others too), riding along the streets on tiny wheel bikes or pushing a neatly folding bike along underground corridors. I want a Brompton, but need one like a hole in the head. It is the ultimate commuter accessory. My watch app told me that my daily walking steps on this trip was over 13,000, but that in London it was closer to 20,000.
Summary
So that’s it for this trip. It was great. I had questions about the kind of travel I can and might do and some of those things were answered. The trains were great, but if I wanted to walk in the country more or do some special photography, I think I would rent a car or even more preferably a travel van. The hostel system is still great, but possibly because it was low season. If you like pubs, bookstores and rolling country there is no better place to travel. I took a lot of pictures, but I am not enthused about them yet. Perhaps when I get around to working on them they will sparkle a bit more.
‘til next time..
Ken
kenmyhre 