“This channel is not available. Please select another channel”

Phew, so to continue — the most likeley and safe food choices turn out to be both odd and unsettling. I had a BLT one day — a safe and likely bet — and it turned out to be untoasted bread, butter, no mayo, almost no lettuce and it was limp, and great hot greasy slabs of ham. May have mentioned this, but it will probably haunt my memory and dog me in my dreams. David had curry one night that was almost all right except that all the ingredients were very finely chopped.

We eventually found our way back to Grassington (from Burnsall) via the field route to the west of the town. Dinner was at the Grassington House Hotel — very nice pub with a good fire and the dining room turned out to be 18th century, with lovely original woodwork and a very good menu. The food was better than at the Foresters’ — note to self, skate wings aren’t worth the trouble and would be a bony mess if they weren’t from a creature with only cartilage in its skeleton!

The peoplewatching was good there — a large drunk party of people thrown together on a tour of some kind were behaving badly in a quiet sort of way.

The next day being my birthday and also a bit cold and cloudy, we went up to Carlisle on one of our extra rail days and got a few gifts and generally mooched around. When we arrived in Skipton we missed the train by one minute, so we walked around the towpath and a local park. On our return, we missed the Pride of the Dales bus by, wait for it, one minute. So we took a cab – frightening and hair-raising thought it was, we survived.

We had a little down time at the B&B and had dinner at Bubbles. At last! a really fine dinner in the Dales! It turned out to be a lovely little place with a women’s loo that featured cows and pigs on the tile surround of the wee washbasin — I think a companion to this journal may have to be “Loos Wot I Have Peed In,” since they all featured ingenious ways to fit a bathroom in where none had been before. We made a note of the wine — Kaya Chenin Blanc from South Africa.

Our last night in the B&B was spent doing the usual things, also there was a fire in the upstairs lounge for the second night in a row. It was pleasant… and warm! The heat for the house was via radiators and our room never seemed to be the right temp — either too chilly or too warm.

The next day, we heard the dreaded bell for the last time and bid our farewell to Bridge End Farm — we decided it was charming for 2 nights, but no more. Next time needs to be in a town with rail and walking AND a decentish hotel. After a few errands buying a few things such as a compulsory chocolate cowflop for Steve, we arrived at the train station and waved goodbye to Robin and his grubby little car. Our train ride back to London via Leeds was uneventful and smooth — made every connection without having to wait for more than a few minutes. The hotel was modern but had no pool! I was sure it had one! But at least it was air conditioned, because London was still a bit too warm, especially indoors or in the Tube. We had a late lunch and stayed in, feasting on snacks I brought back from the neighborhood Safeway! The St Katherines Dock area is very gentrified but in a nice, well-thought out way, and I explored and took some good pictures. It might be possible to rent a flat there — I know there were a lot of condos, at least.

The 26th, the next day, was our last full day in the city. We went to the British Museum. It was a journey like all London journeys, with loud rushing Tube trains and the smell of diesel, hot track and rubber, with the voices of unseen hundreds echoing in the maze of subeterranean tunnels that is the Underground.

It’s strange seeing objects in cases at the British Museum, because many of them have appeared in books or on TV, so there’s this weird “Hey, I know you,” familiarity when seeing the Bull-Headed Lyre or the Rosetta Stone.

We had an overpriced and merely okay lunch at the museum restaurant, in the new Millennium Court. Strangely, our first bad meal in a museum was in the fanciest and most impressively designed one — it was a Japanese bento box and some of it was very good, and some of it was blah, especially the miso soup.

After some down time and leftover cider at the hotel, we renewed our assault on British transport and took the Tube to Piccadilly for the Reduced Shakespeare Company‘s show “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).” This was at the Criterion, a very interesting old theater that I think was mentioned in one of Ngaio Marsh‘s books.

The show was extremely funny but apparently I laughed too loudly and too well for the couple on David’s left… the the lady next to me left at the interval, hmmmm…. However, she may have been offended by their satire — nothing shocking, but there was a lot of it.

(Turbulence over Prince Edward Island)

In keeping with hoary tradition, David and I fought our way through the crush at the intervals and I managed to score 2 bottles of “K” cider, but all David came up with was a packet of Jelly Babies that tasted nasty. So we drank the cider quickly and asked each other “would you like a Jelly Baby” in Doctor Who voices and went back for the second act in good order.

Thus Endeth The Journal

Afterwords: April 26th 2005

Good GOD. Essentially, the travel journal is done, but there was so much detail that didn’t make it in. Like the sound of the birds in York early in the morning. Or the smell of freshly trodden grass in a horse pasture (and other smells as well). Or the sound of a train coming into an isolated station and the feeling of anticipation that you’re about to be off on another mini-adventure, which is so much less stressful than going to the airport, but not quite as exciting as boarding a plane. To this day, we’re still drinking English beer and cracking little quips we picked up on the journey. Some musical acquaintances of ours, Synergy Brass Quintet, will be performing in England in late August of 2006, and I mentioned it to David as a good time for a return trip. Only tonight, David had a can of Bodington’s Pub Ale I found at Dominicks, and he manfully ripped open the can to investigate the widget that adds the draught-style fizz. And then I had a mug of some extra-sharp ginger beer and he tasted it and said “MMMMmmm! Good! But not as good as Fentiman’s.”

Only tonight. It’s funny how quickly we forget the little indignities of travel (grumble-grumble “dinner bell” grumble) and harken back only to the odd little details and the delightful discoveries.

I was so relieved – gobsmackingly happy, in fact – that David enjoyed the trip, because if he had hated every moment of it and complained constantly, it would be (to my mind) a tragedy. Our complaining was only in the affectionate manner of a kvetch, anyway. Most of the time we were completely charmed.

The Sad Aftermath

I’ve gone on at great length elsewhere about coming back and finding out just how far gone Stuey was after his emergency surgery. Poor kitty. The end of the trip was colored by that experience and the sad desperation of our first week back; by the next Friday, he was gone, taken away in a brightly colored towel, and I felt so guilty for gadding off for so long on a trip. But it wouldn’t have been discovered for a much longer time if we hadn’t gone on the trip… and I probably wouldn’t have noticed anything unusual until he either collapsed with a broken leg, or had his next scheduled vet visit.

So. Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing that they found it and tried to catch it. But still, poor kitty. I did the best I could.

So Much For That. What About The Pictures?

Funny you should ask. The bulk of them are still on David’s UK gallery, but the best of our all-too-short walking days are now in their own gallery on my site, and I have a new blog-widget which makes it much, much easier to pull them in here now.

Enjoy.

And that’s just a walk between Stowe and Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, and between Kettlewell and Grassington in Yorkshire. There was so much more, but it was walking the fields and byways and fells and dales that I loved best.

I can’t wait to go back.

September 25th, Grassington.
“…That day was a Saturday, which wasn’t the best day to arrive, since all the local buses that serve walkers only run on the weekends, and we didn’t walk on Saturday or Sunday; we explored Grassington (up a steep hill from the B and B) and got some lunch at the Dales Kitchen, then returned for some relax time. As David wasn’t feeling great, I went out later to the “supermarket,” which we would call a small neighborhood convenience market, and foraged for some stuff for sandwiches and stay-in comfort food.

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On the Train to Skipton, September 20th

Also, the car was absolutely grotty inside and almost too full of junk in the back for our suitcases to fit. And — it smelled pretty rank and I had a moment of unquiet dread as to the state of our room in the B&B.



However, when we arrived we found a comfortable room upstairs with blackened oak beams, just off a comfortably shabby (ETA: There’s that phrase again) shared sitting room. Horse brasses were much in evidence, especially in the kitchen, along with toasting forks around the huge stone fireplace. The house was built around 1650 and was set in extensive but rather overgrown gardens along the River Wharfe.
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On to Scotland: 15SEP-19SEP
The next day, we had a long, boring travel day. It was either 6 hours on a train and getting in really late in the day, far from a rental car location, or 5 hours waiting around for a flight to Glasgow, picking up a car, and driving no more than an hour to our first night’s B&B near Loch Lomond.

In retrospect, we should have spent more time around York and fewer hours at Leeds/Bradford (LBA) airport (we went earlier in the day in the hopes of getting an earlier flight, but no such beast). We arrived at Glasgow (GLA) after a short flight and our car adventure, also known as “David’s Mirror Image Drive on the Left Nightmare” began. In short, it was nerve wracking at first, but we only had an hour to drive to the Old Toll House B&B in Tarbet, and it was fairly simple highway driving. Gorgeous along Loch Lomond, and we had a very cheerful welcome from Jim at the Toll House.
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On the Train from Carlisle, Northumbria, September 20th
Once again, not enough time there to do more than a quick look round, but its a pretty city and our hotel was a Best Western affiliate, the Cumbria Park. Very comfortable old antique four-poster in the honeymoon suite — disturbingly, all the framed art in the HONEYMOON SUITE was of newborn babies or young children! Eeeeyaaagh.

However, it had a full sized tub/shower and room to swing a very small and cooperative cat in the bathroom… and also the biggest one on the trip thus far (the Tower Thistle bathroom remains to be seen). We had a very good dinner “in” (in the dining room), a full-bore garden-decor room with plenty more antiques and lots of “prettiest pub” awards over the bar. Our morning the next day started with yet another great English breakfast, but no beans, please, we’re American (YAGEBBNBOWA), and then back to the Victorian station at Carlisle for the run (a “Great Railway Journeys of the World” type of route) into Skipton for Grassington.
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York was 2 nights in a very comfortable and nicely decorated, but very small (VCANDBVS) room at the Water’s Edge. Julie turned out to be a very pretty brown-eyed blond who offered to do our laundry for L5 a bag. Well, we didn’t stuff the bags as full as we should have and apparently British washers and dryers are very small. So that was L20 for the lot — but they were all folded.

The B&B was on a river walk and next to the St. Mary’s Abbey/Museum Park and so we thought it would be lovely and quiet. Wrong. Party boats. 70’s and 80’s music and a DJ blaring, and a disco ball, and they went back and forth about 6 times the first night.

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On the York Train, Sept 13th, 2003

We’ll arrive into York at the Water’s Edge – looking forward to that one – and tonight we meet up with David’s AIM buddy Martin for dinner. And we’ve GOT to do laundry! I mean it!!

Afterwords: February 18th, 2004

There was so much more – a lot of that day was just sensory overload for both of us, but especially for me. I got most of our visit to Boarstall down on paper, but completely missed mentioning having a nice bevvy and lunch at The Head of the River pub, which was just a few blocks from the hotel. We arrived in the late morning and were just thinking about what to do next, when we decided to call Rob. He had a few hours to spare and graciously came and fetched us and took us out to see the house (Oxford traffic is no picnic, either).

I didn’t take any photos inside (come on, it was their home, although I think David did take a picture of the door guarding the “most secure internet server in the world,” as it’s not only an I-series, but the building it’s in withstood an assault by cannon. Rob uses the computer to run his personal website for Boarstall in addition to his business endeavours.

So there we were wandering around north Oxford. Soon we were wandering along St. Giles, familiar to me from books like “Gaudy Night, by Dorothy L. Sayers”>Gaudy Night” and “The Moving Toyshop, by Edmund Crispin”>The Moving Toyshop.” And of course, we peeked in to the Eagle and Child pub, Tolkien’s and C.S. Lewis’ hangout.

After browsing amongst gateways and a small amount of trappessing (the gardens of one small, newer college were open to view, so we wandered in) and some browsing at Blackwells bookstore (where Professor Fen used to hang out) and wandering around…

…behind Christ Church and near the Radcliffe Camera, we found a pub for dinner. It was an older place tucked back off the High Street – pleasant, full of locals (professional town types, students, but no bailiffs as far as I could tell).

We people watched as a group of formally dressed people in dinner jackets and designer gowns moved up the street, probably on their way to a concert. After a while we went back to our little room and endured the typical “oof! sorry” pre-departure Packing Dance in a Small Room.

The next morning, as described, we found ourselves heading away from Oxford by train, but we actually spent about 45 minutes or more mooching around waiting for the train, eating, drinking lattes, and so on. Very important touristic activities.

I was starting to keep an eye out for ‘interesting’ train stations – I admit it, I think I was becoming a train snob, and I liked my stations cute and charming. Oxford station is not cute and charming, but it does the job… and they had chicken tikka sandwiches at the to-go stand. Sweet! We were set.

I noticed something – there’s often no convenient way to get from one side of the tracks to the other without climbing stairs and descending stairs, with all your luggage, and quite often there’s no elevator. We helped older people with their bags at a couple of places. And now and then, there’s a really nice and convenient ramp or elevator that makes you think “well, not all modern stations are crap.”

Anyway we arrived in York, settled in, and very soon I could see that David was really falling in love with Britain. That’s okay, I’m not jealous.

We did meet up with Martin, who turned up wearing this…

…amazingly cool rune aloha shirt. And then off we went to Betty’s for dinner – it’s all described in the next entry.

We had to drag the rolly-pollies to the bus stop, and very soon the bus dropped us off in the square at Stow-on-the-Wold, and then we were welcomed at the Unicorn Hotel. It was authentically creaky, and appeared to have been built in Tudor times (or soon after) — typical honey-colored stone with irregular little hallways and ancient beams. Our room was very comfortable. We wandered around down a short country track and watched horses and dogs, then had a really good dinner in the Unicorn restaurant. We got all sorted for our stay in Oxford at the TIC, then bought a walking guide and went to bed.

It’s a food and walking adventure — yesterday’s walk in the light rain showed that we’re capable of finding our way using maps, waymarks, and a developing eye for spotting the way well trodden across otherwise featureless meadows.

Afterwords: February 13, 2004

Looking back, we really should have rented a car and stayed in the Cotswolds for at least a week, but we were just barely venturing out into Britain, and I didn’t want to put that on David’s shoulders so early in the trip. So we’re already thinking about a return trip, and I’ve found at least one self-guided walking tour to check for price and availability. Heh.

When we decided to walk from Stow to Bourton, we weren’t carrying an official Landrangers map, we just had a little walking map booklet. So we weren’t encouraged to wander off the route and follow a different footpath coming out somewhere else along our way. However, for our first outing, it was probably best that we not wander, since as it was we took a wrong turning somewhere just beyond Lower Slaughter and had to muddle our way into Bourton.

Here’s the little map we followed. Looks simple enough:

Yes, it was raining that day.

Following the directions, we followed the track past Quarwood Cottage to a gate leading to a field, failing to note the direction the footpath arrow was pointing. So we walked straight into the field, and the path disappeared, and left us with nothing much to look at except a field that dropped vaguely away on the front and left to a treeline. We kept walking toward the trees, because we knew from the directions that eventually we’d be walking downhill alongside water.

When we decided to walk from Stow to Bourton, we weren’t carrying an official Landrangers map, we just had a little walking map booklet. So we weren’t encouraged to wander off the route and follow a different footpath coming out somewhere else along our way. However, for our first outing, it was probably best that we not wander, since as it was we took a wrong turning somewhere just beyond Lower Slaughter and had to muddle our way into Bourton.

We were entranced by the distant prospect of a village on the hill opposite…

… but eventually came back to our senses and started looking along the fenceline as we came up to it for the tell-tale gate and arrow symbol. Sure enough, we had moved too far to the right, and had to backtrack uphill a little. Only then did we realize that the trail symbol with the arrow actually meant something, as in “continue in the direction I’m pointing, you simps.” Back at the first gate, I thought it just meant “go through this gate.”

Okay, so we figure that out and soon came to rely on the arrow’s direction. We walked on downhill through some woodlands and across a road or two, always staying on the footpath and avoiding private property.

We noticed a number of horses in the fields, and then came past a very large, new barn that was in use – someone inside was driving a practice coach and four horses.

That was distracting enough (it’s a very large facility, and through the open doors we could see the horses being driven around inside) but then we realized we had a field to cross with some horses in it.

But at least the trail was easy to spot! There it goes diagonally toward the gate in the corner, passing close by the horses.

David wanted to go around.

I did not. I wanted to see the horses.

“My little pony! Can I keep ‘im?”

“No.”

After My Little Pony’s mom came up and inquired as to my intentions, we moved carefully along so as not to spook them or the other horses in the meadow and carried on toward the mill mentioned in the trail directions. (She was very nice about it, she just walked up and loomed over me, so I backed off).

At one point, we had a nice chat with a young woman who was cleaning out a drain in her driveway, in the company of her friendly Labrador retriever. We passed the time of day, and she warned us that they’d moved the trail slightly about 50 yards farther on, in order to keep walkers from messing up a neighbor lady’s front walkway. We took the hint and followed the detour signs — it was silly, it just took us off the lane, into a field where we couldn’t be seen as easily from the lady’s house, and then back onto the lane after passing her house. We then realized that the trail had indeed been moved in order to avoid messing up her view with a pack of chattering, untidy walkers and their horrible beards and backpacks. Harrrumph.

After this point, it became a question of counting fields and spotting the next gate. We entered one field that had recently held a lot of cows and thought ourselves lucky that we had missed them, as we hopped and skipped over and around the cow pats. Then in the next field, we found the cows. And the entire herd was massed around the exit gate. Delicious! What to do? But fortunately, the farmer was just coming into the field with a few bales of hay in the front scoop of his loader, and he waved to us in a friendly manner and drove up to the far end of the field with the hay, with the herd of cows obediently (and rather impatiently) following along beyond. Nice man! We waved back enthusiastically and hopped and skipped along to the next lane.

It became quite a mental game – “was that 3 fields, or 4? Did that last one count?” because we weren’t sure about the scale of the map, and thought we might have taken a wrong turn and missed the village of Lower Slaughter. But occasionally we’d stop to take pictures, because after all we were on vacation and although we were currently in the middle of some farmer’s field in Britain, eventually we’d find our way.

Finally, at last, we found the elusive cricket ground mentioned in the directions, and spotted the church spire and found ourselves in Lower Slaughter. There was indeed a mill there, too, with the normal offerings of post cards and ice cream.

Time for lunch, but what to do? Pub? No restaurant in sight, but what about that rather posh hotel?

We ended up at the Washbourne Court hotel for lunch, and they were quite willing to talk walkers’ money so long as we took off our boots.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other patrons there with their boots off, so we settled into comfortable chairs and splurged on a pretty expensive lunch for what it was – high-end ham sandwiches, if I recall- but the setting was very nice. The flowers in their gardens and their window boxes were still so pretty, and it’s right on the river (Eye, I think, not the Windrush) which was little more than a tiny canal. It was lovely and we could have stayed longer, but we had to get a move on. If you’d like to stay there, they thoughtfully provide directions for where to land your helicopter.

After a quick look at the church of St Mary’s, which had a lych gate,

we blundered on as described, following the path along the watercourse and encountering a smartly-dressed couple walking their beagle. They were older, but they were exquisitely neat, and looked as if they could have stepped from the pages of Country Life. I’d never seen such beautiful outdoor attire (and shoes!) so perfect for walking a beagle in the English countryside. We were too shy to ask for their permission to photograph them.

About then was when we went wrong on the route – we went along the path they’d just come from when we should have continued a little farther before turning, but we ended up in Bourton just the same. We shopped for a bit at an outdoor store (that happened to be outdoors at the time), wandered farther along the footpath that follows the Windrush, and then stopped at a pub with a nice garden for a bite and a bevvy:

It was a great day, so “well done, us.”

September 10th, 2003

Today we head out from London and got the Cotswolds for 2 days, then Oxford for a day, then York. Yesterday was spent mostly lazing around (tourism is hard work) and then we sat at the British Tourist Authority and then the Scottish Tourist Board to make B&B/hotel reservations. I hadn’t been able to settle on anything from home, and then I usually couldn’t make reservations via the Web, but we’re sorted now, I hope. David is worried that the hotels/B&Bs won’t be any good — that is, worse than this one, which isn’t that great but is at least convenient.

We have a train and then a bus to catch to Stow-on-the-Wold — we picked that place solely because there was an available room. Nothing like advance planning… nothing at all.

Also yesterday, we wandered around

Trafalgar, toured the Cabinet War Rooms, and dropped in on the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Once again we found an easy and surprisingly good place for lunch — the cafe at the War Rooms was about 2/3 along the route of the tour. We wandered the neighborhood and found a beautiful church with Evening Prayer just ending, lots more restaurants, almost witnessed an accident, and had a good meal at a Spanish/Italian place called “Brazas.” Almost went to “The Swan” but it was too smoky, though it had a pretty posh clientele.

All in all, London has been good to us. Now let’s see what the rest of the country can do.

Afterwords: February 7th, 2004

The weather cooperated with us as we wandered around being tourists. We covered a lot of ground that day.

As a travel agent, I was amazed and astounded that the business of making a hotel or bed-and-breakfast reservation still came down to going in person to a travel office and sitting down at someone’s desk while they made phone calls. I realize that B&B bookings have to be person-to-person for the kind of place we were looking for, but still it made me feel a slight nostalgia for the old way of doing things… or was it nausea? Anyway, it was an interesting process and it took a fair amount of time to get things sorted. Both agents that helped us were very nice – it appeared that they both worked for the same travel company that contracted for the British and Scottish tourist boards.

Strangely, they were located in different offices, so once we were done with getting things figured out for the Cotswolds, off we went to the Scottish office, just down the street (and not far from Trafalgar, so we did sort of proceed in a logical fashion toward actual tourist activities).

At least at the Scottish office, they had free bottled water. Made me think of a “Monarch of the Glen” episode, but it was not the Glenbogle brand.

As it was an unseasonably, and downright unEnglish hot day, we walked out with several bottles. What’s the hey. We were glad we had them later.

We wandered around toward Trafalgar and window-shopped (neither of us are big shoppers). At one point, it looked like there was about to be some sort of news story happening – there were a lot of official cars and police escorts drawn up outside one of the ministry buildings near Trafalgar, but I have no idea what it was all about. We watched to see if anything interesting would happen or to see if perhaps the PM would be visible, but saw no one we recognized.

We spent a good hour just taking photographs in Trafalgar, but decided against hitting the National Portrait Gallery and the inside of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and decided to wander along the Mall in the general direction of nothing in particular, looking at the various buildings and relaxing.

After wandering around the gardens in Green Park (which were well watered and spectactular) we headed for the Cabinet War Rooms tour – an EXCELLENT and interesting choice for something to do (and also cool in the summer and dry in the winter).

There was some sort of altercation at the front door between some people whose tourist vouchers stated that admission to the tour was included, but the tour people were saying the offer had been rescinded, and they went on wrangling about the price for quite a while. Their American accents sounded harsh and brassy to us (after only a couple of days in London, too!) as we quietly paid the admission.

By about now in the trip, we had both started using little phrases we picked up in passing or heard on the morning chat show in the hotel breakfast room. I’ve always had a fund of little Britishisms, but it was funny hearing David start to use them, and we’re still doing it. Just today, after getting out and skiiing in a nearby forest preserve, we made it back to the car in one piece and David said “well done, us!” He became a big fan of the Tube, and still misses it. 😉

Anyway, the tour we had just signed up for is a self-guided walk-through of the Cabinet War Rooms used by Churchill during the Second World War. It’s very evocative of the time of the London Blitz, and they’ve done an incredible job making it seem like everyone concerned has popped out for the day. They use sound effects to make it seem like someone is just around the corner, whistling and striding down the hall with that particular ringing step familiar from the soundscapes of countless British war films. About half way along we were flagging, and found they had an area for sitting around listening to sound clips from the era in these lovely leather armchairs. And in the same area was the cafe. We figured as a captive audience it would turn out to be our first disappointing and overpriced meal in Britain, but not so.

Lunch at the Switch Room cafe was not only excellent for a little canteen-style place with pre-prepared sandwiches, they had Fentiman’s ginger beer. We had first encounted Fentiman’s at the Tower of London cafe and loved it, so we were perfectly happy. Canteen sandwiches in Britain often turned out to be tandoori chicken and had nice crisp peppery watercress on them instead of limp lettuce. We soon learned to recognize a couple of brands and rely on getting at least a decent sandwich when we were on the move.

“Oooh!” I’d say. “Tandoori chicken, my favorite.” I’d never seen curry used as a sandwich filling, but I must say it’s delicious.

And we’re not the only fans of Fentiman’s, apparently, although I won’t go so far as to bid on some online. We’re really hoping to find a US source in our area, but our local Binny’s doesn’t carry it. Yet. These guys do, and we’re headed out West in the Spring. Hmm.

I was surprised to find that there is no national museum in Britain dedicated to Winston Churchill. There was a section of the tour devoted to Churchill’s life after being voted out of office, and it moved me very much. However, it appears that they will open some sort of small museum there in 2005, to be called “The Churchill Museum.” And they’re looking for funds. Must mention this to the hubby.

After that, we moseyed along toward Buckingham Palace and wandered up through Regent’s Park. It was gloriously empty.

Sadly, we didn’t actually explore our own neighborhood until the afternoon before we left London, but on a return trip I think we’ll feel a lot more venturesome, no matter where we’ll staying. I keep running across references to restaurants and things to do that were located in our area that we missed out on. That’ll larn us.

Here are the best of the photos… these are thumbnails at 25%:

National Portrait Gallery and fountain

St-Martins-in-the-Fields

Fountain

Flowers in Green Park (someone worked hard to keep these going)

Buckingham Palace: The Queen Is Not Receiving Drop-In Visitors

Regent’s Park: where is everyone?

I have no idea what this building is, I just thought the copper detail on the mansard roof was striking.

And so off we went to Paddington the next morning to catch the Thames Trains service out to the Cotswolds, and the next part of our trip.