Looking back...

 

...and down! A recent trip to Duxford set me thinking about the rather fantastic flight over London I did in the Classic Wings Dragon Rapide back in 2019 - a present from MrEH, and such a special experience!  I think I probably blogged about it at the time - I'd certainly be surprised if not - and there were probably more photos included then (I'm going to need to double check now aren't I!) but I found the one above just now and goodness me what a view of London that is!  We actually got closer to The Shard than that - at one stage it felt as though we were essentially circling directly around the top, although I suspect that was an optical illusion. 

Look carefully and find the Cutty Sark! 

Here we go - another photo that I don't believe I did post at the time - 2 for the price of one on a Looking Back post? Whatever next! 

Looking back...

No prizes for guessing where this is - but you might be wondering why exactly it's so surprisingly quiet?   This is indeed exactly as it looks like - Charing Cross underground station in London, but it is one of the disused platforms there - closed in 1999 when the Jubilee line extension was opened - now open to the public by way of the London Transport Museum's Hidden London programme. 

I've blogged about Hidden London tours before I think -  we've done most of those they offer and thoroughly enjoyed them all. Charing Cross is a bit unique because the station has been out of use for a relatively short time and I for one remember using it when it was open, of course. These days it gets used for filming TV shows and films when a modern looking station is needed - one of the notable ones being that it was used in some of the underground scenes in Skyfall. Great fun seeing the escalator where Daniel Craig slid down in pursuit of the baddie - but no, we were not allowed to follow suit! 

Robyn

Just for one…night!

 

On Thursday evening after work, rather than going for a walk then killing time waiting for MrEH in the car, or heading to the pub and sitting with a beer and a book until he arrived, instead I hopped on to the tube into Central London. Lovely and easy from where I work - the nearest station being about 5 minutes away and then a few stops on to on this occasion, Holborn as to start with I needed to pop to the shop at the London Transport Museum. Now, as all Londoners know, there is little point in going to Covent Garden station if you can instead get off at Holborn or Leicester Square, and on this occasion I was on the Central Line (the red one!) so Holborn it was. That’s “Hoe-bun” by the way- no debate here , “Hole-burn” in incorrect and sounds quite unpleasant!  😆

The museum is a short walk from MrEH’s office so we met there, did our errand at the shop, then walked through to Shaftesbury Avenue, where we grabbed first a portion of chips each from a nearby chippy (pricey, as expected, but quite tasty) and then a beer at the lovely Craft Beer Company before crossing the road to the Shaftesbury Theatre for a performance of “Just For One Day - the Live Aid Musical”. Now I LOVE the theatre, always have, but haven’t been for years for various reasons - tickets to West End shows these days tend to be extremely expensive, and sometimes it’s just hard to justify, you know? I’d spotted this show when it first began its London run, and thought it looked excellent, so I had been keeping my eyes peeled for a good offer, and sure enough at the end of last year, spotted a deal through Nectar for “tickets from £20” - I assumed that when I looked there would not actually be any at that price, but for once my cynicism proved well wide of the mark as there were plenty! I secured two seats three rows back in the Grand Circle (“up in the gods” as my Nan always referred to it!) for a straight £40 total - not even a booking fee to spoil our fun! For an additional £10 each I could have had front row but the excellent “View From My Seat” website reassured me that there was really no need to pay that extra cost, and so it proved - just look…

The show had me gripped from the opening moments - a story that everyone my age knows, but looked at through the eyes of today’s 18 year olds - already world-weary and firmly of the opinion that our generation got it all wrong of course! The reference from Jemma - the young girl off to university - to “studying the 80’s in history” brought giggles from a lot of the audience! The cast were superb - so full of energy and some absolutely amazing singing voices, and the band providing the music were also fabulous. The set was incredibly cleverly managed - minimal props, and those there were being moved on and off the stage by the cast themselves meaning set changes were almost seamless. A platform with stadium style seating which moved forward and back on the stage  as needed was used to create the feel of people in their seats at the gig, media at press conferences, and various other settings, and when not needed it simply slid back underneath the band riser out of the way. Many of the cast played multiple characters too - in fact there wasn’t really a “leading role” at all, something which was reflected in the curtain calls at the end when the whole cast took their bows together as one ensemble. Something we noticed also was that there was clearly one cast member missing - but this was covered seamlessly and the only reason it was noticeable was due to a gap on the stage at one stage where clearly there should have been a cast member - whatever part they should have been playing was obviously picked up by others brilliantly. Of course the music too is an absolute highlight - all the hits you would expect and a few you possibly wouldn’t. By my reckoning Queen are the front-runners for hits featured with at least 4, but then what would you expect, but everything is played and sung flawlessly and it was nice to see members of the band getting their moment in the spotlight at various points through the show, too.

The show is coming to the end of its run in London, but will be heading out on a national tour from March I believe. Should you go and see it? Yes - RUN to the box office, you won’t regret it, and you will leave grinning after a thoroughly joyful couple of hours! 

Robyn

(All my photos were taken either before the performance, during the interval or at the curtain call as requested by the theatre)

A World Apart - East London in the 1970s

MrEH and I had plans for Friday evening that involved us being in Central London - for one of the LT Museum’s “Hidden London Hangout” podcasts - but in front of a live audience. We’ve been wanting to get to one of these for a while - this is the third they have done as far as I recall, but the previous two have been on days we have already had other plans.   MrEH announced well ahead of time that he intended to use the day as one of his required days of working from the office, a sensible move as otherwise he would have struggled to get into town in time after finishing his working day, so I decided I may as well travel in with him - saving myself on travel costs. 

While still in the process of deciding what to do with my day, I spotted on the excellent Ian Visits newsletter email  that a gallery in Bethnal Green was running an exhibition of photographs taken in London’s east end during the 1970s - from:the detail given both in the email and on a linked BBC news site article it looked utterly fascinating, so I immediately started structuring my plan around going for a look. 

The gallery is on Roman Road - just a stone’s throw from where MrEH lived when we were first together in fact, and a walk along from where I elected to hop off the bus was fascinating seeing what had changed, and what was still much as I remembered. 

The exhibition - A World Apart - shows the work of a dozen photographers who worked with local communities in Whitechapel, Wapping, Spitalfields, Stepney and thereabouts, documenting the changes as the continuation of the post-war drive to rebuild saw buildings torn down and new immigrants began influencing the shops and businesses. Some of the photographers lived in the areas they were working in and those they were photographing were friends and neighbours and well as subjects, meaning they could achieve a level of trust and relaxation - something which really comes across in the images. 

The common link between the photographs is that they have all been exhibited previously at the time they were taken, in various spaces in the East End - theatres, laundrettes and libraries  all hosted shows. This is the first time they’ve all been seen together though, and they paint a powerful picture of the time, as the communities welcomed the new Bengali & Caribbean incomers. Indeed, that integration stands out as a theme through the exhibition with black, white and brown faces seen working and playing together. 

“A World Apart” exhibition can be seen at the Four Corners Gallery, Roman Road, Bethnal Green until 6th December 2025.

A Capital weekend!

 At the beginning of the month we had another of the Hidden London tours booked - Holborn this time, a chance to see the opposing end of the Aldwych branch having already done the Aldwych tour a few years ago. A couple of weeks beforehand we got an email through from the LT Museum telling us that  they were running their 1938 stock train on the top end of the metropolitan line that same weekend, and a plan was hatched…

Friday morning saw the usual gathering of like minded individuals lurking around outside Holborn Station on Kingsway. Within a couple of minutes of our arrival our tour guides appeared, and after some minor technical issues involving an iPad not getting a data signal, we were all checked off on a list, issued us with our lanyards and “Visitor” badges, and ushered through the barriers into the station. Around us commuters were heading off to the escalators - while we stepped through a door off to one side of the ticket hall and were faced with our first glimpse of the station’s wonderful tiling…

It never fails to astonish that features like this have just been left untouched even when stations have been refurbished a number of times in the time period since those areas were last used by the public. This tiling continued in various states of repair all the way down the long spiral staircase - such a treat to start us off! 

The main areas for exploring were of course the old Aldwych branch platforms - and there was certainly plenty to see. The photo above was taken just beyond the end of the old platform 5 looking along the running tunnel - you can see how the line changes its route and where the old second tunnel would have run. That platform is now taken up with small office type rooms which have over the years been used for all sorts of things including changing rooms. Indeed several still have signage visible on the doors confirming this…

I love the picture added by the Hidden London team for context, too! The highlight of these rooms was  room 8, for me - because of this…

Yes - another patch of beautifully preserved original tiling - this section clearly showing the station’s unique “chevron” pattern. Originally this would have appeared all along the platform, with the station name also appearing in the tiling too - and in fact in room 8 you can also still see just the “N” of “Holborn” too. 

More of the tiling remains on platform 6 - as well as a real piece of heritage in the shape of this sign…

Yes - the station used to have reference to “Kingsway” in its name! Look carefully around the edges and you can see more of the tiling too  - and elsewhere on the platform are lovely features like the “Exit” sign cartouches 

It’s not only tiling and signs that survive either - by some miracle in one of the old passenger tunnels this little gem can be seen…

Apparently this can be fairly accurately dated to the mid 1930’s - the number of “flights” on the arrow (a Mexican Arrow, for fellow tube geeks!) means it can be narrowed down to a block of pre-war years, but the fact that the line diagram does not show Down Street - closed in 1932 - reduces that window somewhat. In real terms though, somewhere about 90 years old - yet still vibrant and clear! All in all another fabulous tour - and for anyone else considering it trust me, there is plenty to see that I haven’t shown you here! 

Tour complete we - as is now traditional - repaired to the nearest decent pub for a beer and a bit of a debrief and natter about our favourite bits (him - the old running tunnel, me - the tiling of course!) before heading off for lunch, then we set off to be tourists for thr afternoon. MrEH gave me a guided tour of the Royal Courts of Justice - an utterly breathtaking building that it turns out any member of the public can visit - and then I took him to St Clement Danes church which I last visited probably about 40 years ago! We then met a good pal for a quick pint at the end of his working day - I found Neptune Brewery’s “On The Bounty” on the bar in that pub which I was delighted about as a beer that tastes like you are drinking liquidised Bounty bars is a wonderful thing! We wrapped up the evening with a few more beers in another favourite pub - this one was serving Hammerton Brewery’s “Crunch” which tastes like liquidised peanut butter so as you can imagine I was rather pleased about that, too - then headed off to find our bed for the night, at the Travelodge at Wembley. 

The following morning we were out bright and early for breakfast and then the short walk to Wembley Park station to catch the Metropolitan Line out to Amersham. While waiting we got our first glimpse of the reason for the trip, too… 

On the right is the gorgeous 1938 tube stock train from the London Transport Museum, on its way to Amersham to run passenger trips for the day. It stopped in  at Wembley Park on the way to pick up volunteer staff, and was certainly turning heads - even the driver of the current day train alongside was craning his head out of the window for a good look! 

Once at Amersham we browsed the Friends of the Museum stall - acquiring a few quirky oddments of tube history along the way, including a rather wonderful guide to the Victoria Line and the new automatic ticket barriers it was given - dating from 1970. Then it was time to board our chosen carriage- I had opted to book one of the end ones, feeling like we may well get a chance for a look into the cab that way, and we were certainly not disappointed on that…

The trip was from Amersham round to Watford and back - including going round the “North Curve” , a section of line normally only used by a couple of trains a day, very early in the morning and very late at night.  We had a short time stopped at Watford where the train invited lots of interest from passing travellers, before heading back the way we’d come. The 45 minute gave us all plenty of time to enjoy the marvellously comfortable refurbished moquette seating, admire the gorgeous glass lamps, and reflect on all the changes that had occurred since the carriage maps were produced! 

All in all it was an absolutely lovely trip -  the train is fantastic and it’s amazing to not only get to experience such a piece of history, but also to see how other people on the platforms we passed reacted to it as well - and also how some folk were simply so immersed in their phones that in spite of those around them reacting, pointing and smiling they missed it entirely!  Booking the budget hotel room for the night worked well too particularly as the travel back and forth would have cost us about the same - and it was great to have an afternoon of simply being a tourist in my own city as well! Definitely something we would consider doing again. 

Robyn

After work wandering…

 I’ve been reading through the blog of a friend of mine recently. A lot of it I’ve read before - but a fair bit of it I haven’t for various reasons, so it’s nice to go back and catch up on her life a bit more. (For those wondering - it’s the lovely “Not Quite a farm” blog). One of the things I utterly adore about her blogging style is that she posts with masses of photos attached from her various adventures - it makes reading through such a treat! Anyway - this inspired me to take some photos on my glorious after work amble today - and let’s be honest, anything that encourages photo taking also encourages us to really look at our surroundings which is a good thing, agreed?!

First thing to catch my eye was these lovely Ox Eye Daisies. I love these - they seem quite content to grow in all sorts of places - alongside railway lines; in great drifts on motorway embankments; and here - on a patch of scrubby land just yards from the busy A12 dual carriageway. 

Next was this Vetch - another tenacious little plant, this grows everywhere in the area I was walking although it’s right at the beginning of its flowering season.

Comfrey is also growing in profusion- a useful plant this as it can be grown as part of a green manure system for veg growing. The leaves can be steeped in water to make Comfrey tea - a nutritious fertiliser (and a stinky one!) or they can be chopped up and dug into beds for future veggie planting. We may well be searching out some leaves later in the year! 

The area I had chosen to walk is Wanstead Flats - an area of parkland/scrubland which is also part of the corporation of London’s Epping Forest. It’s lovely to have it so close to work and a great place for walking or indeed running. It’s finally drying out a bit from our very wet winter and this was the first time I’d braved the mud so far this year. 

Gorgeous, isn’t it! You can see the mix of woodland and more open space - almost heathland I guess as the soil underfoot always feels quite sandy, although with enough London Clay to make it stick to your boots when wet! 

As you walk through the woods every now and again you come across a lovely shady little glade like this - with the trees through here now in full leaf it just felt unbelievably green and lush - and really brought it home that yes, finally, spring is here! 

In case a reminder of the proximity of Central London itself is required, look carefully at the shot above and you will just see the Shard way off on the horizon! 

Finally, after a couple of miles of gentle meandering, I found myself back close to where the car was parked. And as the sun was still shining, I was able to settle down at a bench in a nearby park to write this and then read my book while waiting for MrEH to get back from his working day, so we could head home. 

Not a bad end to a working day! 

Robyn 

55 Broadway

 

Those who follow my Instagram account will know that over the last few years we have been thoroughly enjoying the London Transport Museum’s “Hidden London” tours - from the incredible history of Down Street, to the big and small screen connections of  Charing Cross - each and every one has been both unique and fascinating. The ”one that got away” however was 55 Broadway - for nearly 90 years the head office of London Transport and its forerunner and successor entities. Foolishly we had assumed that it would be a tour which would always be offered, and so we had put off doing it in favour of the more “directly involved” visits to actual stations - which meant that the announcement that TFL were moving out, and there would be no more tours came as a bit of a blow. Over the past few years I’ve looked on with envy as various social media influencer types have got to visit, all the while thinking that from our perspective, all hope was lost…

Just imagine my joy, if you will, when in the middle of March, we discovered an email saying that a visit had been arranged, if we might be interested…? Needless to say, we wasted NO time in responding,  and later that day had confirmed that we would indeed finally be getting across the hallowed threshold! I should add that I had in fact been into what is now the reception area many times as a small child, when my Nan took me in there to see this rather wonderful thing…

These are the old train interval indicators,  used to enable the frequency of the service to be monitored - until around 1989 these were in an area which just formed part of St James’s Park station and so were publicly accessible. I have to confess this was one of the things I was most excited about seeing - sadly they no longer work, but standing back in front of them I was astonished to realise that in spite of not having seen them for  well over 30 years, I could still hear in my head the distinctive noise of them recording the trains - a sort of “Swish-clunk” sound!  

Having met our guide in reception, we initially went outside to hear some of the history of the building - designed by acclaimed architect Charles Holden - at the time it was built it was the tallest office block in London.  Looked at from above the building forms a cruciform shape,  and from the ground the shape tapers upwards -  with the central tower culminating in a flagpole. It features sculptures on all sides, and various nice features like rainwater hoppers featuring the famous roundel. 

Back inside, and having heard a little more about the various materials used in the interior decoration - all very ornate, perhaps the nearest current tube station equivalent is Piccadilly Circus, we made our way to the upper floors. Unsurprisingly even the staircases are wonderful - with the most beautiful tile detail…

 The staircase then opens onto a lobby area from which the various wings of the building can be accessed, and also toilets, the lifts etc. Other features include  pedestal - probably for a vase of flowers or, as here, a plant - a water fountain and a clock. Indeed, there are clocks everywhere!  

We were ushered along a rather smart walnut panelled corridor to see the executive offices and the boardroom, and finally the Director’s office, which apparently featured the Director’s desk in the diagonally opposite corner to the door one had to enter through, meaning that if you had been summoned to see the great man, you faced an unnerving walk all the way across the office to stand in front of him! My favourite feature of the room was something I spotted as we walked out again…

That also gives you an idea of the beautiful panelled doors! Then, very excitingly, it was back to the stairs - or to be accurate this time, the lift and then more stairs…up to the very top of the building! The final couple of floors are purely functional, with plant rooms and finally a narrow steep metal staircase to reach the “flagpole level” - quite a climb but, oh, how worth it…

There you go - choose a London landmark and you can probably find it there somewhere - from Wembley Stadium to the Houses of Parliament, across to Epping forest in one direction and the Crystal Palace transmitter in the other - the whole city is laid out in front of you - genuinely one of the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. 

We were incredibly lucky to be able to do this - not least as the building’s conversion to a hotel is due to start imminently, our guide said that he had a feeling that we really might have had one of the final opportunities to visit the building “as it is” although as it is Grade 1 listed the changes will need to be done sympathetically. Massive thanks to the London Transport Museum Friends who arranged the access, and to guide Ed, the TfL Heritage advisor and a thoroughly nice chap.

Robyn 

One year on...

 We’re now into that odd territory of “this time last year...” - past the point when we’re looking back at things being normal, that had to all intents ceased by early March - and now into the area where things had begun to close down. Most schools had already begun to discuss a possible switch to remote learning, shops and offices in the area I work in had begun to take precautions after it became apparent that the virus was starting to take hold. Pubs and bars had mostly switched to asking customers to use contactless payments rather than cash, and it was rapidly becoming apparent that they would in turn be instructed to close sooner rather than later. 

Greathead Shield - Moorgate Station.

On 1st March last year we did a Hidden London visit to Moorgate in the morning, followed by another of our “underground-overground” walks - from Liverpool Street to Leyton, ending up with the traditional pint in a handy pub. Lunch was grabbed en-route from Brick Lane market - which was busy, and I can’t recall feeling particularly uneasy about being in the crowds at that stage. There was never any suggestion that the  Moorgate tour would be cancelled either, although I do have a feeling that may have been the last weekend that the tours went ahead.  From that weekend things really did start to ramp up though - CAMRA announced soon after that all meetings and social events would either be cancelled or would take place “virtually”, and the likelihood of other social plans being cancelled had also started being discussed. Premier league football had announced that it was suspending its season, and the Rugby 6-nations was abandoned part way through the tournament with the remaining games to be played “in due course” - they were eventually completed in October.

This day a year ago was notable for two reasons - firstly it was the day that NHS England announced it was cancelling all non urgent operations to free up beds for tackling the virus. Hindsight now suggests that as much as anything else it was the staff that they wanted to free up, as by that time they were likely aware that the beds that would be required would not be standard hospital beds, but rather ICU and high dependency ones. The second was that it was the last time I went to the gym! I remember it being really quiet, and also making a point of washing my hands thoroughly on arrival and before leaving, but not feeling particularly wary or uncomfortable about being there - possibly because it WAS so quiet. 

I think even at this stage last year it was impossible to truly envisage what was ahead, and certainly I don’t believe any of us could have imagined that we’d still be dealing with it a full 12 months on! 

Robyn 

Throwback Thursday...

Spent a chunk of today looking back at some old aviation photos again - from Cosford Airshow 2015. For a while now I have had a feeling that there should be a fair few shots there that I’d never got around to processing first time I went through them, and sure enough the first ones I found were a load of the fantastic Gloster Meteor - a jet we haven’t seen displaying since the tragic events at Shoreham later that same year. I think there can be very few of us aviation photographers who wouldn’t love to see a Meteor flying in the U.K. again - I know I would! 2015 was also the last time we saw a Vulcan bomber fly as well of course - and that is one aircraft we will almost certainly never see airborne again.

As a further “throwback” this afternoon I had volunteered to drive my Dad into London for an appointment - in the interests of not risking being late, we got into Walthamstow with half an hour to spare, so took a little drive around the area that Dad grew up in to full some time. I think he was pretty astonished by all the changes - I have been round the area on a reasonably regular basis since we moved away in 2003, and even for me I find it quite strange going back to an area that is quite so different now.

MrEH and I made the decision to move out of London at the point where we wanted to buy somewhere to live - realistically we would only have been able to afford somewhere absolutely tiny in London at that stage, and moving out just a few miles meant that without over-stretching ourselves financially more than we felt comfortable with, we were able to buy somewhere of a far more practical size. For me it was a huge decision - a Londoner born and bred, I had never lived anywhere else, or indeed wanted to! Going back now is strange - and although there are areas of London I would like to live, there is no prospect we would ever be able to afford even those places where frankly we wouldn’t be caught dead!

Robyn

Day 91...

Another day where I haven’t taken any photos - so having had some appreciative comments about the one above elsewhere on socials I thought I’d share it here also. Scott’s Sufference Wharf on the right, Shuters & St George’s Wharves on the left, taken as we were heading back to the car on Thursday. The name of the wharf on the right grabbed attention to start with and we went for a better look and saw this view - the view down to the river caught my eye, then the texture of the mud...I grabbed a shot with the iPhone because I suspected mutiny from MrEH had I decided to get the DSLR out again...when I remembered the shot and looked at it again yesterday I instantly knew it had to be a black & white (or technically monochrome as it’s not *quite* black) conversion, the timeless quality of the photograph just demanded it.

Today has been a day of first, movement - our usual walk first thing, then I ran afterwards, and followed up with LOTS of stretching. Some planning - mapping out my week ahead in my journal, including a meal plan. A chat on the phone with a friend, general pottering and enjoying having the time to devote to jobs which might in other circumstances have been rushed through. Some cooking later on this afternoon - cottage pie mix made, the mince bulked out with red lentils and mushrooms to give an additional portion for the freezer - the first half will get eaten tomorrow evening.

I’m beginning to hopefully see a proper return of my running mojo I think. At the moment I am sticking with 2-phase runs - the first half being prompted by the commands from the Couch to 5k programme, and the second half running intervals of 0.1 mile, followed with 0.05 of a mile walking. It’s giving a relatively slow overall pace but that will improve as time moves on and I can first alter the C25K prompts to mean more running, less walking, and then increase the distance on my intervals afterwards. Already today that second half felt more comfortable, several times I either ran on past the distance or chose to run further - a good feeling. My 5k time is still slower than I know I am capable of at the moment - a bit over 33 minutes today - but I know that if I put the work in, the pace will come back. So for now it’s a couple of runs a week following that structure, some sessions of strength work, and plenty of stretching, water and sleep - all the good stuff.

And now - enjoying the last of the day outside on the balcony. The point in the year has come where we often quite happily sit out well into the evening, enjoying the warmer temperatures and the increased daylight. A lovely, relaxing way to end a day...

Robyn

Day 87...

So, it rained ALL through last night. At one point it sounded as though the worlds biggest bucket was being emptied right outside the windows. It carried on raining for most of this morning as well - sometimes deluging, sometimes just a drizzle. We popped to get MrEH’s newspaper and got home mildly damp. Rumours abounded that the counterpart flypast in Paris in the late morning was being cancelled because of weather - not true, in fact Paris had glorious blue skies!

We left home to drive into London just after lunch - it was still spitting but - a literal glimmer of hope - the sun had started peeking through... by 3pm we were walking along the Embankment from a Tower Bridge with some incredible cloud formations above - some clearly still threatening some rain but importantly all nice and high, so unlikely to disrupt the actual route of the flypast. The 2 teams had made it across to RAF Brize Norton to refuel but reports were that the weather there was still pretty dreadful, it wouldn’t be the first time that a Flypast was scuppered by weather either at the operating base, or between that base and the target, frustrating for all concerned but can’t be helped.

By 4.15pm we had recced all possible locations and I had decided on plan A - Waterloo Bridge - giving a view which could - depending on the precise line taken by the jets - include the London Eye and the Thames in one direction, and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and the city skyline in the other - just so long as a bus didn’t draw up at the wrong moment! Better still though, those superb cloud formations were hanging around, particularly in the St Paul’s direction. 4.40pm - takeoff time and we started picking up snippets of radio transmissions on the scanner confirming that 18 jets were in the air and heading our way...

At bang on 5pm the coloured smoke appeared over the roof of the Ministry of Defence building - I fired off a couple of shots with my 10 - 18mm lens on the Canon 80D, then hastily switched to the 7DMk2 hanging over the other shoulder ready to shoot the remainder with the 24 - 105mm as it became apparent the wider angle wasn’t going to give quite the composition I was hoping for. As the jets roared over I dashed across the pavement, hopped onto the barrier and framed up ready to get the departing shots with the Cathedral - massive thanks to the lovely van driver who held back as long as he could from blocking my view! The whole thing was over in around 45 seconds - which actually feels like quite a long time photographically, although people watching always feel it is over in a flash!

As always looking around and seeing the reactions of the people around was a definite highlight - a flypast puts smiles on faces, all the more so for those who didn’t know about - and weren’t expecting - it. People continue to stand and watch for a few moments more as the lingering red, white & blue smoke drifts across the sky - before carrying on with their day. You can imagine the conversations around dinner tables that evening “Wow - guess what I saw on the way home!”

Robyn

(To reiterate from yesterday - in London it is still being requested that public transport use is for essential travel only, and had I needed to use the tube, or buses I would not have made the trip in. As it was we drove as far as Bermondsey, just under an hour, parked there and walked the rest.)

Day 76...

LONDON BABY! 😁 Following a conversation with a good friend last week about how they had driven into London for a walk, and how odd and quiet it was, but how nice it was to walk somewhere different, we decided to do similar this weekend. Our usual method of going into the city is of  course  to drive to Epping, then get the tube, but at the moment public transport in London is still essential travel only, so we needed an alternative. I was also looking for somewhere that I would be able to park midweek too - because I may need to pop back up there in a couple of weeks for what we shall just refer to right now as “a thing” - so we did a bit of research on google maps and settled on the area just south of the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Now I HATE the Rotherhithe with a passion. It’s nasty and narrow, and as a passenger it triggers my claustrophobia quite horribly - I don’t like tunnels much at all, but that one I REALLY don’t like. Gulp.

First mistake was deciding to believe the SatNav might really know a better route than I had planned - thankfully we picked up in time on the fact that it was planning to take us across Tower Bridge. Scenic it might be, but I rarely want to drive across it! anyway, I ignored it for a while, made a few turns of my own back onto my planned route, and got back on track. Surprised myself with the tunnel too - felt very apprehensive driving towards it, but once I got to the half way point I realised I was concentrating to hard on driving in the crazy narrow lanes that I wasn’t much thinking about anything else. I wouldn’t much want to go through on my own, and definitely still wouldn’t want to do it as a passenger, but driving, I can handle it just fine.

Parking was a doddle - plenty of free on street parking in the street I had earmarked, although perhaps not for much longer as it appears it is being converted to residents parking at some stage before too long. For now though, and at weekends even after that, it should do nicely. We walked through to Tower Bridge, then along the embankment to the Tate Modern. Crossed over and back along the opposite side. Fabulous to be back in my home city, and to be walking along the river too! Initial feeling was that it was quite busy, but actually I think that was just that it had been so long since I’d been anywhere with that many others. The city itself was unsurprisingly very quiet indeed - and because of the protests currently going on up towards Vauxhall we decided against going any further along. It was so nice to walk somewhere so completely different though - and the perfect plan for a rainy Sunday afternoon too!

Robyn.

Flying High...

A couple of years ago, for my birthday, MrEH bought me a flight in the same type of vintage aircraft I have flown in before - the DeHavilland Dragon Rapide. I looked into booking it that first summer - only to find there were no available dates that suited me. Then I looked into booking it again last year, only to find that the company running the flights did not, at that stage, have a secure website for taking card payments for bookings....sigh! I suddenly thought about it again a few weeks ago and decided to take another look, and to my delight firstly the website is now secured and secondly there were LOTS of dates to choose from - including to my delight one in just a couple of weeks time, on a Friday where I had nothing in the diary!

Last Friday I travelled to Duxford where I was admitted to the Imperial War Museum free of charge on production of the voucher I received when I made my booking, given a map of the site and dispatched off towards the "Classic Wings" enclosure on the flightline in order to register my arrival, get given my ticket for the flight and hop on the scales - everyone gets weighed so that Classic Wings know how to distribute people through the aircraft - apparently she prefers lighter people at the front, which was wonderful for me as that meant I got given one of the front seats, and being directed to board first meant that I got the one directly behind the pilot's doorway - meaning I could see directly ahead of me throughout as well as off to the side - wonderful! 7 of the 8 seats were occupied in the end - including the one behind me which was taken by the loadmaster from one of the American Douglas Dakota's that had arrived at Duxford ahead of the D Day commemorations which were shortly to be taking place - they weren't going to have time to do any sightseeing so when he'd seen the flight advertised on arrival he thought it would be a great way of seeing London!

Our pilot - Brian - had a quick word with us before popping on his headset and getting ready for engine start - basically explaining that the exact route we took on the way down would depend on how we got routed by ATC for the three busy airspaces we'd be travelling through - Stansted, London City and Heathrow Airports - but that essentially we'd be going roughly through the Lea Valley before reaching central London, over the Olympic Park and then on to the river, before doing some manoeuvering over some of the main sights to make sure everyone stood a good chance of seeing them. Then it was engine start, taxi to the runway and before we knew it we were airborne and turning gently to the south to start our trip. I was looking out for Harlow on the way down needless to say, but the best I spotted was Hoddesdon, not all that far from us, and at that point I switched my attention to the front to see the Lea Valley appearing ahead of me, and Wembley visible way off to the West shortly followed by the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium.  It seemed hardly any time after that before the "Stadium hat-trick" was completed by the Olympic Park appearing, again off the starboard wing - amazing to see the whole park laid out below us like this!

On to the river, then, and a sweep over Greenwich and past the Isle of Dogs and the Millenium Dome - or the O2 as we're now meant to call it of course!  Amazing to see the iconic shape of the "bulge" in the Thames formed by the IoD & the Greenwich Peninsular clearly visible 

Look carefully in the one below and you can see the Cutty Sark (click on the picture and it will enlarge) as well as the Royal Naval College at Greenwich - this was a favourite section when we did the Themes path walk through this area.

Brian wasn't kidding when he said he'd make sure everyone got a good view either - we flew around the Shard several times from all angles getting great views - at times it felt as though we were almost on a level with it! 

These are a mix of pictures from my phone and some taken with the camera that yes, I inevitably had with me too! There are a LOT more photos to go through yet too and I may well do another post at some stage with some more - I've had a quick look at a few and it's fascinating spotting places that I'd not recognised from the air. Apparently we had a quite wide divert around Stansted airspace both ways which meant we got a slightly longer flight than sometimes happens - I think the only person even slightly complaining was the lady in the other front seat who did need to make use of a little white bag at one stage, poor thing! You get a lot of turbulence from an aircraft that size, and combined with the "vintage" smell of fuel that tends to linger, it can make you feel ever so slightly queasy - I found that making sure I fixed my eyes out at a distance if I started feeling even vaguely uneasy did the trick for me, thankfully. 

It was a fantastic experience and one I'd certainly be interested to repeat at some stage - Classic Wings are efficient and friendly and if anyone fancies a similar experience I'd strongly recommend them - there are also other companies doing the same thing on the same aircraft type elsewhere in the country, I believe. For a Londoner, the trip I did would really be hard to beat, however! 

Robyn

Going Underground...

A couple of years ago we were introduced to the "Hidden London" tours - organised by the London Transport Museum, these take small groups of people to the parts of the London Underground system that your regular commuter doesn't get to see. The first one we did was to the old Down Street station -  this station sat between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park on the Piccadilly line but due to the proximity of the other two stations it simply didn't get the footfall and so was closed in 1932. That was far from the end of its life though as it was later to see service during world War 2 as the Headquarters of the Railway Executive committee and even provided refuge for Winston Churchill!

In February we did our second Hidden London tour - this time the disused tunnels at Euston. Our little group met in the old Leslie Green designed station on Melton Street - no longer in use apart from providing ventilation to the active tunnels below:

From there we had a short walk across to the Mainline station and down the "shortcut steps" known to most Londoners to the tube station where we were ushered through the barrier (no Oyster cards required!) and on to one of the Northern Line platforms where a door at the end lead to the tunnels we were after. 

Unused by the public for over 50 years, these tunnels were closed when construction for the Victoria Line started - since then they have been used to run additional ventilation pipes, and for storage and access for those working on the station, and as a result the tunnels are astonishingly well preserved exactly as they were when the last commuters passed through. 

As well as the history of the tunnels themselves we learned about the way the tube stations were constructed in those days - basically they were  built in "kit form" from a standard pack of parts - which leads to oddities like this ticket window - designed to allow commuters to purchase tickets to change lines without having to return to the main booking hall...

...as it is a single window the "in" and "out" make little sense and it can only been assumed that they were in the parts supplied and therefore got used regardless!

Some more posters...who is Spartacus?! ;-)

Originally there were lifts running from these platforms to surface level at the Mainline Station - here is the view up one of the shafts...

These tours are absolutely fascinating - not cheap, we paid £85 each for the Down Street tour and £45 each for this one I believe - but good value for money, nonetheless, and the money supports the London Transport Museum helping to ensure that these sorts of tours continue to be available. since starting to write this post (yes, writing,m and actually getting around to posting can be spread over a l-o-n-g time period!) we've actually done yet another - so I'll try to tell you about that one before all that long too! There is a feeling of visiting somewhere that has been frozen in time when you explore somewhere like this - and some of the small details are absolutely fascinating - for example did you know that all the rings that line the tube tunnels are date stamped with at least their year of manufacture, and sometimes with the day and month also (If you happen to be exiting a Jubilee Line Extension station any time soon take a look at some of the rings that are visible from the escalators for examples of that.

I'll leave you with a picture that pretty much sums up the Euston tour, for me - this is the tunnels as they were abandoned when this section of the station was closed off. The colours on the tiling still so vibrant, and those amazingly preserved posters - there is almost a feeling that it could have a bit of a clean up and swing back into action!

Robyn