Sixth Weekend and Final Days

It's a wonder my legs still work and that you, my loyal readers, are keeping up with my blog posts. I hope you've been enjoying them and that I've sparked in you an interest in exploring London. Like that bloke who does the adverts for Viking River Cruises says, one of the tenets of life is to be curious. My curiosity about London knows no bounds and London always delivers.

My weekend took me to some far-flung parts of west London, but even before I got on the tube to head westward on Saturday I had another first-for-me experience: The Lord Mayor's Show. For hundreds of years (since the 12th century, I think), there has been some form of processing of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, initially to Westminster to pledge allegiance to the monarch. Now, the parade includes military units, bands (military, youth, community musicians), floats sponsored by various businesses and charitable organizations, and all the livery companies of London (the 110 guilds comprised of professions, trades and crafts). My friends Jane and Jen tipped me off that people they knew from the London Historians group would be lining up on Gresham Street, not part of the actual parade route but rather the pre-parade and every bit as good as the official thing. I had a blast standing there for two hours watching horses, dancing toothbrushes, women on stilts, Chinese dragons and a host of other groups march down the street.

The end of the parade was timed perfectly for me to hop on the tube at Mansion House and make my way to the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton. The depot is an enormous warehouse in which the Transport Museum stores, maintains and restores thousands of things related to public transportation in London. It contains historic buses and train carriages as well as everything you can image related to the operation and promotion of the system. Open Days are an infrequent occasion (generally three weekends per year) and I gather that they can be pretty crowded. Even rarer are their special tours. When I read, way back in April, that there would be a Design Icons tour during my time in London, I pounced on it and booked immediately. I've gotten a bit geeky about London transport over the years from watching Geoff Marshall's YouTube Channel and I have a long-standing interest in design, fabric, fonts, signage, etc., so this tour was right up my alley. There were six of us on the tour (ten had booked, but four were no-shows) and we spent two hours with our volunteer guide Eric. He pulled out numerous drawers containing the iconic 1916 hand-drawn Johnston font design, maps and dozens of swatches of moquette. We saw posters, signage and the original Routemaster buses (RM1 and RM2). It couldn't have been better. 

For the past five weeks, I'd been trying to find a good day (read: no rain, no other plans) to go to Twickenham. Sunday was my final opportunity. I took another trip down memory lane by starting my journey at the Finchley and Frognal overground station. Back in 2004, when Roger was living near South End Green in Hampstead and Molly and I were staying at the now-defunct hotel in Frognal, we used to catch the Silverlink train here as a way of getting to Roger's without having to climb up and over the huge hill. The train went through a tunnel under the hill, emerging again at Hampstead Health Station. There were no Oyster cards back then. Rather, a conductor walked through the carriages while the train was in motion, collecting fares as he worked his way down the train. Because it was only one stop from F&F to HH, we could often make the ride for free without the conductor catching us. The line has since become the Overground and is part of the Transport for London network, so there are now touchpads for Oyster cards. 

I rode the train to the end of the line in Richmond (going through South Acton where I'd been just the day before) and then began a leisurely stroll across the bridge over the Thames to the Twickenham side and down the Thames Path towards Marble Hill House. As I walked along the path, I could hear an Irish band busking on the Richmond side of the river and they weren't half bad. If I had done this walk earlier in my visit, I could have visited Turner's House along the way, but it was closed for the season so I didn't bother going past it. Sadly, Marble Hill House was also closed, but I did walk through the grounds that slope down to the Thames, past a black walnut tree (said to have been planted in 1720) and the grotto, and then the house itself. 

From there I continued away from the river, walking up Orleans Road with its charming cottages, until I reached the Richmond Road and, a few minutes later, the ultimate destination and reason for this whole journey to Twickenham. I'd come to the Eel Pie Island Museum to learn of the history of this epicenter of jazz, blues and rock music in the 1960s and 70s. Eel Pie Island is in the Thames, reachable via a narrow foot bridge. There had been a hotel there since the 1920s, popular with people looking to get out of London. In the 1960s, it became the home of a membership club, extremely popular with young people, where first trad jazz acts played and, a bit later, up-and-coming British pop and r&b acts like the Rolling Stones, Rod Steward, Eric Clapton and more. The museum contains a ton of interesting artifacts and ephemera, and the docent who showed me around was gregarious and informative. Well worth a trip from Massachusetts, I'd say.

Before making my way back towards Richmond, I briefly stopped into the Twickenham Museum (ho-hum) and had a butcher's at the rather over-the-top Italian sculpture and water feature in the York House Gardens. 

I also visited the Orleans House Gallery, with its elegant octagonal room (built 1720, newly restored and Grade I listed). 

The Irish band was still playing as I approached Richmond Bridge, ending their set with an instrumental version of Avicii's Wake Me Up, which wafted across the water:

So wake me up when it's all over

When I'm wiser and I'm older

All this time I was finding myself, and I

Didn't know I was lost

I love the song, but I'm not sure I'll adopt it as the anthem of my trip to Twickenham. It was a great day out though, probably the last warm, sunny day -- certainly of my visit to London if not of November as a whole. It was fun to revisit some streets I'd walked along years ago on the Richmond side of the river and to discover new places on the Twickenham side. 

And now for my final two days. On Monday, I spent the morning doing a Pilates class, publishing my previous blog post and experiencing extreme frustration as I attempted to top-up/add-on more data on my crappy EE mobile. I also worked in a 90 minute walk around bits of St John's Wood, on the other side of Primrose Hill from my gaff. I'd been meaning to do a whole proper walk there (another one of the Stephen Millar Hidden London Walks) but just hadn't gotten to it. The rest of the walk will have to wait until my next trip.

In the mid-afternoon, I headed into town to meet my friend Kathy in the cafe at Foyles Bookstore. She's a very talented artist and photographer, another person who I initially met through Guess Where London on Flickr. Kathy was the one mate I hadn't yet worked into my schedule, so I'm really glad we were able to do this. It was lovely just to sit and chat, catching up on the past three years. 

Knowing that Tuesday (my final day) would be taken up with packing and fretting with pre-travel anxiety, I opted to do only one last exhibition rather than run around trying to fit in as much as possible as I often have in the past. This exhibition -- Making Modernism at the Royal Academy -- had just opened on Saturday. It features the work of four German women who were trailblazers in modernism (post-impressionism, expressionism, etc.) in the early 20th century. 

OK, so I lied. On the way to the RA, I popped into Sotheby's to see Heads by Thierry Noir. 

And afterwards, since the torrential rain of earlier in the day had ceased, I got my last Meal Deal from Tesco -- a roasted veg and chestnut wrap, a bit more expensive than my usual egg mayo or tuna sweet corn, but possibly my best Meal Deal yet -- and sat on a relatively dry bench in St James's Park to eat it. Then I walked over to the National Gallery to look at the two Turner paintings, not seen in Britain for over 100 years, on loan from the Frick Collection in NYC. And then, I took my final ride of this visit on the number 168 bus back to Belsize Park. Since TfL are proposing to merge the 168 route with that of the number 1, sadly this may have been my last ride on the 168 ever.

Now it really and truly has come to an end. Once I get home and sleep for a day or so, I'll post some photos of the area where I stayed and will share some of my reflections on the whole adventure. Please leave any questions or thoughts in the comments section below and I'll try to get to them from the other side of the pond.

As always, I'm so grateful to all my mates in London who helped make this a fabulous visit. And thanks to my lovely AirBnB hosts who allowed me to make their flat my home from home. See you in 2023.

Stats: 

Saturday, Nov 12

£10 Transport Museum Depot tour

55p cookie

58p Lockets (like Hall's cough drops -- it's my allergies, not covid)

15,831 steps

6.77 miles

Sunday, Nov 13

£10 top up Oyster (I've been in Zone 4 twice in two days)

£2.50 rum raisin gelato 

25,937 steps

10.8 miles

Monday, Nov 14

£5 top up EE data (highway robbery!)

£20 top up Oyster card (so I have some left on it for my next visit)

£1.55 Boots

£7.70 tea and flapjack at Foyles

17,371 steps

7.21 miles

Tuesday, Nov 15

£14 Making Modernism ticket (£6 discount with Art Pass)

£2.75 sandwich

18,024 steps

7.58 miles