Rain and food and more rain

Sorry to keep whinging about the weather, but it's really been dreadful. I've never seen it like this in all the time I've been coming here this time of year. And Tuesday was the worst of the worst — several absolutely torrential downpours of Biblical proportions, flooding streets and pavement. I waited out one stonking shower inside the Tufnell Park station, but didn't get the brunt of it. My host, however, did and came home soaked to the skin. 

It was a pretty low-key day for me, after all the adventures of my two day trips. I took the tube to South Ken and walked up to the V&A, which is my usual go-to place when the weather looks foul. I saw a large exhibition called FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, all about where our food comes from, who produces it and how it's produced, food waste, human waste, as well as innovative products that are being made with waste. I learned a lot and am never, ever going back to eating meat. 

Not knowing what my next destination would be or what the weather had in store for me, I ate lunch in the bright, cheery caff by the new entrance on Exhibition Road. 

Sandwich consumed and still no rain, so I took the tube to Green Park, still not certain if I was going to the Royal Academy for the Gormley exhibition or if I'd potter around a bit. I consulted the Art Rabbit app and saw that there were two interesting gallery exhibitions in easy walking distance: Shiny Colourful Amusements for the Walls of the Bourgeoisie (Robert Montgomery, at the JD Malat gallery in Davies Street) and Super Rich Interior Decoration (new works by Grayson Perry at the Victoria Miro Mayfair in St George's Street). I enjoyed both a lot. This was the third time I'd seen an exhibition of Grayson Perry (the huge retrospective at the British Museum several years ago and his 2017 show at the Serpentine Gallery). I must say that the Mayfair crowd was a humourless lot — not much talking amongst the punters about the work, few smiles and no chuckles. Perhaps they realized how much the work was poking fun at them, their greed, conspicuous consumption and Tory politics and they were not amused. But I certainly was. 

Back home mid-afternoon to Tufnell Park to start packing for my trip to Arundel. In the evening, I dodged the puddles, caught the 390 bus and headed to the British Library to meet up with Judy for an evening about Asylum: Fact, Fiction, Truth, curated by Juliet Stevenson and featuring four women who incorporate stories of asylum and refugee experiences in their fiction, poetry and music. The panel was a bit uneven, with the women who spoke from their own experiences the most interesting and compelling. I'd like to read Dina Nayeri's book, The Ungrateful Refugee.

I'll be down in Arundel with friends David and Janie from Wednesday to Friday morning, so no blog post until I return. It looks like there's no rain in the forecast.

Stats:
£5 to top up Oyster for my upcoming journey into zone 3
£8.50 Food exhibition at the V&A (half price with my Art Pass)
£6.25 for lunch
£14 for Asylum at the British Library
£2.58 yogurt and ginger nuts from the convenience store in Tufnell Park
16,803 steps
7.14 miles

The sun! The sand! The sea!

On Monday I took another day trip, this time to the seaside town of Margate in Kent. I'd bought a cheap return ticket out of Victoria, which turned out to be the milk run. (There are faster, more expensive trains from St Pancras). The train took me through places known and unknown. As we rumbled along, I peeked into windows of flats and offices in towers around Battersea, looked down into back gardens and allotments in Brixton, crossed the River Medway and saw Rochester Castle and Cathedral (Roger and I had visited there a few years ago), got the first glimpse of the sea as we came into Whitstable, and saw the silhouette of the ruined church at Reculver above Herne Bay (Judy, Helen and I had done a day trip to Whitstable and Reculver even more years ago). From that point, it was all new to me. 

The sun was shining as I got off the train in Margate, so I headed straight toward the beach. The town is a fascinating combination of seaside tacky (arcades and casinos),  Victorian iron and wood shelters for sitting and looking out across the water, boarded up shops (some closed for the season and some permanently out of business), twisting lanes, lovely flint cottages, and a ton of photo ops.

I joined a bloke in looking out at the sea.

Passed a twisted letter box.

Ate my packed lunch at the colourful closed-for-the-season Sea Shed.

Walked across the golden sand.

Wandered in the streets and lanes of the Old Town.

Arrived at the Turner Contemporary around 2 pm and looked at the installations by the four artists who have been shortlisted for the 2019 Turner Prize. 

All four works were challenging and dealt with contemporary political and social issues, involving multiple media. This wasn't a "paint a nice picture and stick it on the wall" type of exhibition. I enjoyed aspects of three of the four, but the bubblegum pink feminist utopian city did nothing for me. The other three involved issues of immigration and isolation, women's activism in Northern Ireland, and how sound shapes memory among survivors of a brutal prison in Syria. Here's the review in the Guardian (which I've not yet read). 

When I left the gallery at around 4:30 pm, it was getting cooler, windier and darker, but I was still able to mooch around before making my way back to the train station. I looked for the Gormley sculpture and spotted his head bobbing above the waves. The tide was slowly going out, so I hung around long enough to see his shoulders. 

I made it back to the station in plenty of time for the 6 pm train back to Victoria. The rain started about half way to London. 

So, mates, for a great day out from London, choose Margate!

Stats:
$26.38 for train ticket (that's about 20 quid)
£1.75 for pastel de nata for the ride down
£3.30 for wine for the ride back
16,094 steps
6.71 miles

Rainy Sunday

I cut myself some slack today, opting for a lie in this morning, then doing laundry and tidying up my space. Monday is rubbish day in the borough of Islington, so I brought up my recycling to go out with that from the rest of the house. The weather is still being a pig and I was in no mood to go out in the rain, so I faffed around till a bit after noon before heading out. 

I really had only one destination for today — the Museum of London in Docklands. I would normally have taken the DLR to West India Quay, but there was a partial closure and I was routed via Canary Wharf.

I hadn't been there in ages, so I looked at some of the new buildings.

And walked through Jubilee Park, which sits on top of the tube station. There's a great water feature that forms the spine of the park, and there are lots of benches all around. The park does just what it's supposed to do — it brings the scale of things from that of the surrounding tall buildings back down to human level. It's quiet, away from the traffic noise, and even smells great because of all the fir trees. 

I saw some new (to me) sculpture.

And reached West India Quay. The Museum of London in Docklands is housed in a former sugar warehouse along an old wharf. The permanent exhibitions, which I'd seen, have to do with London's part in the sugar and slave trade as well as the development of the docks. But I was there today to see Secret Rivers, an exhibition about the lost, buried  and/or forgotten rivers that flow into the Thames. 

The exhibition had a number of items found on the foreshore of the Thames and in digging around the other rivers, similar to what I'd seen in the exhibition at the Bargehouse except that these objects were really exceptional. The stuff includes bones, coins, leather shoes, children's toys, an engraved dog collar from the 18th (?) century, axes, daggers, a Medieval three-holer toilet seat, audio of sounds of the rivers, video from down in the sewers and a cope (a cape or cloak) worn by the Bishop of Lambeth at a recent blessing of the Thames that was made by an artist from the detritus of the river. 

I told myself that if it was not raining when I left the museum, I'd take the overground up to Shoreditch to mooch around for the rest of the afternoon. But it was raining, so I executed Plan B, heading back to London Bridge station and a short walk to the White Cube Bermondsey. 

I didn't know anything about the three women artists on exhibition, but I was immediately drawn to the galleries containing the work of Mona Hatoum, a Palestinian artist whose work involves themes of surveillance, incarceration, occupation and globalization. I managed to catch the second half of a video in which she talked about her work and what it meant. I really liked the exhibition and thoroughly enjoyed taking photos of the installations. I love photographing at the White Cube. The walls are white (duh) and the visitors often wear black with pops of colour here and there. It makes for good fun photographing the works and the punters looking at the works. 

Back in Bermondsey Street:

After more dodging of rain, I'm now back in Tufnell Park. Soon, I'll heat up my take-away Ethiopian that I'll have for me suppa. Off to Margate in the morning. 

Stats:
£35.10 for another one-week travel card loaded onto my Oyster
£1.50 cookie
£6 take-away for dinner
15,487 steps
6.6 miles

A Daytrip to Bath

I should be starting this post with a pithy quote from Jane Austen as she spent a lot of time in Bath and it figures in her fiction, but I've never read any of her books. I'm sure she had a lot to say about the social scene, the Georgian architecture and taking the waters at the Pump Room. I'm not as eloquent as she, so you'll just have to settle for my account of my day out on Saturday.

I booked my ticket several weeks ago and got the cheapest day return I could find. It's best to travel to Bath from London at the weekend, as the week day train schedules are more suited to people commuting for work than to daytrippers like me. The 8:30 am train from Paddington got me into Bath at 10 am, just enough time to stop in at the visitors' centre to get a free map of the centre city before the free 10:30 walking tour offered by the mayor's guides. There are three different walks (two free, one for £15) that have assembly points outside the Roman baths and the Abbey — the mayor's guide tour was the one with the massive crowd awaiting the start. I was a bit worried during the introduction as the group was so big and there didn't seem to be any use of amplification or headsets, but it was quickly revealed that there were six guides available and that the throng would be divided. I found myself in a group of about 16 people with an excellent guide called, coincidentally, Austen. He really knew his stuff and told us gobs as he lead us around, first inside the old Roman city walls and then uphill to the newer (1700s) part of the city, for two hours. Although I could have downloaded a self-guided walk or an audio guide, this guided walk turned out to be a great thing to do. I learned so much about the development of Bath, from the pre-Roman settlement, through 400 years of Romans, to some local kings, the Norman conquest, the building of the Abbey around 1500, a bunch of kings called George and the development of the 18th century Georgian city, to the rediscovery of the Roman architecture. 

Along the route, we saw the sites of some of the hot springs that have been used through the centuries for relaxation and healing, locations of various Medieval and Georgian hospitals (to this day, one of Bath's largest industries is health care), lovely Palladian facades facing pretty squares, the King's Circus, the Royal Crescent and the Assembly Rooms. I peeled off from the group at the Assembly Rooms, the penultimate stop on the walk, to eat my packed lunch on a bench and then backtrack to the Royal Crescent to see No. 1 Royal Crescent, a restored, beautifully appointed Georgian home. 

From there, I reversed the walk's route back down the Gravel Walk. On the way up, I'd seen an open door leading into the Georgian Garden and wanted to return for a look around. 

I then zigged and zagged back down hill, passing along Milsom Street with its bow-front shops, a posh commercial street in the 18th century and a bustling place today. I nipped into the Guildhall Market, had a sit down, a tea and a Welsh cake (a bit like a dense currant scone) before taking a look at the Pulteney Bridge with its shops on both sides (like the Rialto Bridge) and the weir on the River Avon. As I looked out at the bridge and at weir, I could hear the sound of a cheering crowd. Turns out that the rugby pitch was just across the river and Bath were playing a home game. 

My next stop was the Roman Baths. It's an expensive ticket, even at concession price, and I wondered how looking at an old swimming pool filled with green water was going to be worth the price of admission. Well, there's a lot more to the site than just that. Underneath the Georgian bath building and the Pump Room lies an entire complex of Roman bathing and worshiping facilities. With audio device in hand, I spent nearly two hours going through the exhibitions and numerous rooms. 

The photo above is of a bloke that they pay to sit around wearing a cloak and pretending to be a Roman. He was periodically approached by a punter who engaged him in conversation. Wonder if he spoke in Latin.

My plan was to go to the Pump Room after to taste the waters, but it seems to have closed sometime when I was roaming around the subterranean ruins. My other plan was to leave an hour for seeing the inside of Bath Abbey. I exited through the gift shop right at 5 pm, having made a mental note that the Abbey was open until 6. Not that day, it seems. They had just closed the doors in order to hold their annual harvest dinner for the congregation. 

And so I spent my final hour mooching around in the waning light. I passed a row of shops selling tourist tat and got a tote bag (with top zip!) for a fiver. It will be perfect to use as an overnight bag for my upcoming trip down to Arundel. By this time, the rugby fans had spilled back into the centre city and were heading into the pubs and restaurants or flocking to the train and coach stations. Time for me to catch the 6:43 train back to Paddington. 

As I write this, it's a gloomy, damp Sunday morning. I had a lie in, did my laundry and am tidying up a bit. Tomorrow it's Margate!

Stats:
$43.71 train ticket (booked online from the US, so charged in dollars)
£4.55 for No. 1 Royal Crescent (half off the concession price with Art Pass)
£4 tea and cake
£18.55 Roman Baths
£5 souvenir tote bag
£2.15 water and olive roll for train journey home
£12 wine and veg from market in Tufnell Park
21,671 steps
9.06 miles

Up the Archway and across the Heath

My friend Jen, who is a professional walking tour guide with Footprints of London, offered to take me on a bespoke version of her Archway and Highgate walk this morning. I met up with her half way up Dartmouth Park Hill; we continued walking upward to the Archway to see where the former gyratory has been converted to a pedestrianized plaza of sorts, called Navigator Square, with a disused pub in the middle that was where the cover for The Kinks album Muswell Hillbillies was photographed. We walked past a derelict Methodist hall, various new office towers, a former almshouse, a Mercers' Maiden (the Mercers owned property in Islington and founded the almshouse), up to — and then up over — Archway Bridge. We visited the Whittington Stone and the statue of Dick Whittington's cat, placed where it's said he heard the bells of St Mary-le-Bow calling him back to London when he and the cat set out to leave town. The bells seemed to say, "Turn again, Whittington, thrice Mayor of London." In fact, he was mayor four times. 

We walked through the incredibly lovely Waterlow Park, dubbed the "garden for the gardenless," and decided to stop at the caff in the park for a cuppa just as the skies opened up. The downpour gave us an opportunity to take a look at an exhibition of local artists' work, which was impressive. The rain soon stopped and we pushed on to explore some housing developments tucked up against Waterlow Park and Highgate Cemetery. Jen showed me were some scenes of The Bodyguard (the recent tv series, not the Whitney Houston movie) were filmed in Highgate New Town. I'm going to have to rewatch the series now. She ended our tour right next to a bus stop where I could get a bus over to Highgate Road and an entrance to Hampstead Heath. 

The weather was still looking fine as I started the uphill climb on the east side of the Heath. I debated whether to go left to Parliament Hill or follow the path to the right that would take me past the ponds and up to Kenwood House. Quickly, clouds rolled in and things began to look iffy again. I decided to go for the Parliament Hill route, hoping it would take me to the Viaduct Bridge, which I'd never seen, and out to Spaniards Road. The heath is a wild place and there are scores of paths that crisscross all over it. My phone was not able to figure out where I was, but that was ok because I had my trusty copy of Michael Middleditch's The London Mapguide with me. It's never let me down and even pointed me to the cute little toilet block/cottage in the woods. 

So there I was, in Spaniards Road just feet from the entrance to the Hill Garden and Pergola, when it began sprinkling again. Undeterred, I walked in the garden as the rain started chucking down. Since the structure I was there to see is a pergola, it wasn't going to offer me much in the way of shelter from the storm. I hightailed it to the cupola (a brolly for the brolly-less) and waited out the rain there, wondering if I should make a dash for the nearest bus stop. I was still mulling over my strategy when the skies cleared and the most beautiful late afternoon light bathed the gardens. (The photos below were taken when it was still raining, but I'll post the brighter ones on my photo site in due time.)

My spirits lifted by the sunshine, I reckoned I could get one more destination in before heading back to my gaff. I hopped a bus to Hampstead station, got the tube to Warren Street, and walked over to Regent's Park to see the Frieze sculpture. I'm no judge of sculpture but I know what I like. I liked the Emily Young. 

You be the judge of the rest. 

I've been trying to take different bus routes to and from my gaff. I hadn't yet taken the 134 to Tufnell Park, so I walked a few blocks east of Regent's Park to where it stopped on Hampstead Road. And I waited. And waited. When it finally arrived, the journey to Tufnell Park was short, but not fast enough to avoid the next onslaught of torrential rain that started just minutes before my stop and ended just minutes after I walked in my door. 

I'm off to Bath tomorrow. Fingers crossed I have some decent weather for my day out. 

Stats:

£3.60 for bread from the local baker

£4.85 for tea and coffee for Jen and me 

26,553 steps

11.2 miles

According to my Fitbit, I climbed 94 flights of stairs today. In reality, that was mostly uphill slogging.