Britain – Page 30 – Where is Phil now?

Hadleigh Castle

Monday 02 June 2014 – Hadleigh Castle, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.

Way back at the beginning of April I took a walk along the Thames Estuary from Leigh-on-Sea to Southend, and just before we entered Leigh-on-Sea on the train I noticed a small ruined castle on a hill and decided that I should make a visit there soon. Once home I discovered the castle was Hadleigh Castle and when a quite day and a dry spell arrived at the same time I took a trip out there.

Hadleigh Castle is on a small farm gifted to English Heritage by the Salvation Army in 1948 and is in turn surrounded by the Hadleigh Country Park, which is owned by the Essex Council and was the venue for the mountain bike event at the 2012 London Olympics.

The building of the castle started sometime in the early 13th century when the land was gifted to Hubert de Burgh by King John I for favours rendered. A few years later the de Burgh family fell out of favour with King Henry III and they were stripped of the castle and land and it became a royal palace for a while before falling into disrepair in the middle of the century.

There was a revival of its fortunes under Edward II and III in the 14th century but after that there was little interest in the castle by the royal family and it was finally sold to Lord Richard Rich in 1551 and it was dismantled so the stone could be sold.

The castle is built on a low clay hill over marshes and farmland over-looking on the banks of the Thames Estuary and has been subject to much subsidence over the years. I saw a piece of the castle lying in a ditch as I was walking across from the coastal path.

After a few nice days, with me getting all excited that summer was on the way and I could get out and about again, we then settled into almost two weeks of off and on rainy weather. When the forecast suggested a few hours of sun and high cloud before a late afternoon of rain I thought sod it, grabbed a ticket and jumped on a train from Fenchurch St to Benfleet. I decided to walk from Benfleet up to Hadleigh Castle and on to Leigh-on-Sea where I would have a coffee before heading back to London. In theory I would miss the rain.

The train journey took about forty minutes and then it was another ten minutes of “thinking I know where I am going” walking until I reached the gate of Hadleigh Country Park.

The path took me along the bank between the estuary and the flat lands of the park,

And away in the distance the gentle hill of the Olympic mountain bike course, which I think is open for the public to ride. As a side note I have now bought another bike, a year after my last one was stolen, it is a mountain bike and once I get my fitness up I will see if I can ride here, once I have a couple of test rides under my belt. I am soooooooooooooooooooo not ready to do any decent bike rides right now.

I crossed the railway lines that I would travel on later in the day when I return to London on the train.

A glimpse of the only remaining tower of the castle in the distance.

The path up to castle from this side is surprisingly steep!

There is not a huge amount left of the castle, some of the outer wall is passed through on approach.

I was surprised with the number of visitors there, at least a dozen other people were visiting or relaxing in the grounds – I fully expected to be the only person there. The view to the south and over the Thames is quite impressive – as were the clouds moving in from the west…

The remains of the kitchen.

The last remains of one of the towers built under Edward III.

This tower, also from Edward III is the most preserved piece of the castle.

With the rain pending, I took a last look around and then started down the much gentler path towards Leigh-on-Sea, turning back for a couple of last shots.

I was walking fairly fast down the path back towards town, and once there decided to flag the extra walk from the station to the cafe area about a kilometre away. I jumped on the next train and headed home.

It was a good few hours out, I explored another old castle and got to see a bit more of the area close to London – an area that most Londoners will never see themselves!

Of course it never did rain at all 🙂

Gods Own Junkyard

Saturday 31 May 2014 – God’s Own Junkyard – Walthamstow.

God’s own junkyard has been a feature of Walthamstow for many, years and amongst other things is a place to store the neon signs collected by its owner. Last year the site it was on was sold so the ever pervasive building of flats could spread there. At the time it seemed to be the end of God’s own Junkyard and there was a bit of a local hue and cry about it – it even made the national papers, so maybe it was bigger than local. Luckily a new place was found and God’s Own Junkyard can now be found inside at the small industrial estate on Shernhall St, and still in Walthamstow.

Chris Bracey who owns it has been in the neon-sign business for many many years, originally working with his father who also made neon signs. The “Junkyard” is a massive collection of signs made by and collected by Chris, his work has been seen in loads of major motion pictures and videos. It is also frequently used as a location for photos shoots and videos. Some of the work is for sale, though I suspect a lot of them are just too good to let go.

It is great place to visit, for a look around – and from this weekend (hopefully) there will be a cafe opening for coffee and food. I really enjoy visiting there. The photos will give you some idea of what the place looks like.

There is a small garden out the back, where coffee can be drunk and food eaten. It is almost as quirky as the inside and I really liked the subliminal message here…

One of the other great things about an afternoon visit to God’s own junkyard – is the factory over the way – a new East London brewery – The Wild Card Brewery. It was too early in the day to be open when I was there, but I have been for a visit and a taste before and the beer is brilliant.

For a good afternoon out, check out Shernhall St Industrial estate….

And now for something completely different – ComicCon 2014

Saturday 24 May 2014 – ComicCon, London.

I cannot believe it has been over a month since I last wrote a post, I also find it hard to believe that I have not done anything in that time that I found blog-worthy – though it must be true as there are no posts. I have been pretty busy though, there seems to always be a lot happening. I did start a project to photograph all the remaining sections of London’s Roman walls and thought I had finished until I found a blog post that showed I had missed a fair few pieces. If it stops raining in the coming week I will get out there and finish it off before I start the next project on my list.

A few weeks ago my mate Steve asked me if I wanted to go to ComicCon at the ExCel Centre and take some photos, I have never been to a comic festival before so immediately said yes, something completely different to my normal activities.

I have been suffering from some minor back pain for a while so decided I would not take the big camera as I get a sore back from lugging it around. I took the small Panasonic, which was a decision I really regretted at the end of the day. I took a lot of photos and deleted most of them as the focal point on the camera was not in the centre where I thought it was, I had knocked it out to one side. This meant that virtually all my photos were badly out of focus – gutting ! It was my fault; I have never really gotten into the habit of closely checking photos when I take them – “chimping”. I glanced at them to see if I had exposure set correctly, but without my reading glasses on everything is sort of blurry anyway. Mistake – oh well. Lessons learned – when taking photos of people in low light environments use the Canon, or learn how to take photos properly with the Panasonic first.

Steve and I had arranged to meet at the ExCel at 10:00 but I got there really early as I badly over-estimated how long it would take me to get there. The train ride in was interesting as the carriage was jammed, with half the people in weird and wonderful costumes, some I recognised – most I didn’t. It must have been a surreal experience for those on the train who did not know what was going on.

I grabbed a coffee and stood on the concourse from the station and watched the crowds go past.

Slowly and surely I was forced further and further back by the crowds as I tried to maintain a position where Steve could easily find me, until finally I was right back at the end of the concourse and just waited in the crowd. I was really surprised at the amount of people here!

Steve arrived on time and we slowly made our way into the venue, past some pretty serious security.

We finally made through the front gate into the centre itself, where we split into two groups, those with priority tickets, like us – and those without. Those without had to queue downstairs.

While we went into the exhibition centre itself – into another mass of people waiting to get their tickets checked.

Once through the ticket barrier I assumed it would be all go. No – there was the wrist band barrier to go through next.

Finally after an hour and a half of queuing we were in !!

I had no idea what to expect inside, I knew there would be stands and normal exhibition type stuff and I knew there would be people dressed as their favourite character, but I was surprised at the amount of people in costume – and I thought it was all rather cool. Most people would pose for photos if asked and there were (I am assuming) a number of professionals posing in all the well lit locations. There were a lot of photographers!

The exhibition itself was not that interesting for me, I am not a comic guy or gamer, so a lot of the references were meaningless, though of course there was still plenty of familiar things – like Cyanide and Happiness – I like how “The Joker” is buying something…

There were stands from some of the big boys in the genre, like Transformers and Dr Who.

Along with live comic drawings.

Gaming

Loads of large weapons – luckily there was no bag search !

And weird stuff for sale.

After walking round, the rather disappointing, exhibition areas for a while Steve and I hung out in the couple of locations were the light was good and took photos, which in my case were mostly rubbish, though I saved a few for the sake of documenting the event.

Yay – R2D2 !

Even evil gods like Loki need some time out to keep their social media feeds updated…

I left just after 2:00 and headed outside and was completely surprised to see hundreds of people out there. I had read on the event program about loads of meet-ups for the various fan clubs and here there were in the all their costumed glory. Perhaps we should just stayed outside !!

It was a fun day out, I was disappointed that some zombie facial close-ups I took were just terrible, along with a load of other out of focus shots. You would think I would have learned this lesson before now, but no – I haven’t!

I will definitely go again, but will just hang out outside – where the real action is.

Thanks Steve, I look forward to seeing some of your photos – no pressure 🙂

I made it home just before the rain hit!

Following the Ching.

Good Friday 18 April 2014 – River Ching, Chingford to Highams Park.

Last weekend El and I took a walk up to Highams Park, which is two train stops north of where she lives in Walthamstow. There is a lake (read large pond) in a small woodland extension of the much larger Epping Forest and as it was a nice day it was a good place to walk to, and around. Plus El got to show me where she used to live – in a house long knocked down to allow a part of the North Circular motorway to be built.

When we walked around the lake we saw a track heading off into the distance and decided that we should come back and have bit more of an explore – but armed with a bit of information as to where track was likely to go. Not that you can get too lost in this section of the forest – it is completely surrounded by suburban streets. I have been keen to explore a bit more of Epping Forest and had bought a map of the area a while back, so after a map referral we decided to catch a train to Chingford, head up to Connaught Water and follow the River Ching back down to Highams Park Lake. It was not a long walk, only a few kilometres, but in theory it should all be off road and maybe in the trees – it sounded pretty damn perfect to me.

We arrived in Chingford late morning and found Connaught Water fairly easily, it is only a km or so from the station which is on the southern edge of Epping Forest. It was a reasonably sunny day, but there was quite a cold wind blowing and out on the open areas of the forest park it was quite chilly – so we were looking forward to getting into some shelter from the trees, plus a forest walk really should have trees!

Connaught Water is called a lake but really it is just a large pond, but it has fishing and boating and at twenty five minutes from Liverpool St station on the train – it is pretty damn cool !

It also appears to be the source of the mighty River Ching, and this is the headwaters… It is hard to believe that when this flooded back in 2009 it actually caused damage!

The river flows from here down to the River Lea closer to Walthamstow, though we were only walking the forested section.

The first section of the path was well formed, though there is absolutely no signage at all at any stage and this was a bit frustrating, especially matched with a map last printed in 2010. Things had changed a bit since then.

The path is shared with walkers, runners, bikers and in some sections – horse riders, we saw a few of walkers, runners and riders on the way, though once we were out of the main section of the forest it was very quiet. The path was pretty dry, but you can see where it has been heavily cut up in winter by bikes, horses and loads of runners from the nearby Orion Harriers. Some parts look like they could be quite fun to ride on as well – unlike this open and smooth trail.

After crossing the main road north from Chingford we were off the clearly defined path and followed the river more closely.

The forest was really nice here, though we were really in a small section of parkland in the middle of suburban London it was beautifully quiet and there was an amazing amount of bird song to provide some background.

We crossed another road and the track followed the edge of a golf course for a kilometre or so, crossing the fairway at one stage, which was a bit disconcerting as it was not sign posted, we were not really paying attention and there were people were playing the hole. Fortunately they must be used to walkers as they waved us through without any aggravation.

We got a bit misplaced at the end of the golf course, but with a quick look at the phone we found the entrance to the top end of Highams Park, and a nice little area full of late spring blue bells.

Again the forest here was really nice, some lovely spring foliage on the trees and a nice windy and clean ‘river’ to follow.

At one point there was even a rope swing, though I am assuming you are not supposed to drop into the river from it !

After an hour and half of walking we popped out on to the ‘lake’ at Highams Park.

We could have continued on for another couple of kilometres of forest through to Hollow Pond** but finished the walk here and headed to the nearby supermarket (they had Picpoul de pinet wine on special) and then caught the bus home…

It was a really nice walk, and hopefully the start of a summer of Epping Forest walks.

** Hollow Ponds is the title of a new track by ex Blur and Gorrilaz vocalist Damon Albarn who was brought up in nearby Leytonstone. I like the song and it is cool that something as small and local as Hollow Pond gets name checked by a fairly big star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwfsV50m7Dg

Bury St Edmunds.

Saturday/Sunday 5/6 April 2014 – Bury St Edmunds.

On Thursday evening El and I were sitting around home chatting and quite randomly decided that we should go somewhere and stay the night on Saturday. We had a hurried look on the interweb mainly at train timetables and maps of places within a couple of hours from home – and were then horrified at how much train fairs were at the last minute…. We looked at York for instance, return for two people 400 pounds. This is just insane – what the hell is wrong with these people! Obviously with some pre-planning it would be cheaper, but we are not always pre-planning people. Anyway, we decided on Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. It had a cathedral, a market, a nice hotel and was cheap enough to travel to, cheap enough that we decided to go first class. I have never done first class on a train before – or any other form of transport for that matter. Where is my first class appropriate collar and tie you may ask ?this is a civil society after all !

The forecast promised us a cloudy but rain free day on the Saturday and showers on Sunday, which suited us fine. We left mid morning from Liverpool St for Ipswich, where we had a connecting train, and though we left on time for some unknown reason we were late arriving so ended up with an extra thirty minutes in Ipswich station, surprisingly it was not that exciting, and the coffee was crap as well.

We arrived in Bury St Edmunds and on the walk from the station to the hotel we passed a record fair, that just had to be visited later in the afternoon… We walked though the nicer parts of the market town and with a little bit of g-mapping found our hotel easily enough.

The Georgian era hotel looks really nice from the front and Charles Dickens stayed there in the 1800’s and is mentioned in his book The Pickwick Papers, slightly less cerebrally Angelina Jolie stayed there while filming Tomb Raider. Sadly I can report that while I have seen Tomb Raider I have not read The Pickwick Papers.

Once checked in we decided to go for a walk around the old part of the market town, have some lunch and check out the record fair. The Angle Hotel is on Angel Hill and over the road from St Edmundsbury Cathedral. I gleaned the following from a Suffolk guide book “Throughout the middle ages Angel Hill served as the site for the Bury Fair, attended by traders and entertainers from all over Europe. Today it still attracts visitors from abroad and home, but mostly serves as a car park.” I just found that hilarious…. And here it is – the site of the famous Bury Fair, and the front of our hotel.

Our first stop was the cathedral over the road, though I am a little confused about what bits are from what era, the original abbey was started in 1065, though the actual cathedral part was not fully completed until 2010… I do like cathedrals, but not so much the modern ones and I was a little disappointed. It was nice, but not “wow, how did they do this x hundreds of years ago nice”. The organist was having a wee jam session while we there and it was very loud – and not my cup of tea musically.

I am a huge sucker for high vaulted roofs!

The older parts of the abbey were round the back in the gardens and we decided to get lunch first and check them out later. We walked up through the market, a mix of traditional farmers markets – prices half that of London, and the same old plastic crap that is for sale in every market on every continent. The shops were fairly bland as well, the usual suspect high street retailers and the only boutique type places catered for a different market to us. The record fair was a bit of a disappointment as well, only a couple of people selling stuff, there was an LP copy of NZ’s Straightjacket Fits ‘Hail’ album and I was tempted, but did not buy it in the end.

I can report that lunch was good, the highlight of the trip to be honest!

We had a table reserved in the hotel restaurant and reviews had been pretty good, so we had high expectations. It was however, like the rest of day and was slightly disappointing. The menu was reasonable, the food was OK, it looked good and was prepared well – it just didn’t set the taste buds on fire. At dessert they got El’s cheese board wrong and the waiter said the port he served me was the cognac I asked for, when I said it was port he almost argued with me, it was even in a port glass! They were both sorted out, but not what we expected for the price.

There was quite a cool little underground bar in the hotel, we went down for a drink and by the time we managed to get our drinks all the seats were taken so we ended up heading back to our room to watch Match of the Day on TV – I will admit that was likely anyway.

The hotel was grossly overpriced for what it was, and our room was pretty shabby compared to places we have stayed in that have been a lot cheaper, but positives I can say about the room was even though the place was pretty busy it was dead quiet, and the bed very comfortable, a mega-sleep was had.

After another bout of rubbish service and an average breakfast we were going to walk around the abbey gardens before heading home. However the rain put paid to those plans so I nipped out to take a couple of photos of the abbey – including rain drops, before grabbed a break in the showers and nipped to the station.

We were lucky to get first class tickets on the way back as the train had a stop in Cambridge on the way back and what seemed like 10,000 people got on the train. It is the weekend of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the Thames in London and there were a lot of fans travelling.

I am glad we went to Bury St Edmunds, it was nice to go away, and walk and hang out together – but we won’t be rushing back, even though I would have liked to explore the abbey gardens a bit more, just in case I missed something.

A coastal walk, Leigh-on-Sea to Southend.

Friday March 28 2014 – Leigh-on-Sea to Southend-on-Sea.

When I was out walking Hampstead Heath on Monday with Steve we came up with a loose plan to head out to the coast on Friday if the weather remained agreeable; which it did. We decided to head to Leigh-on-Sea on the Essex south coast and the mouth of the River Thames. It is only forty or so minutes from London’s Fenchurch St Station, so dead easy to get to.

Leigh-on-Sea is an old fishing village that has become a wee bit gentrified, but still retains some of its working past, so thee was a bit of photographic grittiness mixed with some nice pubs to try for lunch. Who can ask for more than that.

We left London mid-morning, it had been a foggy start to the day, and by the time we arrived the local fog had cleared but the horizon stayed foggy for most of the rest of the day. The railway line cuts the town in half so we ended up staying on the seaward side of the tracks and in the end decided we would walk the 5km or so up to Southend-on-Sea and stop to take pictures on the way.

For a large part of the walk the seaward side is quite narrow, basically a walking path running next to the edge of the sea, with a few small wharves along the way. As you would expect for a fishing and shell-fishing village there was a lot of small boats along the way.

There was also a small strip of sheds selling seafood, though only one was open on the day. I wonder if the numerous closed sheds open in the summer months – as I suspect this is a very busy walking area. I certainly hope so.

There is also a bit of history around small ship building in this area as well.

At the end of the town there are a couple of quite nice looking pubs and cafes, though it was sort of lunch time we carried on walking.

There was also a couple of places selling locally caught seafood as well as ‘Thia’ fish cakes – not quite sure what they are!

Just outside of town I was really surprised to come across this nice little beach just outside of Leigh-on-Sea. It was completely not what I was expecting to see. I will admit that my ignorance of this area was pretty profound, I had heard stories of this part of the coast being a bit sad and run down, laughable as a place to holiday – but how wrong I was. OK, it is not Cornwall or Devon, but the beaches looked nice, there was some decent greenery and for a beach under an hour from central London this section of coast is really nice. I stood completely corrected!

I really liked these beach swimming pools; the tide here does go out a very long way. I liked the hard angles and the shapes and they way they contrasted to the natural surroundings. I also liked the fact that the distant shore of the other side of the Thames estuary is smothered by the fog.

The old minesweeper, HMS Wilton is now the home of the Essex Yacht Club, but is famous for being the first plastic and fibreglass warship made back in the early 1970’s. It was retired from duty in 1994 and became the yacht club in the early noughties.

The walk past Chalkwell and Westcliff to Southend took us a couple of hours as we stopped a few times to take photos, I was very fascinated by all the man-made structures poking into the sea and took quite a few pictures as we went.

I also really like this ever-so seaside British building – the pavilion, not something we have so much of in New Zealand, but everywhere along the coast of England that I have visited.

Soon we came in sight of the Southend pier, at 2.14 kms, it is the world’s longest pleasure pier. I guess if it had not been so foggy we would have spotted the pier from miles away ! The pier is that long as the tide goes out for over a mile on this section of coast. They must have been really really keen to build the pier here !

I had a fish and chip lunch in one of the small fish and chip shops open near the pier head and then we caught a small train out to the end of the pier, my knee was really starting hurt – it has been plaguing me for a while and I didn’t fancy another couple of miles of walking. I was glad we did as there was nothing open at the end of the pier, plus it was quite brisk out there, so we did not stay for long.

Once off the pier we walked up the steps to the top of the cliff for a look back over the pier and the closed fairground.

We then caught a train back to London. We were going to stop for a pint at Leigh-on-Sea but decided to head back into town and have an end of the day beer there instead.

It was another really good day out, I learned to not always trust what people say about a place as I kinda liked Southend-on-Sea and the other local towns – though I would not go there on a sunny mid-summers weekend – I suspect it would be madness ! I am keen to walk the other way from Southend out to Shrewburyness, so I will definitely visit again.

Next time I will have to try the famous Rossi ice cream as well.

Hampstead Viaduct – yes there is such a thing !

Monday March 24 2014 – Hampstead Heath, London.

As you would have seen from the side bar of this blog I randomly and inconsistently upload photos to other websites like Instagram and Flickr. I am not particularly consistent with either and just like I am with WordPress blogs I am not that good when it comes to following and liking other peoples work. However, I am not totally unsociable and I do follow a couple of people on those sites and one of them recently posted a lovely monochrome image of Hampstead Viaduct on Instagram. I had never heard of there being a viaduct in Hampstead Heath, but after a bit of research I found that sure enough there was one.

The viaduct was completed in 1847 by the Lord Mayor of Hampstead with the intention of providing an access way to allow the building houses on the heath. His plans were, thankfully, rejected soundly and we are now blessed with a lovely viaduct and a lovely heath.

The day started as a blinder, so I was really looking forward to getting out and about.

Fellow photographer, Steve had a day off work so we decided to a photo walk starting in Camden to look at some new street art and then hike up the hill to Hampstead Heath to look for the viaduct. I have posted about the street art here.

After checking out the art in Camden we walked up through Hampstead, almost to the top of the heath, I was surprised about hilly it was in Hampstead, having been here once before. I knew about Parliament Hill as El and I walked up it, but I was surprised that the rest of the park was also quite hilly. I was equally surprised to find that the top of the park was forested, my experience so far had been grassed fields with trees, but this part was almost forest like. I am now thinking about coming here for a trail run some time soon.

Using Google Maps we found the entrance into the park we were looking for, and soon in we found this little hut and an overgrown wall, which I was rather fascinated with. I know we were in the middle of London, but I do like to find man-made objects that are slowly being overtaken by nature.

There are trails everywhere, so I did the highly unusual and asked an old couple we met on the way the direction of the viaduct, and I am glad I did as we never would have found it heading the way we were.

I was disappointed to find that we could not get close the base of the viaduct, as it is all fenced off, I was tempted to jump the fence at one point as I could see a decent shot going begging, but decided against it once we found the main viewing spot around the front. I only had the wide angle lens so things are a bit far away. The sun was out while we were here, so some nice reflections were had. I must say it is a very cool bit of London.

After the viaduct we wandered into Hampstead for a bit of lunch and then continued up the hill to the top and Whitestone Pond with some wild grasses which I was quite taken by.

We crossed the road and wandered around Golders Hill and the pergolas in Hill Gardens. I loved this sign at the entrance to the pergolas.

The view from the top over the west heath, really did make me think I was not in London anymore.

The small and unassuming Inverforth House from the pergolas.

Steve and I had pretty much had enough of walking around by then so walked back down into Hampstead and found a convenient pub to sit down for a refreshing pint before we went our separate ways and I went home.

It was another good day out, I saw more bits of London I have not seen before and I really liked the viaduct. I was not overly excited with my photography today, I discarded a higher percentage than the ones I kept. I definitely seem to take better photos when I am out on my own.

I think I have found the place I want to visit when London is covered in snow !

A revisit to Greenwich, again

Tuesday 18 March 2014 – Greenwich.

After applying for a few jobs throughout the the morning I decided to take a walk to Greenwich after lunch. I have been there a few times before and have never had a really good look around as it is quite a big space; not that I ended up with one this time either. It is a good two hour walk there from my place so by the time I arrived things were winding down, and I was a bit knackered anyway. I did spend an hour there and knocked off a couple of things I wanted to do, like walk under the Thames in the pedestrian tunnel and try to find the bank building were my mum worked when she first left school.

I did manage to walk under the river, but I failed to find the bank building as the high street of Greenwich Town has changed a lot since then. Sorry Mum !!

As I will return to Greenwich another day I didn’t really make note of the things I took pictures of, so not a lot of detail here about the history of the place. Another time perhaps. I did enjoy the walk and I did enjoy taking pictures.

I walked from my place in London Bridge as much as I could along the side of the Thames. The way is a wee bit confusing, poor signage and new building works, plus having to go around all the little wharves make it a longer walk than it looks. A couple of miles up the Thames from home is the Brunel Museum, somewhere I have yet to visit, and I didn’t today due to time restraints, the building is cool though.

This says a lot of things about this part of London !

Yesterday, when I vaguely planned going for a walk this afternoon the forecast was for a bit of cloud and a bit of sun, I think the sun may have passed by in the morning while I was head down in my laptop as I had to delay my departure due to a brief shower. There were a couple along the way, but this was made up for by some lovely clouds, and the sun did briefly pop out once I had arrived.

This is Surrey Docks Farm, a small farm garden in the heart of Thames side south east London, very neat. It would be great to see more community vegetable spaces in London.

A lot of the Thames Walk passes around the side of old and new housing estates and blocks of very expensive flats. In most cases you can walk river side of these blocks, but sometimes there is a detour round the side streets.

The whole of the east city area of the Thames was a working port and most of the older building are the warehouses that served the many many wharves along the banks. Here and there are relics from the days when ships were worked here.

Peter the Great, the Russian Tzar once studied shipbuilding as a youth and lived in Deptford in the late 1600s, I assume before he was the king 🙂 There is a monument to him on the river side.

Once I arrived at Greenwich my first stop was for a coffee and the cafe I chose just happened to also be the brewery for the lovely Meantime beer, we sold a couple of varieties in the pub I worked in. I was well behaved and only had a coffee, decaf ! Oh, Ok and a chocolate chip biscuit 🙂

I spent most of an hour wandering around the royal college area at Greenwich, as well as walking up to Greenwich town in a failed attempt to find mum’s bank.

Apart from nipping inside the Painted Hall just before closing I was outside the Old Royal Naval College. I really enjoyed the fact that there was hardly anyone around while I was there.

The Cutty Sark.

I have been to Greenwich, and written about it a couple of times before, but I did not realise the tunnel under the Thames was still running until my flatmate mentioned it recently. I had walked past the entrance at least a couple of times on earlier visits and just did not realise what it was.

So I decided to walk under the Thames to the other side, it takes a few minutes and is a little weird as there are numerous damp patches on the walls.

I took a photo of the Old Royal Naval College from the other side and then walked back through the tunnel to Greenwich, where I caught a train home.

It was a really enjoyable walk and again I was happy with the photos I took.

Waltham Abbey

Saturday 15 March 2014 -Waltham Abbey.

El had to pick up her eldest son from his digs in Oxford as university holidays start on Monday and he had to leave the college dorm for the duration. As El does not drive, nor have a car, she rented a car for me to drive us over to Oxford to pick up Joe and his stuff. We were back in Walthamstow by early afternoon so as it was such a glorious day we decided to go for a drive out to Waltham Abbey. It is not too far away and is rumoured to be the final resting place of King Harold, killed by an arrow to the eye fighting the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is a very famous story, and one that had me fascinated when I was kid !

There has been a church on the site in Waltham Abbey, just north of the M25 motorway since the 7th century, though the core of the existing church was started in 1050. The church became an abbey in 1184 and was greatly expanded until it was largely pulled apart after its dissolution in 1540. Once the abbey had been dissolved, almost destroying the local economy, and was no longer used by the monks the buildings were torn down and the stone re-used for other buildings. The church itself was by claimed by the local people and it has remained a parish church ever since.

The outer walls and part of the structure of the abbey are still there and it is quite a large site.

As with all working churches and temples a lot of the interior and some of the exterior has been changed and renovated over the centuries leading to a mix of artistic styles and construction methods, not all of it to particular good taste; such as the Denny family monument from 1547.

The interior is very well lit with natural light, and while no Sistine Chapel, the ceiling was still pretty good.

The Lady Chapel contains a fifteenth century “Doom” painting which I particularly liked. A doom painting captures the day of judgement when one is judged by Christ after kicking the bucket.

After visiting the inside of the church we took a walk around the outside as I wanted to find the grave of King Harold. I found the site around the back of the church. There are many rumours surrounding the death and burial of Harold, one of those is that this stone marks the location where he was finally laid to rest after being killed at the great Battle of Hastings. This would have been underneath the knave of the church at the time.

The church and the abbey were built and added to over many years and it is interesting to look at the stonework and see all the different types of stone and brick used in its construction. It is quite a quilt of local and not-so local stone and marble.

There are odd bits of wall and gate left around the site, the most ‘together’ part is this twelfth century entry to the cloisters that is known as the Midnight Chapel. It is now gated off, but I imagine it was used for a number of activities over its time. I did like its roof.

The side gate.

And back around to front of the abbey.

It was an interesting visit, I enjoyed walking around the Abbey, absorbing a little more history – and remembering stories about kings and battles I enjoyed as a young boy.

I especially enjoyed the 20 degree sunshine. It is now two days later and a grey 13 degrees. Hopefully that does not mean spring is over !

Winchester Cathedral

Tuesday 04 March 2014 – back to London.

The final post in the ‘road trip’ series.

I awoke a bit later on this morning and it seems I missed what was probably a decent sunrise – not forecasted of course, damnit! I hit breakfast as soon as it opened again and was packed and checked out by 9:00.

With nice clear skies overhead I was wondering about maybe taking another day somewhere else and decided to head back towards London via some back roads in the New Forest. I had seen things about the area and had been intrigued about it so thought it was time to check it out.

Leaving at 9:00 meant I missed the worst of the rush hour ferry trip across from Studland to Poole across the entrance to Poole Harbour. It was a nice wee trip.

I managed to get through Poole and Bournemouth relatively unscathed by traffic jams and was soon on the road heading up to Lyndhurst the central town in the New Forest.

Surprisingly there was very little ‘forest’, between Bournemouth and Lyndhurst, lots of wilderness areas and something I would like to explore, but today was not going to be the day. I had a coffee in Lyndhurst and the cloud started to roll in, which pretty much cemented my decision to carry on back to London. Around Lyndhurst there was some very nice forest areas and I think I will do some research into the area and then come down for a couple of days and do some walking and photography. It does look interesting.

On the way down on Saturday I decided I would stop at Winchester on the way back home and check out the famous cathedral there.

With a history over a thousand years old the great Cathedral that I visited was largely completed in the late sixteenth century. It is a massive building and quite beautiful inside.

There is a lot of work going on inside and out so a large number of artefacts are missing for renovation work which was a shame. I did get to see some pages of the great twelfth century Winchester Bible (no photos allowed), which is one of the key relics in the cathedral.

There were some ‘modern’ things to see, and I really liked this piece.

I guess my favourite part were these wall paintings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, obviously much more impressive up close and personal though.

I also liked the fact that the place had been tagged a few hundred years ago, with numerous names and dates carved into the old pillars.

The cathedral was well worth the stop, and if I had not been committed on getting back to London in time to return the car I would have stayed for a walk around the town as well.

And that was it for my break, I had a really good time. Enjoyed getting out for some good walks and pleased that I was actually taking some photos I liked again. Plus I had something to write about for a change!