London Never Ceases to Amaze

It started as a short visit to daughter and grandson in Orpington, although we did take a slightly different route by way of a change, but on the way back we popped in on an exhibition at ExCel and that's where it became amazing, as I shall explain shortly!

For a year now Thameslink have operated weekday half-hourly through trains between Peterborough and destinations in Surrey and Sussex, using a new tunnel to reach their subterranean platforms at St Pancras International inserted of terminating at Kings Cross. The trains go on to the usual Thameslink central London stations including London Bridge, which is the station from which we depart for Orpington. They stop at several stations between Peterborough and London, so they are not for those in a hurry, but it does mean there is less fuss crossing London,  with just one change of train.

We booked the tickets just a day in advance, Super Off-peak Day Single, standard class, a reasonable price. Catching the 14:00 train from Stamford to Peterborough we had plenty of time at Peterborough to go across to platform 1 where the London train was already waiting - the Thameslink trains start and end their journey here. There was plenty of space on the train: they are twelve coaches long and it was easy to find a seat where we could keep an eye on our luggage and enjoy the ride. The seats are firm but comfortable, similar to a good bus seat. We had plenty to read and the trip soon passed. We barely noticed the station stops until we got to London and had to get ourselves ready to leave the train at London Bridge.

We were going to use our Oyster Cards for the rest of the trip to Orpington, so we had to go out through the ticket barriers using our tickets to London, and then come back through again using our Oysters to ensure that we paid the correct fare for the journey. That took just a few seconds and we caught the very next train to Orpington, just a few moments after our arrival at London Bridge. Orpington was the train's first stop, so it was a quick and easy journey, then we walked down to the Premier Inn where we had a room booked for the two nights we were staying. All three trains were on time and our room was ready for us, and after unpacking we walked to our daughter's home for our little grandson's bedtime and our dinner. We spent the next day together and the third day, Saturday, it was time to leave. We had the day to ourselves and the plan was to speak some time in London. It so happened that there was an exhibition at ExCel (with a convention for those who wanted it) for those interested in family history research, RootsTech, and we had obtained free tickets for the exhibition only by email before leaving home. We were unsure how interesting it might be, but in fact it took my wife all the time we had to spare, while I stayed for some of the time as well.

So it was that on our return trip we alighted at London Bridge as usual but then took the Jubilee Line Underground to Canning Town where we were to change to the Docklands Light Railway to get to the ExCel Centre. The Underground train was packed, even though we had let the first one from London Bridge go without us (just one minute before) as it was so full. Some other passengers were in interesting costumes although the only one I recognised was a Jedi knight. Was there something on at ExCel, people were pondering, but I did not think RootsTech would draw such crowds, nor in such interesting clothes, although in London you can never be sure ... As we changed trains at Canning Town, people were being guided, in their hundreds, to the platforms for the DLR for what sounded like "Commicon", and several of them were interestingly attired. We began to realise that there was indeed something else on at ExCel - not a surprise as it is a big place and quite capable of mounting several events at the same time. The DLR train we boarded was an extra added to the schedule to help with the crowds, terminating at Prince Regent station for Comic Con, for so the comic convention was really called. Leaving the train at Prince Regent we were greeted by a Stars Wars fanfare from the public address system and herded off the station, urged not to take the time to touch out our Oysters as it would cause congestion. At the entrance to the exhibition centre, as the Comic Con visitors went their way to another door, there stood meeters and greeters in RootsTech t-shirts and we found ourselves in the right place. I have a feeling I would have been equally happy at either event, to be honest, possibly even finding more of interest at the other (it being so much bigger and more varied), and would not have been out-of-place in ordinary clothes for by no means everyone was dressed up, probably about half.

At the end of the day we made our way by the Docklands Light Railway to Bank station where we walked through to Monument station for the District Line to Kings Cross for our train home. This is probably not the quickest way to go but we had plenty of time in hand and the District Line is so much more pleasant to use than the Northern Line tube, especially at the Kings Cross end. We actually went via the shops at St Pancras for we had run out of Fortnum & Mason's St Pancras Blend tea and visited their shop to buy some more - they only sell it at their St Pancras shop! For the return trip we were booked on a fast LNER train with Advance First Class tickets as far as Peterborough, so at Kings Cross we were able to use the First Class Lounge to await its departure, with a very welcome cup of tea. The train left just a touch late and was quite full. We were served the usual light refreshments: sandwich, drinks (not alcohol at weekends), crisps, cake, biscuits.

At Peterborough we had to take a rail replacement bus service to Stamford because the railway line was closed for maintenance work, but I had known this when booking the tickets and had taken it into account when planning the journey. Not as quick and simple as the usual train, but it was a very comfortable coach rather than an actual bus and gave us a smooth ride to the station in Stamford where those going further would be able to take the waiting train to Birmingham while we we set off across the Meadows on our walk home.

Here and There for Easter

Getting Around Without the Car

St Mildred's, Addiscombe, partly prepared for
the commemoration of Jesus' last supper
on Maundy Thursday

My first Easter since retiring as a parish priest presented an immediate challenge and an opportunity - and it was hard to know what do with our first chance to go away for Easter for forty years! Ironically the last time we did go away for Easter it was probably to the place where we now live, to visit my parents. We looked around at which cathedrals might be offering the sort of services we would like to attend and had eventually settled on York. I had got as far as choosing a hotel and noting when the train tickets would be available, but plans were changed when our friends invited us to stay with them "some time in the Easter Holiday", and with the late date this year the best time seemed to be the Easter weekend itself, and is he is a priest that solved the "where do we worship" question, too.

We planned to travel on Maundy Thursday, attend their church that evening and on Good Friday, spend Saturday with our daughter who lives nearby, Sunday with them (including the Easter Day church service) and leave on Monday via our eldest grandchild's birthday party. It happened that we saw all of our children and grandchildren somehow last weekend as well as our best friends. But this is a travel blog, and how we got to all these places during one of the busiest times of the year for leisure travel is what I need to write about here.

Our original plan, with Easter eggs and birthday presents to carry as well as four nights' luggage, had been to drive down but the more we thought about the practicalities of driving to west London on Easter Monday and crossing the Thames on Maundy Thursday the harder I worked on a method of packing the gifts for travel by rail! It the event it worked well: I simply took the small suitcase which slides over the handle of my wheeled case for some of the gifts, and we had a shopping bag for the rest. The very warm, dry weather helped a lot, eliminating the need for thick sweaters and waterproofs. By the time all this decision-making was done, it was getting a bit late to buy Advance tickets, but on the other hand we need not be too fussy about when we travelled, so I was still able to get First Class singles each way at a very decent price. All we needed was tickets to and from London: our travel around the capital was by Oyster card.

As usual, I booked standard class singles between our local station and Peterborough from where we travelled First Class to Kings Cross. We travelled over lunchtime and were plied with the usual included sandwiches, fruit and cake with wine and coffee on our way there.

Our friends are in Addiscombe, Croydon, and so from Kings Cross we walked across to St Pancras - there was a little bit of shopping to do there - this station is a great shopping centre in itself - before getting the Thameslink train down to East Croydon. The new twelve-coach trains on that route are so spacious and we have never struggled for a seat; they even have displays showing how busy each coach is, so that no-one needs stand if there is room somewhere. Some say the seats are uncomfortable, but I found them very comfortable - but perhaps I like seats a bit harder than some. The central stretch of Thameslink through central London is never fast, but one does get to see some great sights, especially from Blackfriars station, then the train moves on quickly from London Bridge to its next stop at East Croydon where we left it to make its way down to Gatwick and Brighton.

The view of the City from our train at Blackfriars

At East Croydon we discovered that the tram service was disrupted by work on the tracks but the trams were operating as far as Addiscombe, so we were able to arrive in good time by the expected route. When we left the tram, staff were there at Addiscombe tramstop to advise through passengers on where to go for their replacement bus for the rest of their journeys. I was able to ask about what we should do on Saturday, when we were due to take the tram to Beckenham Junction en route to Orpington to visit family. You can read the solution in a following paragraph. The trip to Orpington became a bit of an adventure, but Transport for London arrange these things so well that it all ran very smoothly.

Worship on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday was suitably moving and evocative, preparing the way for the celebration on Sunday, and apart from that we did little but enjoy our friends' company. On Saturday we were due to have lunch with the family in Orpington with a restaurant table booked for 12:30, and with a replacement bus to catch it was hard to predict how long the journey would take, so we left with plenty of time in hand, just to be safe. The bus arrived fairly soon after we arrived at the stop and although it called close to every tramstop on the route it stopped nowhere else and made quite good time - not as fast as a tram but not too bad, and it interesting to see from the top deck so many streets we'd only seen from our car before. The bus took us as far as Birkbeck where we transferred to the tram for the last short stretch of the journey to Beckenham Junction. I had checked the timetable in advance, and at the station checked that the trains were all running to time, so I knew that we now had over twenty minutes before the train to Orpington, so we took a little walk around the town centre at Beckenham. We had driven through here so many times and thought it looked nice, and now we were able to see it properly - it was good to have had the time to do that: there is more to travel than just arriving quickly.

We were soon on our way again through the leafy outer suburbs and arrived at Orpington with plenty of time for morning coffee (at 12:00 noon!) at Caffe Primo in the High Street after the walk from the station before we met the others for lunch at the brilliant A Mano Italian restaurant, a little way along the street.

While we were there a little extra trip was slipped into the day's schedule involving a bus to the edge-of-town shopping centre to the north of the town. The great thing about cities, and especially London, is that we can get anywhere without needing our car, even when the trip is a last-minute idea. So convenient was the bus service that after a very brief wait we were taken to the shops and then afterwards were able to take another bus from there to our daughter's home for the exchange of Easter presents - we were transporting several of the rest of the family whom we would be seeing on Monday.

So far, so good. By train, tram and bus we had taken all the trips were needed and things were going really well. From the stop near the house we took a bus straight to the station and boarded a train back to Beckenham Junction to begin the "interesting" trip back to Addiscombe. When we walked over to the tramstop at Beckenham Junction, however, the trip began to look even more of an interesting adventure, for the service was suspended because of damage to the overhead electric supply. As ever, TfL managed the matter very well and staff at the tramstop advised us to take a train to Birkbeck from where the replacement bus was still running. We went back to the rail station to find a train about to leave: touching-in with our Oysters we dashed onto the train and I think we were probably at Birkbeck quite a bit sooner than the tram would have been! Once there the rest of the trip went much the same as the way out - and we were there in time for the Easter Eve service which we had not been sure we would be.

The empty tomb of Easter morning

Easter Sunday was Easter Sunday: church and chocolate, Champagne and sunshine; and not much more. We did complete the jigsaw puzzle that had been on the go since before our arrival!

And so home on Easter Monday via the fourth birthday party in west London ... we were given a lift by car to East Croydon station, although we did notice that the tram service had begun running again, so we could have gone that way if we had chosen to. There was a train to London Victoria due within a couple of minutes and our idea was to take the District Line Underground from there to Hammersmith, which was near where we needed to be. Unfortunately I had omitted to check the status of the Underground lines and discovered that the District Line was suspended in that section for Bank Holiday engineering work, so we had to go via two of the deep-level tube lines, changing at Green Park, which has some long walks. Had I realised we could have gone a different way. Still, it was yet another adventure!

After the party there was a short family gathering and then we made our way home the usual way via the Hammersmith and City Line, which was working normally, and LNER from Kings Cross. There was a weekend menu in First Class, so no wine with our sandwiches, but that was just as well healthwise, given the weekend we'd just had! The train was a little late getting to Peterborough - signalled in behind a stopping train through Huntingdon - so we missed our intended connection to Stamford, but fortunately there was a another less than half an hour later. I am discussing this matter with Network Rail because that train from London is so frequently delayed that I do wonder about the practicality of the timetable. We'll see how that goes, but in any case we had a great time with family and friends and some enjoyable rides by train, tram and bus. We felt no temptation to try the car in London again, for delays and disruptions are no less likely to occur with the car.

A Lesson in Cocktail Making

Essential train travel!

Last Christmas I was given a couple of vouchers for a public cocktail-making class at TT Liquor in London. Although we visited London a fair number of times this year it took until October to fit in the visit to TT Liquor, which is on Dalston Road in Shoreditch, not a part of town we often visit (in fact, I think I've been just once before). This is, of course, just the sort of thing for public transport, for driving after making and tasting four cocktails (and drinking the one with which we were welcomed to the session) is not recommended! The public sessions are held on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons so I checked availability online and telephoned to book us into one on a date we could make and then set about buying train tickets. We allowed plenty of time before (to ensure we did not miss it) and afterwards (to ensure that we were fit and well). We caught to 08:00 from Stamford, travelling Standard Class on this section of the route, and then changed trains at Peterborough to travel First Class to London, and wait of just a few minutes. We had a very smooth and easy ride to Kings Cross with the light Saturday breakfast served as soon as we left Peterborough.

On arrival in London we caught a bus to Bethnal Green, for we had decided to spend the morning at the Museum of Childhood there, an outstation of the Victoria & Albert, which had recently been refurbished. The bus ride was interesting in itself and involved a change of buses at Ludgate Hill. We saw all that we wanted (all that there is, really!) at the museum and also had a very decent lunch there before taking another bus to Shoreditch for the main event, the Public Masterclass at TT Liquor. The Oyster Card makes this sort of thing so simple, and with our Senior Railcards we get a discount on London transport, too. There was a bit of a walk up Shoreditch High Street before we spotted the venue just after the street becomes Dalston Road.

Using the Mexican Elbow to squeeze fruit

There was a bit of a delay getting started because a delivery had not arrived and staff had to got out and buy the fruit that was needed not only for the public class we were attending but for another event going on at the same time. Eventually we were called through and made ourselves at home in our classroom. There were seven others taking part and two training bars set up facing the teacher's bar at the front, all stocked with the ingredients and equipment we were going to need, some shared with others and some were there was one each. Each bar had a sink for washing, one for waste, one filled with ice cubes and one with crushed ice. We introduced ourselves to each other over the welcome cocktail and heard a bit about what goes on at TT, and then we were into the first lesson which was my favourite cocktail of the whole day, a lychee martini. I'll be able to make them myself because we have been sent by email the recipes for all four of the cocktails we made, although I am not sure I'll be making the zombie which we did last!

There was no hanging about once we got going, quickly preparing the next drink while enjoying drinking the one we had just made, although we did not lose time because of the late start: the class was allowed to overrun so that were were not short of time.

The most helpful thing about the class was not so much the actual recipes but the techniques. I learnt how to shake properly (using a two-part shaker; I have only used the three-part one at home) and the way to prepare mint leaves properly. I may need to look again at ice-making and buy some more equipment ... And having enough fruit juices at is important: if a cocktail is to be refreshing and thirst-quenching it need not be all alcohol!

Tea on the train - not bad for a weekend offering,
smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches

We walked back to Kings Cross. Booked on the 18:18 Leeds train back to Peterborough we had plenty of time. We were open to getting a bus or the Underground but did not need to do so, since there was plenty of time, even to stop for a cup of tea on the way. It was unbelievably sunny and warm for October, about 24 degrees Celsius. As usual we waited in the First Class lounge at the station, and our train was a little late. There had been some sort of hold-up and it came in late from its previous turn. We were not worried by this as we had a long wait for our connection at Peterborough and were in little danger of missing it. Indeed, having had tea and sandwiches on the train, we had time at Peterborough to have another hot drink at the Great Northern Hotel, provided free-of-charge for First Class ticket-holders by LNER. And so the train back to Stamford and a taxi home - after all the walking we had done that seemed like a great way to end the day, and although it was dark by now, it was very warm still and the night was still young.

Barging Through London

Some years ago we were taken to dinner at a gastropub at Kings Cross called The Fellow. Why, I wondered, is it called that? I found out, or at least I think I did, when I visited a small museum around the corner when I had a couple of hours to spare in that part of London at the weekend. It all began with a party in Croydon ... perhaps I need to start at the beginning, if I can find it.

A little while ago we were invited to a surprise birthday celebration in Addiscombe, Croydon, south London. It was on Good Friday night, not ever so convenient but we managed it OK: I booked a night at a new Hampton by Hilton hotel close to East Croydon rail station, and booked Advance First tickets to London; we would use our Oyster cards to cross London to East Croydon, a trip we have done many a time to visit the friends whose party we were attending. After the Good Friday worship in Stamford we caught the 13:00 train to Peterborough and changed to the 13:28 to Kings Cross. The weekend menu was being served in First Class, presumably because of the public holiday, and although we would not expect lunch so late into the train's journey it had not been especially busy and our hostess found us some sandwiches to go with the coffee which was on offer. we have found that the Virgin Trains East Coast staff really do try to make our journey as good as they can.

At Kings Cross I had a little job to do: my Senior Railcard had been renewed and I needed to get the new card connected to my Oyster card in order to resume enjoying the discounts on London travel - I had forgotten to do this when I renewed the Railcard in January and had been paying full Oyster fares  for a while - although fortunately I had not travelled in London all that much. This meant queuing at the ticket machines in the Underground station and then getting a member of staff to connect the cards for me: a quick little job but slightly annoying that I could not do it myself online before I went. Then from the Underground (where I only went to do that administrative task - I did not need a train), the short walk across to St Pancras for the Thameslink train to East Croydon, which was arriving at the platform just as we arrived: could not have been a quicker connection. The new trains in use on this route are far more pleasant than the ones they replace, with wide corridor connections which allow easy access down the length of the train, and comprehensive information displays showing the next stop as well as which coaches have most space and where the toilets are located. The seats, while still fairly high-density local-journey seats, are reasonably comfortable and well-spaced, with plenty of luggage space.

Thameslink trains are currently not going via London Bridge but trundle rather slowly through south London until eventually they arrive at East Croydon. Short walk to hotel, check in, telephone to see when to arrive at party venue. All good so far, half an hour to party, so just time to get ready, walk to tram stop and get to Addiscombe. Again, Oyster for the tram and we are there exactly on time.

(The friend whose party we were attending, having turned 60 and living in London, now has a free Oyster card for off-peak travel in the capital, whereas we only get a discount, and have to buy the Railcard - and remember to renew it - to get that. London is a great place!)

Breakfast room at the Hampton hotel: self-
service hot breakfast in a canteen-style space

After a good night's sleep and the slightly odd "hot breakfast" at the Hampton by Hilton hotel, we checked out and were on our way. I had allowed bags of time before the train home in order to allow for any possible problems in getting back to Kings Cross, but in fact all went very well indeed and we had a couple of hours to spare. A few moments on the internet with our iPhones tracked down the London Canal Museum, just a few moments walk from Kings Cross station: a visit of about one-and-a-half hours was recommended and this seemed to be exactly what we needed. No café on site, but we'd had a good breakfast and there would be tea on the train, and snack in the First Class lounge at the station if we arrived there in good time.







The London Canal Museum is worth a visit. The recommended time is about right. It gives the history of London's canals and indeed the nation's canal system, explains all the various types of boat and how locks work, how the canals and local river navigation fit together and the lives of those working and living on the boats: apparently the men operating the boats are called canal fellows ... according to a looping video show at the museum. Hence the gastropub of that name has a horse's face as its logo, presumably a canal tow horse? The museum is in a canalside former ice warehouse and the opportunity has been taken also to show the story of the ice trade, and an ice well is a feature in the floor: this has to be seen to be believed. Outside the glass doors at the back (or is it the front?) is Battlebridge Basin, with several private boats moored a couple of metres above street level.

Back to Kings Cross and a drink and snack in the lounge, and on our mid-afternoon train back to Peterborough for our change for Stamford, with tea, sandwiches and cake which passed the journey nicely and kept us going into the evening, fresh and ready for Easter Day in the morning.