It’s been a busy time of late, what with getting quotes to make the back garden a little more user-friendly, booking my wheelchair in for some running repairs, and celebrating the mighty achievement of remaining married for six very eventful whole years!
We have in that time survived illness scares for my wife, Tina, as well as myself, and had some huge changes in circumstances. If it was a case of testing our relationship to destruction, then I’m happy to say that we’ve passed. A+. Gold stars all round. And that’s with my natural tendency to annoy the hell out of Tina. (Deliberately? Me? Nooo. Surely not.).
So, yeah. There was that. Not that we’ve done anything special to mark the day as yet, funds being a little on the non-existent side as they are. We do have a cream tea paid on for us by a very generous and completely anonymous person though (Thank you to whoever that was. Love random acts of kindness). So that will probably more than suffice.
And of course non of that is the subject of today’s post.
Eat all, Drink All, Pay Nowt
No, today we are going to put the final touches on the tale of our recent trip to London. To set the scene this is the story of our third day in our nations capital. Our adventures on days one and two can be found here and here.
We have in that time survived illness scares for my wife, Tina, as well as myself, and had some huge changes in circumstances. If it was a case of testing our relationship to destruction, then I’m happy to say that we’ve passed. A+. Gold stars all round. And that’s with my natural tendency to annoy the hell out of Tina. (Deliberately? Me? Nooo. Surely not.).
So, yeah. There was that. Not that we’ve done anything special to mark the day as yet, funds being a little on the non-existent side as they are. We do have a cream tea paid on for us by a very generous and completely anonymous person though (Thank you to whoever that was. Love random acts of kindness). So that will probably more than suffice.
And of course non of that is the subject of today’s post.
Eat all, Drink All, Pay Nowt
No, today we are going to put the final touches on the tale of our recent trip to London. To set the scene this is the story of our third day in our nations capital. Our adventures on days one and two can be found here and here.
So, we start the day with yours truly abusing the breakfast facilities. I’m a big eater anyway, but the fact that we were paying for continental breakfasts for three and two of the three were eating very lightly indeed, led to some easy maths for me. I am after all a Yorkshireman. Value for money is kind of a default setting. Two croissant, a bowl of cereal, a round of toast, some fruit, and three cups of coffee later however and I was ready to face the day. The first task of which was not the most pleasant.
Three's Company
You may have caught my mention of there being three of us in the previous paragraph. You may know our travel arrangements from previous instalments. If you don’t well the first two travellers are myself and Tina (Natch). The third Musketeer, well that was my lovely step-daughter, Sarah. Sadly it was that morning that she was to depart from us and make the long train journey to her sort-of-native Cheshire.
And then there were two.
It’s always an upsetting time, saying goodbye to Sarah, especially for Tina, for whom it’s like having a limb chopped off. We dealt with it though and after the goodbyes, and a few tears. We collected our belongings and checked out of the hotel. We had one last day in the big city before heading home. Around eight hours to kill, and we had plans for at least some of that time.
Lost The Plot
Throughout the stay, we had divided up our time pretty equally to fit in the things that people wanted to do, or to see. There was one thing that was on my own personal list though that we had yet to manage, and that was a visit to the British Museum (I’ve been before but it really is an immense place). So, upon alighting from the train to central London at Victoria station that was where we headed. For some strange, and really quite idiotic reason, we thought we could do this on foot.
Yeah, we got a bit lost... Again.
Theoretically it’s not that far. A mere 2.2 miles if a certain well known search engine’s ‘maps’ function is to be believed. I think we might have doubled that.
It wasn’t all that bad though. We set off in the right direction, which was a decent start, and only had about three minor disagreements, one of which was regarding the identity of Buckingham Palace, (not Windsor Castle), and another, which of the two possible directions to take on The Mall (twice).
We also managed to stumble upon a good few landmarks including The National Gallery, The Shaftesbury Theatre, and Leicester Square, although the latter showed no signs of the two houses and a hotel I purchased the last time I landed on it.
Afternoon At The Museum
Eventually though, almost passing out from heat exhaustion and with the memory of the nice, but to my mind overpriced, deconstructed fish and chip dish (scampi, fish bites, whitebait, tartare sauce and about six chips) fading fast we reached our destination.
The British Museum is, for me at least, a fascinating place. It’s somewhere where you can be in touching distance of carvings, statutory, and other artworks, reaching back millennia, upon millennia. Some pieces that I saw, pieces of ingenuity, precision and skill, pieces of a scale that were truly mind blowing, dated back over six thousand years. It is a place that is truly humbling in scale, and I’m not just talking the size of the collection.
Unfortunately it is also a place without much in the way of air conditioning, and on an extremely hot day, after a few miles of walking, and with a ban on taking the vastly overpriced soft drinks (can of coke - £2.80!) for sale in the cafeteria, anywhere near the galleries, it proved to be a place we couldn’t stay in for as long as we would have liked. I think we will return one day, but perhaps not in the height of summer.
Homeward Bound
And that was it really. Bar a coffee and a bus ride back to Victoria to catch the coach (experience is a good teacher). We said good bye to the capital and headed up the M1 to Yorkshire. The coach ride was, again, exemplary, and I think that next year, when Sarah starts university in the big city and trips down there become a happy necessity, we we will be more than happy to utilise Megabus. We even had no problems getting a taxi from the coach stop home which was, you know, nice.
So, yeah, job done. Trip over. It was only three days but they were jam packed days and there is still a lot of things that I would like to see down there. At the least though the trip has given me a lot of confidence that despite the size and the busy nature of the city, and despite any (undeserved) reputation it might have for unfriendliness, London is doable for a wheelchair user.
I might have to see if the same is true of the tube.
Until next time...
Three's Company
You may have caught my mention of there being three of us in the previous paragraph. You may know our travel arrangements from previous instalments. If you don’t well the first two travellers are myself and Tina (Natch). The third Musketeer, well that was my lovely step-daughter, Sarah. Sadly it was that morning that she was to depart from us and make the long train journey to her sort-of-native Cheshire.
And then there were two.
It’s always an upsetting time, saying goodbye to Sarah, especially for Tina, for whom it’s like having a limb chopped off. We dealt with it though and after the goodbyes, and a few tears. We collected our belongings and checked out of the hotel. We had one last day in the big city before heading home. Around eight hours to kill, and we had plans for at least some of that time.
Lost The Plot
Throughout the stay, we had divided up our time pretty equally to fit in the things that people wanted to do, or to see. There was one thing that was on my own personal list though that we had yet to manage, and that was a visit to the British Museum (I’ve been before but it really is an immense place). So, upon alighting from the train to central London at Victoria station that was where we headed. For some strange, and really quite idiotic reason, we thought we could do this on foot.
Yeah, we got a bit lost... Again.
Theoretically it’s not that far. A mere 2.2 miles if a certain well known search engine’s ‘maps’ function is to be believed. I think we might have doubled that.
It wasn’t all that bad though. We set off in the right direction, which was a decent start, and only had about three minor disagreements, one of which was regarding the identity of Buckingham Palace, (not Windsor Castle), and another, which of the two possible directions to take on The Mall (twice).
We also managed to stumble upon a good few landmarks including The National Gallery, The Shaftesbury Theatre, and Leicester Square, although the latter showed no signs of the two houses and a hotel I purchased the last time I landed on it.
Afternoon At The Museum
Eventually though, almost passing out from heat exhaustion and with the memory of the nice, but to my mind overpriced, deconstructed fish and chip dish (scampi, fish bites, whitebait, tartare sauce and about six chips) fading fast we reached our destination.
The British Museum is, for me at least, a fascinating place. It’s somewhere where you can be in touching distance of carvings, statutory, and other artworks, reaching back millennia, upon millennia. Some pieces that I saw, pieces of ingenuity, precision and skill, pieces of a scale that were truly mind blowing, dated back over six thousand years. It is a place that is truly humbling in scale, and I’m not just talking the size of the collection.
Unfortunately it is also a place without much in the way of air conditioning, and on an extremely hot day, after a few miles of walking, and with a ban on taking the vastly overpriced soft drinks (can of coke - £2.80!) for sale in the cafeteria, anywhere near the galleries, it proved to be a place we couldn’t stay in for as long as we would have liked. I think we will return one day, but perhaps not in the height of summer.
Homeward Bound
And that was it really. Bar a coffee and a bus ride back to Victoria to catch the coach (experience is a good teacher). We said good bye to the capital and headed up the M1 to Yorkshire. The coach ride was, again, exemplary, and I think that next year, when Sarah starts university in the big city and trips down there become a happy necessity, we we will be more than happy to utilise Megabus. We even had no problems getting a taxi from the coach stop home which was, you know, nice.
So, yeah, job done. Trip over. It was only three days but they were jam packed days and there is still a lot of things that I would like to see down there. At the least though the trip has given me a lot of confidence that despite the size and the busy nature of the city, and despite any (undeserved) reputation it might have for unfriendliness, London is doable for a wheelchair user.
I might have to see if the same is true of the tube.
Until next time...
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