More of London

Wednesday we hit the city again with another full schedule; Trafalgar Square, Tower of London, London Bridge and the London Dungeons. There aren’t any pigeons in Trafalgar Square any more – in fact there was a Falconer there chasing them away. The Tower of London was pretty cool with lots of good stories and the Crown Jewels were especially impressive. Some of the gold items were amazing. We walked across Tower Bridge and hunted out the London Dungeons quite late in the afternoon. The Dungeons are more of a “theme park” but there’s some history learning to be had too. The comparison between the way the Royals lived and the way the commoners lived was very interesting.

After a couple of pretty full-on days in London, Thursday called for a slow start. We trained into town about 10am and headed for South Kensington Station to the Science Museum. The kids had a ball. It’s probably half as big again as Te Papa and really hard to navigate around. We could probably have spent two days there and still not seen it all but I think we picked up the highlights. The IMAX Theatre was really good – the best I’ve ever seen. After dinner at South Kensington we headed back to Charing Cross Station and walked to the Lyceum Theatre to see Lion King. It was a stunning production with great sets and characters. The kids loved it, and so did Shari and I. It was late night though and both Adam and Reid crashed on the train the way home.

Mark

Exploring London City

Tuesday was our first day exploring London City. We decided to take in Hyde Park, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye and the Star Wars exhibition then walk back across the Millennium Bridge to the city for dinner. It was a huge day and we must have walked about 10km all told. The kids did great though and the Star Wars exhibition was a real hit.

Mark

Sunday was spent heading back downstream towards Aldermaston. The day was wonderful again, with blue sky and vapour trails. We arrived at the dreaded Woolhampton lock about 3pm and discovered that the lock was even more tricky going downstream as the current is pretty strong and things happen pretty quick. There’s a lovely old pub there called the Rowbarge where it seems crowds gather on a Sunday afternoon for a warm pint and to watch the canal boat carnage. We managed to only scrape the port side quite gently on the way under the traffic bridge so probably disappointed the crowd.

Monday we delivered the boat back to the hire company and headed for London so we could catch the train out to Hemperdon to pick up the camper. That all went without incident except that taking a family on trains and tubes is outrageously expensive when you convert it to NZ dollars (I must stop doing that).

Mark

Canal boating on the Avon and Kennett canal

Our canal boat needed to be picked up early on Friday afternoon so Wayne and Fiona very kindly dropped us down to Aldermaston Wharf. After a quick briefing and instruction on how to pass through a lock, we were on our way. Unfortunately the very first lock – at Woolhampton – is the trickiest one on the canal, involving a swing bridge that stops traffic, a narrow channel, a side current, a sweeping curve and dodging other moored boats. The worst part though is that it’s very public and you’ve always got an audience and canal boats handle like supermarket trolleys! We survived it without hitting anything though, so settled in for our first night afloat fealing reasonably chuffed.

Saturday was cool and clear and we headed off for Newbury. Our body clocks were still messed up so we were up pretty early again, which worked out fine because we got a head start on other boats and found all the locks empty as we headed upstream, a real time-saver. We got to Newbury at about three and explored the streets and discovered a good place to moor for the night, just a few meters from an olde English pub called “Lock, Stock and Barrel”.

Mark

Beijing to London

The flight from Beijing to London was pretty easy. The fight path crosses Siberia and northern Europe and it’s surprising the detail you can see from 39,000ft. As we crossed the coast just north of Amsterdam we could quite clearly make out the windmill farm in the sea.

We had a nice tour of Windsor on Thursday evening and had planned to go out to dinner with Wayne and Fiona but the kids crashed at about six. We were all asleep by eight but unfortunately all awake again by 2:15 the next morning. BBC kids TV is not very entertaining at that time of day!

Windsor Castle was our focus on Friday morning. We all came away more impressed than we expected to be. Walking through the interior of one wing it was easy to understand why the English are so into their traditions and the Royal Family. When the Empire was at its peak the British Royalty must have been viewed as the centre of the universe.

Mark

First few days in England

Hi there everybody,
Guess what? We’re in London! We stayed in a hotel called the Holiday Inn on our first night. We woke up at 2.15am London time. When it got light we wandered around Windsor, a path that took us to the Windsor castle, which is where the Queen spends most weekends. We saw the changing of the guards and an immense dolls house that was a present to queen Mary. That afternoon we picked up the canal boat that we took up the canal. It took us two days to get to Newbury, which was 7 miles away. We then returned the canal boat to the owners. Then we took the train to pick up our campervan, which is called a motor home over here. Then drove it to the campsite called Wyatts Covert in Denham.
The next day we trained into London for a day of excitement. We took a walk through Hyde Park to Buckingham Palace. We wanted to see the guards in red uniforms but they only wore grey. Next we went to the Big Ben where we took plenty of photos. We walked over a bridge to the London eye. We took a ride up to the top and down to the bottom again. Once we got off we noticed a hall that was doing a Star Wars exhibition. Mum and Dad let us get a family pass. We went in and had great fun looking at all the models and the pictures. We went to a green room where they filmed me having a light saber duel with an actor. We got it on dvd. Next we went to an old courtroom where they were doing a Jedi school. Reid and me were the only volunteers. It turned out to be an act that they had me and Reid doing. We stayed there for another 15 minutes then tubed backed to our campsite.

Adam