A(nother) Grand Day Out...

(Apparently I have no imagination, I’ve had a Grand Day Out already.)

Last September, when the Yarn Harlot herself was in London, and we all went to see her speak, I was inspired. No, it wasn’t about knitting, it was reading her blog reports of her wanderings around London. I was thoroughly jealous. Which is ridiculous. I live just an hour’s train journey from London, there is NOTHING stopping me from going and wandering around London as much as I could possibly want. (Except that I do find London rather big and scary. Exciting, invigorating, fascinating, but still scary. Lots of big roads and big buildings. And I prefer to wander round with company anyway.)

So I suggested to ‘Big Ruth’ that maybe she wouldn’t mind accompanying me on such a trip. She agreed enthusiastically, and we left it as being a good idea that we would do sometime. But then she and her family agreed a sale on their house and planned to move away from London. It all started looking a bit more urgent. So, despite the rail system’s best attempts (1 hr 40 min to Kings Cross due to engineering works – I assume – with the last leg on the tube – uh uh, no way, I don’t do the tube) I took the train to Liverpool Street and we ‘did’ London.

We started by following her husband’s directions to the Church of St Dunstan in the East

The pictures don’t do it justice (in fact the pictures aren’t that great generally – that’s what comes of travelling light and relying on the phone camera – sorry), but it was a wonderfully tranquil place to sit and eat our lunch. On the way there we passed the Gherkin

and various other places of which I totally failed to get decent pictures. Ruth was the perfect guide. We saw all sorts of little corners – it’s a cliche to say that London is steeped in history, but there simply aren’t any ‘boring’ bits. They all have their charm, from the Dickensian pubs to the tantalisingly long and narrow Catherine Wheel Alley.

After lunch we headed towards The Tower

then, having been brought up next to the Mersey I have rather a fondness for great big dirty rivers, so we took the ferry to Westminster, with an annoying fake cockney tour guide to narrate our cruise.

We passed the London Eye (with the building which at the age of 11 I declared to be the most beautiful building I’d even seen – County Hall – in the background.)

Then on to Downing Street:

(On that same trip when I was 11 there were no gates across the end, and we were able to go right up to the front door of No 10 and chat with the policeman on duty. Now there is a gate to stop you getting to the gate – not to mention all the armed police.)

Then to – a memorial to the work done by women during World War 2. Next we headed to Trafalgar Square (to which we later returned – it does seem to have a magnetic effect), from thence up Pall Mall to Buckingham Palace (I did take pics, they were rubbish). By then my legs were definitely ‘quite tired’, so we decided to stop for a bit – which is why when John rang to see what we were up to, I was able truthfully to report that we were having tea in Fortnum and Mason.

On the train on the way home I used my cloak of invisibility – aka knitting. My travel companions were all delightful (initially I was joined by a young teenage girl and her parents, and once they’d disembarked, by three boaties on their way home from a race). However all of them totally ignored my presence until we had pretty much arrived in Cambridge, by which stage I’d put my knitting away. The three lads had thought the train would take longer, and were discussing whether this could possibly be their destination yet. I grinned and told them it was – I enjoyed their expressions as I suddenly materialised…