London - Part 3

Our third day of our London trip and the highlight was to be afternoon tea here

but more about that later. We drove to Jonathan's in South Bermondsey as we had various 'stuff' he'd asked us to bring down. After a quick coffee we were off to the station to catch a train into the City

getting off at London Bridge. I hadn't realised that the Shard was above the station. I had to stand against a bollard to look up at it as it made me so dizzy

We made our way to one of my favourite places

Very busy as usual

I just want to buy it all!!
We moved through the main part to the temporary street food area for a spot of sustenance

 before leaving to make our way (walking) to the Kings Road, Chelsea. It was a fair distance which was good as we were able to work off the street food. We passed the Chelsea Barracks (last time I was there was at Chelsea flower show)

looked up at rather nice apartments

walked under bridges until we eventually turned right into Beaufort Street, walking up it where we joined the Kings Road and we found ourselves almost opposite The Bluebird Restaurant

We were shown upstairs

 and to our table which was overlooking the front of the building - good for celeb spotting (if there were any around)

The afternoon tea was my birthday present from the children and Jonathan was detailed to make sure it all went well and pay the bill. Feeling very decadent we opted for champagne

We were overwhelmed when the tea arrived, such a variety, all beautiful presented and of course delicious

and then the piece de resistance arrived

I just loved every minute.

We made our way back to Jonathan's after and eventually back to the van as we had another full on day back in London the next day.

London - Part 2 or should it be Welwyn Garden City?

Day 2 was spent in our local area - Welwyn Garden City. Before I start here a little bit about WGC taken from Wikipedia

Welwyn Garden City was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the 1920s following his previous experiment in Letchworth Garden City. Howard had called for the creation of planned towns that were to combine the benefits of the city and the countryside and to avoid the disadvantages of both. 

The town is laid out along tree-lined boulevards with a neo-Georgian town centre.^[4] It has its own environmental protection legislation, the Scheme of Management for Welwyn Garden City.^[5] Every road has a wide grass verge. The spine of the town is Parkway, a central mall or scenic parkway, almost a mile long. The view along Parkway to the south was once described as one of the world's finest urban vistas.^[6] Older houses are on the west side of Parkway and newer houses on the east side^[4]

The original planners intended that all the residents of the garden city would shop in one shop and created the Welwyn Stores, a monopoly which caused some local resentment - This store is now John Lewis.

I had found a city trail that took us on a walk passed various sites of interest

 including the Daily Mail Model Village of 1922

It was built in conjunction with the Ideal Home Exhibition, to showcase new building materials and construction methods. The village consisted of 41 houses demonstrating 16 different house constructions which also incorporating the latest hot water systems, cooking facilities and interior fittings. Rather than demolishing it after the exhibition finished the houses were sold and are still lived in today.

From there we gradually made our way back to the city centre via wide boulevards

but with a village feel

It was all very interesting, the huge variety of housing and the ethos behind it all.

Leaving WGC we passed the huge, derelict Shredded Wheat factory building

An eye sore at the moment but there are proposals for redevelopment here - a case of 'watch this space'

From WGC we went out to Hatfield House built in 1611 by Robert Cecil. It's a lovely 'warm looking' building with lots of interesting brick patterns, doors and corners

The courtyard has a cafe and shops

I ended up buying the primula above as I couldn't resist the colour and pattern. By this time the day was getting noticeable colder, so next stop was the caravan!

The first of 4 - London, part 1

Gosh it seems a long time ago since we were in London and in fact it was, as I write only 2 weeks ago that we were packing the caravan up to leave our temporary home for 5 nights at Welwyn Garden City to drive back for me to work in the afternoon. It was an ideal base for us, north of London but easy to get to all our activities for the weekend.

We had a fairly busy schedule for the 4 days we were there and so were up and off by 9-30am on Thursday morning. After looking at going in to London by train from Welwyn or Hatfield I opted for using Just Park . If you have never come across this site and need somewhere to park in a city or town have a look. People who have a space on their driveway or piece of land will rent a parking space out for the day/week at generally a very reasonable price. It's a brilliant way of knowing that you have somewhere to park at a time you want. In our case, we parked on a private drive, 2 minutes walk from Highgate tube station for £6-30 and could come and go as and when. We avoided driving down there at rush hour and had an easy journey, finding it easily - absolutely brilliant.

We got the tube down to Covent Garden and headed straight for a coffee at Balthazar's

which also happened to be a french style bakery 

Replenished, we set off in the sun to wander around

finally (and I'm not sure how) ending up at Trafalgar Square

From there we decided that we would go and find the Aldwych Theatre as we were going there later to see

With the help of an 'app' on David's phone we found it

Then as time was getting on we went for lunch, choosing Carluccio's as I hadn't had time to look for anything a little 'quirky' plus we've never had a bad meal there.

Back to the theatre and despite our seats being restricted viewing we had a good view partly due to the fact that we were able to move our very comfy seats to get the better view. We LOVED the musical which brought memory after memory with the all the songs sung - well it is our era after all (the audience was definitely a certain age!). 

On leaving there we walked  (yes walked ) up to the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street to meet Jonathan as he finished work. We then braved the rush hour traffic on the tube (awful) to get over to Bethnal Green where we met my nephew and his partner at El Ganso for a meal

Very nice, it was quiet when we arrived but soon filled up

We all walked back to the tube station going our separate ways after a lovely evening. A none eventful journey home and we were soon back to the van and bed.