Open Squares

A couple of Sundays ago Ruth and I headed for the Open Garden Squares weekend, which we last went to in 2016. Profiting by experiences at previous such events of spending most of the day travelling between venues, we were determined to pick a collection of places to visit within a reasonably confined area. I decided I wanted to visit some actual garden squares this time, and picked a selection from the 'Kensington, Brompton and Chelsea' section of the guide.

Ruth in Thurloe Square

First up, after brunch at the Carluccio's opposite South Kensington tube, was Thurloe Square, which Ruth later decided she liked the best of all the squares we saw - unlike all the others, it was divided up into different zones rather than having a central lawn surrounded by paths.

We then visited the nearby Ismaili Centre - a building I've noticed before but never gone into - as its roof garden was open as part of the weekend. This one had a 'no photography' rule, so no pictures - but here's a photo of it in the guide, sans the crowds that were there when we visited. We were escorted in the lift up several floors and then joined a small group for a mini-tour. The garden was apparently designed as a traditional four-part garden or 'chahar bagh'. It's very lovely.

After this we visited the Brompton Food Market for a cup of tea, then headed westwards along Cromwell Road to visit Courtfield Gardens (East) and (West). The 'East' garden is mainly occupied by a church, though apparently it now houses a theological college.

In Courtfield Gardens (East)

The 'West' garden is a more standard lawned area surrounded by paths. We failed to locate the handkerchief tree mentioned in the guidebook. On the way in we were handed a guide to the plants in the garden, but with only their Latin names given, which wasn't too helpful - though quite a few Latin plant names give the impression of being crudely made up from English words with Latin-type endings (admittedly we couldn't spot 'handkerchiefium' on the list, though we did look for it).

Courtfield Gardens (West)

On a couple of streets away to Bramham Gardens, with a different feel of house (variously red-brick Victorian and Dutch-Gothic style, apparently).

Victorian houses backing onto Bramham Gardens

Then on to Collingham Gardens - these are really lovely, bordered by interesting terraces of houses - including these - that back directly onto the gardens. The lucky residents must really get a peaceful green oasis feeling in the middle of London.

Collingham Gardens

The last garden we visited was Gledhow Gardens. For whatever reason - possibly garden saturation by this point - I didn't take any pictures of this one, but was very charmed to see the actual two cats that grace the photo of these gardens in the guidebook (below), together with their elderly owner and two cat baskets. Does she bring the cats into the garden every day? One of them looked like a British Blue, lovely- if slightly cross-looking cats that you don't see often. Both were lying around in the sun when we arrived at the garden; after a while both headed back into their cat baskets when the owner got up. Intriguing - clearly they know the form and don't wander off.

We headed back to Paddington across Hyde Park, feeling extremely constructive at having visited seven venues in the space of only a couple of hours or so. Park was full of people sunning themselves. Lovely sunny day and thankfully I didn't get too much hay fever, given the awfulness of the pollen levels currently.

Ruth in Hyde Park

Circuit of Derwentwater, 10.35 miles

10 April 2018

Ray eager for the off

Did this walk with Ray on one of the days of our family holiday in the Lake District back in early April. Although the route says to start from Keswick, we thought the car park by the Keswick Launch might be a bit crowded so drove south down the eastern shore of the lake and parked at the car park just off the B5289 on the road that leads to Ashness Bridge.

The first part of the walk followed a path through woodland towards Lodore Falls, which we paused to have a look at, though I’ve visited it a good many times before. Due to lots of building work going on, the footbridge and path round the back of the hotel were closed so we had to partially retrace our steps back down to the road.

Me in front of Lodore Falls

Further along the road, turned off onto the path leading down to the River Derwent, across the foot of the lake. Ray had a bit of a distance vision fail just here: from the road, he had exclaimed at apparently seeing a person in the middle of the marshy area, but I pointed out that it was a sheep just in time to avoid him gallantly plunging to their aid. My distance vision is thus far still good, though I now have trouble making out detail that’s a foot from my face.

Crossed over the footbridge and followed the board walk to the far side of the lake.

Passed the Teddy in the Window.

Walked through the woods at Brandelhow, stopping for a snack at a convenient picnic table. Passed lots of people heading up onto Cat Bells.

Passed Lingholm. Stopped at the café at Nichol End Marine – unpretentious but pleasant, and featuring some record-breakingly enormous cakes. Walked on via Portinscale into Keswick, and then out the other side past the Keswick Launch landing stages.

Called in at Friar's Crag, which is evidently a famous viewpoint. Walked through an odd little woodland apparently known as The Ings, then around Calfclose Bay and back down the road to the car park.

View from Friar's Crag

The Ings

Passed a couple of sculptures en route: 'Entrust', near Low Brandelhow on the western shore, and the Hundred Year Stone, so called as it was put in place to mark 100 years of the National Trust.

'Entrust'

The Hundred Year Stone

Lovely walk and Derwentwater is a beautiful lake, though we weren’t particularly lucky with the weather – it was an overcast day and drizzled intermittently most of our way round. Our weather apps cheerfully indicated a 99% chance of rain for much of the route.

Our route shown in red on the map:

That London

Have only had a couple of days in London so far this year so it’s time for more (indeed, it's the Open Garden Squares weekend next weekend, which we're aiming to go to).

On the last Saturday in January Ruth and I made the journey over to Canary Wharf to see where she was working (and is still working, as at time of writing) for KPMG. Obviously dead impressed, what with their being a high-profile company and all, though my only direct experience of them has been as external auditors on behalf of HEFCW in 2011, not long after I started at the OU, and having to run around sorting out various levels of access for them.

It was a generally wet day but in addition to Ruth pointing out her building, we visited the fascinating Museum of London Docklands.

Wet Canary Wharf

The Museum of London Docklands

Ruth was stymied in her plan for us to walk to The Grapes at Limehouse (Ian McKellen’s pub) for lunch, due to rain, inconveniently-sited road works and my increasing irritability (Ruth isn’t the first person to point out that I become irritable when hungry). In the end we ate at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen and viewed this large inflatable bunny before heading home.

Inflatable bunny

Second trip was on a Saturday in mid-March. Ruth wanted to see a play, ‘Mary Stuart’, starring Juliet Stevenson and Lia Williams as alternately Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I – apparently a coin was tossed before the performance to decide who was going to be Mary and who Elizabeth that particular performance. Incredible how the actors can work like that. I had declined to see it as the tickets were reasonably expensive and I thought it might be a bit heavy-going for me. However Ruth enjoyed it, which was good. Turns out Stevenson was Queen Elizabeth for that particular performance.

While Ruth was being cultural, I went for a walk out of Volume 1 of London’s Hidden Walks, a darling little three-volume set Ruth had bought me for Christmas. Chose the Fitzrovia & Bloomsbury Walk, starting from Warren Street tube station. The area known as Fitzrovia apparently used to be owned by the Fitzroy family (the Dukes of Grafton), hence the name ‘Fitzrovia’ and the cluster of streets named after the family (Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy Square). Interestingly, ‘Euston’ (as in the road and station close by Fitzrovia) is also connected with the Fitzroy family, as 'Earl of Euston' is one of the Duke of Grafton’s subsidiary titles. Euston is (apparently) a village in Suffolk, close to Euston Hall which is the Duke’s seat.

Fitzroy Square

Noted Pollock’s Toy Museum, though didn’t attempt to go in. Nipped down Chenies Street to view the funny little round buildings labelled the ‘Eisenhower Centre’ - I've noted these before but didn’t know the history behind them. Apparently the buildings are one of the surface entrances to a deep-level shelter built during WWII. Fascinating stuff … the reference to Eisenhower is because the tunnels were apparently equipped to be his London headquarters during the war (though I'm not sure whether he actually ever spent time there).

Houses in Bedford Square

The walk passed through Bedford Square and along Bloomsbury Way to the junction with Kingsway and Southampton Row, where I stopped to peer through the gates leading down to the Kingsway Tramway Subway. Another interesting find – I’d never heard of this. There’s some footage here of a tram actually going down into them (the trams stopped in the early 1950s). Would have taken a photo but felt a bit self-conscious standing essentially in the middle of the road.

Stopped briefly at a Caffè Nero and then headed north via Doughty Street, observing the Georgian town houses pointed out in the book. Walked through St George’s Gardens, an old graveyard with a ‘hidden away’ air, though there were quite a few people sitting or walking in it.

St George's Gardens

Skipped the rest of the route in the interests of returning to the theatre to meet Ruth. We had been going to have dinner in London but weren’t hungry enough so returned to Reading and had dinner at the Valpy Street Bar & Bistro, the current incarnation of the former 'Chronicles', where we went for my 40th birthday dinner, and subsequently for drinks for Ruth's 40th in 2013, when it was called 'Valentino's'. On the current occasion it was busy and we only just got a table, in rather a crappy position next to a loud party. Can’t actually remember what we ate. Think I had some sort of veggie gnocchi.

Walk, Marston Vale, 13 miles

24 March 2018

I suggested this walk, which I’d cut out of The Times’ ‘Weekend’ supplement a while back, as it explored countryside to the east of Milton Keynes, which is not a side of the town I’ve explored much since living here. Hai, Matthew and Rebecca were also up for it, which was nice, so I collected Rebecca and Hai early on the Saturday morning – Matt, in typical hardcore fashion, reckoned he was going to walk from his home in Willen Park to the Marston Vale Forest Centre, where we were starting off - a distance of around 11 miles before the walk even started.

Drove via Marston Moretaine – whose dismal Travelodge¹ I stayed in during the Travelodge Year, though I seem to have confined myself to reasonably positive comments about the neighbouring Little Chef – to the Forest Centre, and parked.

The Forest of Marston Vale seems to be being established on around 60 square miles formerly occupied by a brickworks and some landfill sites. This walk followed the Timberland Trail.

We started by walking south west from the Forest Centre to the village of Lidlington, over an irritating freshly-ploughed field. Then turned east – quite hilly – passing the boundary of Millbrook Proving Ground, which I hadn't known anything about but Matt filled me in. It's the circular area on the map below.

Matt crossing the ploughed field

Part of Millbrook Proving Ground

After stopping for a sandwich, walked through Ampthill Park past Katherine's Cross. After that, through Laurel Wood and past the ruins of Houghton House. Hai and I slowed down a bit on the second half of the walk, while Matt and Rebecca continued to power on - Matt did reassure me afterwards that it wasn't a race, which I guess was comforting.

Ampthill Park

Laurel Wood

Ruins of Houghton House

Then a longish final trek across country to the model village of Stewartby, and from there around Stewartby Lake back to the Forest Centre, where we had tea and cake.

According to Matt, you used to be able to walk around the disused Stewartby Brickworks, but they've now been closed off. There seems to be a move afoot to demolish the remaining chimneys on the site, though according to this BBC News article they are listed structures.

Matt and Rebecca walking through Stewartby

Map of the route in red, showing the start and end point at the Forest Centre:

¹ In fairness, it looks from the hotel's website as though it has now been upgraded. Good thing too.

Feast days; gas; assorted spam

Today’s ‘Trending now’ section on Twitter has the following:

From the ‘World Bee Day’ website, this would seem to be the first World Bee Day. 20 May was apparently chosen because it’s the birth date of a renowned Slovenian authority on bees (it was apparently Slovenia who proposed having a World Bee Day).

Today is also, apparently, Pentecost, which marks the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ’s apostles. It’s also known as ‘Whitsun’ (for Whit Sunday). ‘Whitsun’ is one of those calendar dates that has never meant anything to me, though either Ruth’s mother or aunt (or possibly both) have referred to it as a time when they apparently got a holiday from school. Tomorrow is marked in my Google Calendar as ‘Whit Monday’ – apparently this was a holiday in the UK until 1971, when it was replaced by the Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May. 

Pentecost/Whitsun is determined by the date of Easter – it’s the seventh Sunday after Easter, apparently – and thus moveable.

Changing the subject: I hate dealing with utility providers, due to my own lack of patience and the inherent boringness of the topic, though I appreciate it's a really good thing to fully engage and research best provider and tariff, etc. Did have an online chat with npower a month or so ago, to draw their attention to the actual reading on my gas meter, which was nothing like the inflated estimate on the bill. The conversation led to my being put onto a different tariff which I was assured was the best one available to me, though as my monthly direct debit has since gone up from £5 a month to £118 a month, I’m not convinced of this, so will have to have another conversation with them in due course.

The following suggests an admission that they may be over-charging me somewhat:

On to some communications I have received recently. Mr Liu Jun gets straight to the point:

While Mother Teresa Stang is more circumspect:

This one, purporting to be from PayPal, was more convincing, but fell down on the salutation:

Baffled as to why anyone bothers sending these things. Surely no one actually replies to them?

Lido; gums; stiff rabbits

Earlier this year tried out the fabulously renovated Thames Lido (as it is now). Formerly the King’s Meadow Baths, it closed in the mid-1970s and had stood unused and increasingly derelict ever since. There had been various attempts over the years at fundraising and at trying to get the local council to do up the baths and re-open them, though it became increasingly clear in recent years that council money was never going to be spent on this. Reading is very poorly off for public swimming pools¹, though if council money were going to be spent, it would be more usefully spent (IMO) on refurbishing the dilapidated Central Baths rather than a small open-air pool.

Thames Lido. New extension on the left housing the restaurant

Anyway, the pool has been restored by the same people who did Bristol Lido, and it opened last October. I treated Ray to a trip as a late birthday present, booking us both in for a weekday morning ‘Swim & Breakfast’ package, at a cool £35 each. It’s pricey but the refurb is stunningly beautiful. We did a bit of swimming and then I did a bit more swimming while Ray basked in the hot tub and sauna. Our swim was followed up by a two-course breakfast in the restaurant that overlooks the pool. I had the toasted fruit bread and maple butter (what a wonderful concept) followed by the Turkish poached eggs; Ray had the sourdough toast followed by a vast kipper. Very nice indeed. Given the cost it’ll be an occasional indulgence, but I’d definitely like to go again.

The pool from the restaurant

Man and kipper

The baths apparently started out as the Ladies' Open Air Baths; there are some interesting bits and pieces here including a pic of the baths in use for a water polo match in 1904. There was evidently also a men's pool nearby - that's not there anymore but it looks as though it was on the opposite corner to the surviving baths. According to this it was closed in the mid-1950s. This interesting photo, nicked from https://www.lostlidos.co.uk/2002/04/07/kings-meadow-ladies-open-air-baths/, shows both pools (the men's pool is above the ladies' pool in the picture; there's now housing on the site):

Have paid two or three visits to my new dental surgery Dental Works since the beginning of the year, partly because of some trouble with a wisdom tooth – these have been partially erupted since my 20s but are clearly never going to move any further. Was prescribed the antibiotic Metronidazole for what the dentist theorized was a gum infection. Not something I’ve taken before – not that I take many antibiotics, but the usual go-to seems to be Amoxicillin. The Metronidazole prescription was handed over with a stern warning not to consume any alcohol while taking it, including avoiding mouthwashes containing it. As you would, I duly went straight to the internet to check this out, and inevitably found views veering from “I drank pints and I was fine” to “Don’t drink anything ‘cause you’ll be really really ill and possibly DIE”. I played it safe and avoided alcohol for the five days of the course, though did have a mini-bottle of wine with my dinner the day after I finished the course with no ill effects, giving the lie a bit to the advice I found in several places to additionally lay off it for 48 hours after finishing the tablets.

Dentists do seem to hand out antibiotics far more readily than GPs do – I haven’t had an antibiotic from a GP for decades, but have now had two lots from dentists within the past few years.

Oh, and as a footnote: the Metronidazole did clear it up. Fair enough then.

Our house bunny Harley went for a check up at the vets earlier this year and was prescribed a daily painkiller to take after the vet noticed that his hips seemed a little stiff and probably painful. Whatever the mixture is, he seems to like it and hops up to Ruth eagerly to take it. From our observations it seems to be doing him some good; he has seemed livelier, even to the extent of chasing the much younger Catherine Howard around the room friskily each morning.

Although we don’t know Harls’ exact age, he was believed to be around a year old when we adopted him in 2009, so should be about 10 this year, which is a respectable age for a rabbit though no doubt living in a centrally-heated house has helped him.

I do find it bizarre that rabbits have such a fast metabolism that they can take a medicine intended for dogs, twice a day. Fascinating creatures.


¹ Soon to be even worse off: I passed Bulmershe Leisure Centre on the bus the other weekend and it appears to have been fenced off for demolition. Article here.

Spotify

Decided to try out Spotify – or at least, the free version – as even Ruth is using it. I’ve never been much of a music buff but thought I should keep up with the latest trends. Though actually, streaming music is probably no longer a new trend by this point. And we’re going to Forest Holidays again in June and they’re so high-tech they expect you to bring your own HDMI cable and stream things from the services you’re signed up to.

Logged in to the free version with my Facebook account, and was presented with an interface that included this:

No idea whether this is the initial choice it gives everyone, or whether it’s somehow detected that I might be pleased by jazz and folk (and possibly even a spot of New Age, though I keep quiet about that). Which indeed I am.