This is the BBC Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London!!
It's a Grade 2 listed building made of Portland stone over a steel frame. There's 9 floors above ground and 3 floors below ground. The architects were George Val Myer and Raymond McGrath. Portland stone is limestone of the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset in England. It is used extensively as a building stone throughout the UK, including St Pauls Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, the South African Embassy on Trafalgar Square and Somerset House!
closer view of the relief work.
Construction began in 1928 with the first broadcast made on 15 March 1932, and officially opened the following May.
Apparently, underground structures (including 100 year old sewers) presented problems: the building is standing over the London Underground Bakerloo line with the Victoria Line tunnelled in the 1960s. Apparently, noise from passing trains is audible in the radio theatre but (luckily!!) imperceptible in recordings!!
The white radio tower over the main entrance is a predominant icon in BBC radio publicity printings
Quite something to look at, huh?! Those big double doors there (with the statue above), they used to be the official main entrance
That modern white building - that's the new extension with renovations starting with the original building on 2003 and completed in 2005
The television BBC News moved here as well so it's not solely radio programming from here now.
It's a lovely building, huh?!
You can just see the "BBC" signage at the back there - that's the new main entrance to the building.
You can also see here that the new extension gives the building a "U" shape now.
And we're off!!! The bus was busy so we weren't able to leave them a CD or anything.
We got off here at the train station!!
And got on the right train!! We had to move a few times when it got proper noisy though.
They got a CD too!
Oooooo - where are we going?
OH! That's the Shard!!
Here's our train coming into Blackfriars train station...... but we didn't get off.
We got off here!!!!
We used the facilities and left them a floppy disc on the door. Then we washed our paws for half an hour, just to be safe.
Then it was off to the bus stop outside!
That's St Pauls Cathedral up there, but we're not going that way.
Aha! Bus bingo alert!!! Number 26!!
We left a CD on this bus!
And went past the Royal Courts of Justice!!
And we got off here at Aldwych!!
Then it was just a short walk down to Somerset House....
....because we're going to see the Beano expedition!!!
We had to go through to the other side of the courtyard to get there, and we saw they have their chrissmoss tree up!
It's pretty!
CHOCMOBILE??? LET'S DRIVE IT HOME!!!
They have a skating rink here too...
Aha.... entrance this way!!
THAT WAY!!! LET'S GO!!!!
Before we got to the actual exhibition, we had to go through this room with lots of quotes on it!
We like breaking rules!!!
TA-DAAA!!
Oh....... yeh, that be true, dat.
Hmmm.... good advice there
I do that every time I start singing!
We had to wait for a little bit to get in the expedition because it wasn't quite 11 am yet - but the first thing we saw was a big pile of bangers and mash!!!
Ooooo - interesting painting!
Fabric donuts!!!! Hahahaa!
That's all about the donuts.
And a cherry pie with mice eating through it!!!
And a tomato with bugs in?!?! Eww!
It's the Bash Street Kids!!!
Their school's through there! Let's go!
OH!! Hahahaaa!!
That was a fun expedition - well apart from the scary see through glass staircase. That was a bit horrid. But we had a good look through the gift shop at the end (we'll show you later)
And then we scooted off - but not home just yet!!
It's getting a bit cloudy now.....
We then had a stroll down towards Covent Garden and left a floppy disc on the way.
That looks like a slightly art deco-y building over there. Ooo - Sandy's having his art deco competition isn't he? Wonder what we can find....
The Savoy Hotel has chrimbo deccies up!!!
Coo!!
The Savoy Hotel is an art deco building..... but they don't let riffraff like us in.
Fancy skylight too....!
And that's a Lalique crystal fountain there too!
We left a CD on this grate....
And found a tiger in the window!!
There's more chrimbo deccies over there too!!!
We still had a bit of time before our lunch booking so we had a wander round Covent Garden to look at the decorations!
Oh!!! It's a balloon dog!
Those are pretty!!
Another chrimbo tree
They had a little chrissmoss food market there too - but it wasn't open yet.
Oh that's pretty! They had a peacock there last time we visited here!
We also spotted this very odd little sculpture
There's even a little person in that doorway!!! (can't see it very well though)
More brass rules!
We left another CD here too!
And then it was time for lunch!!! It's another Gordon Ramsay burger!!!
They got graffiti in here as well!
Quite fun really!!!
We got a fizzy drink that we could top up whenever we wanted.....
And a bhaji burger and seasoned fries!!! YUMMMMY!
Nom nom nom nom! Love this! We were all stuffed to the gillets after this!
After lunch, we decided to walk down to Trafalgar Square. Looks like it's been drizzling again.
Oh wow!! More chrimbo decs down there!
And a blue tree!! What fun!
Ooo! Twinkly lights as well!
The dollop of icecream is still there. Bit nippy for icecream today though.....!
Right. Bus bingo alert. What one are we getting now??
Number 453!!
This bus took us up Haymarket where we saw ANOTHER chrimbo tree!!
(we tied another CD onto the hand rail too!)
Then we turned into Regent Street and spotted these funky lights!!
We saw some more interesting buildings too, and we think some of them were art deco as well.
Ooo here's Oxford Circus!!
We got off here at Portland Place. You see that big building behind us?
It's famous!!!!
We doubled back a little bit and went to see this building. Andrea's Mum used to work in there a million years ago.
It's "the home of BBC radio, pioneer of education for children through radio broadcasting" up until 1993. Andrea's Mum was a producer and then editor of radio programmes.
Opposite that building is the Langham hotel (super posh!!!) and they've got their chrimbo deccies up as well!
And that's the BBC radio building!!! It's art deco and it's going to be our entry into Sandy's art deco competition!!!! There's a modern extension bit on the other side now which is probably why they don't use that red brick building any more, that Andrea's Mum used to work in.
Then we walked back the way we came to go back to the bus stop. We're going to do a separate post about the BBC building as we've tons more pictures of the place.
We spotted the Telecom Tower again, but it's getting covered by low flying rain clouds!
Right ho. We're waiting for another 453 bus.
When it arrived, it only went on for one more stop (and not to Marylebone Station) and we got off here at Great Portland Street Station.
That's OK because we only had to walk up to the main road, which happened to be the Euston Road which is exactly where we wanted to be! And we left another CD on a railing!!
Then we crossed the road and left a floppy disc here.
(Ed's note: this one got claimed!!! Floppy disc 414 on the other blog!)
That's Regent's Park!!! We found Regent's Park! London Zoo is on the other side of that!!
But we're not going there today. Bit too late in the day for that. We have to find another bus stop, and we left another CD out on the way!
Aha! Here we go! This is the one!
Bus bingo alert! Last bus of the day, number 18!!!
It was only when we sat down that we remembered why the traffic was so awful. The Underground tube drivers had called a 24 hours trike at 4:30 this morning - and there's 5 major mainline train stations along the Euston Road. Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, St Pancras and Kings Cross, none of them having Underground service today. So all those passengers (either coming or going) were travelling by car, taxi and bus. So all the traffic was at a snail's pace. Literally.
Luckily we were only going two stops, and we got off at Euston. The queue for the taxi rank was INSANE!!! From the road well into inside the actual station!!!
But we didn't have far to walk so it didn't take us long to get to where we needed to be!!
Here's the British Library!!
And here's St Pancras Station! We're on our way home!
We stopped off at Fortnums again (we'll show you later!)
And Laduree of course (we'll show you later!) and then used the facilities and left a floppy disc.
We washed our paws for half an hour and....
(Ed's note: this one got claimed as well!!! Floppy Disc 412!!)
.....found another chrissmoss tree with a tiger!!!
And it's on top of a book!!!
There's tails on it!!!!!!!
There's lemurs on it!!!
Oh that's funny!!!
Then we went down to the train platform and waited for our train. The train we got on was super busy though.
This is coming into Blackfriars Station again about 7 hours after the other video!!
When we got to East Croydon station, we were stopped just outside the station because the train in front, something had fallen off it and there were engineers walking down the track trying to find the bits. We were held up for a while (we forgot to time it!!) But then then told us that we'd only be stopping at Gatwick (about 20 minutes later than planned) and then Three Bridges and then we'd be going like the clappers all the way to Brighton - so we'd basically turned into a fast train instead of a "stopping at every blade of grass" train!
And we're here!!! We reckon we're still about 20 minutes late though but we're here!!
Then we had a short wait for the bus home.
Right ho - we're off!!
More chrimbo lights!!!
And here we are at the top of our road!!!
Right. We're cold. LET'S GO!!!
But we had to leave one final floppy disc though!!
Now then. We came home with a ton of goodies!! At Somerset House, they had free button badges saying "Conserve Me" and we could take some to give out to our mates!! So if anyone wants one, say so!!!
We also got some Walkers shortbread (yummy!)
And some rubber stamps!!
We're going to stamp these on some of our envelopes!!
We got a Minnie Minx fridge magnet and a "Rules? We don't think so" pin badge. We might use them as bingo prizes but we're not sure yet. Bob T Bear might like one of those....!!
We got that for Andrea's bag!!
We got some playing cards.....
They got pictures of famous artists on them!
We got some Fortnum & Masons Christmas Biscuits and Christmas coffee!
And some macarons! They're a bit squished though.....
We got chocolate, coffee, salted caramel, vanilla and two chestnut ones.
Beanie Mouse lives in the south of England and has been painting and creating artworks for many years. Some will be "lost" somewhere on the planet, some will be mailed out and on the Emporium blog, reviews are given on various stuff! Beanie also travels and blogs about that on the Beanie Mouse blog.
