A day out in London

 

We got up silly early today, but we're going somewhere!!!  We didn't go to the usual bus stop either.

We came here, to Hove train station!

We're going to London!!!

We arrived in plenty of time to get a window seat on our train too!

And we're off!

OH LOOK!  There's a plane coming in!!!

See?!?!

And then we crossed the River Thames!  We've arrived!

We're not getting a bus today though - we're going by underground!

We had to change lines here.....

And missed getting a decent photo of the mosaics at Tottenham Court Road!  D'OH!!

We got off here.  South Woodford in North London....??!

And by the time we'd come through the ticket barriers, it was TIPPING it with rain!!!

And we have a 20 minute walk to get to where we're going!!!!  D'OH!!

But we eventually arrived here - we're doing the shamanic drumming thing today!!

Hurrah!

Andrea was so excited, she ended up getting a fuzzy photo of the altar!!

We did lots of drumming and after lunch Andrea did some healing too - just as well because her hands were really hot.  I'm surprised she didn't scorch anyone's clothes!

And then it was time to come home...... we've had fun today!

Here we are .......

I like coming here....

We had to change lines here again...

And then got off here at the mainline station.

We had to wait a little bit for the train but we got another window seat again!

There's Battersea Power Station!

And we crossed the Thames again!

We  had a bit of a snooze on the train and only got a bit of the Balcombe viaduct crossing...!

And then got off here!

All we had to do now was scoot off down the road to get home.

We saw this written on the pavement!

And we did.  Hope you had an amazing day too.....

Trains, boats and buses

Today we got up super early for a Saturday.

That's because we're getting a train somewhere!!!

We used the facilities quickly and left them a CD

And then got a window seat on the train!!

And we're off!!

There's a new graffiti murial at Preston Park station

Love this bit....!!

Ooo I can see the Battersea Power station chimneys!!

And we're crossing the Thames too!!

We used the facilities when we got off the train and left another CD here.

And then headed off to the Underground!!

And came all the way to Richmond!!!

Now, we've got a couple of bus bingo numbers to get ..... but I think this is the wrong bus stop!!

Yeah, we gotta go down here!

And get a bus from this stop.

BUS BINGO ALERT!!!  We got the number 33!!!

We tied a tag to the rail.

it's pretty round here....

With lots of nature areas

Then we got off here....

And we had to cross the road to get the next bus.

That's our stop, but not our bus!!

This one's our bus!!!  The 209!

We gave them a CD as well!!

This part of London is called Barnes.  It's quite posh.

And super pretty!

There's the Thames again!

And that's Barnes railway bridge!

And we got off here at Mortlake!

We came here last year for the Oxford Cambridge boat race and so we decided to come back again!

They've got some pretty flowers.

There was quite a few boats on the Thames today

Oh!!  There's stairs to the foreshore!!!  They look a bit slippery though and there's no hand rail, so we decided not to.

That's Chiswick Bridge down there, that's the finishing line

And that's back up to Barnes railway bridge

More pretty flowers!!

We decided to have our picknick lunch - chicken sarnies!  Yum!

Then we had a wander along towards Chiswick and found this access point to the Thames!!

So we had a bit of a wander.   It was quite silted up and sludgy and seemed to be mostly rocks so we didn't stay long.

Then we went back to our vantage point at the Mortlake gardens.

We had a few more rowers coming along

Some of the boats were rather pretty!!

And then we had the Oxford Cambridge ladies race - and Oxford were way in the lead!!!!

Then we had the ladies reserve teams - and Cambridge were way in the lead!

Then we had the mens reserve teams....... and Oxford were WAAAAYYYY behind!!!

Then it was the main mens teams race...... and Oxford were so far behind, Cambridge had rowed as far as Twickenham by the time Oxford arrived here!!!!!  Cambridge nailed it!

Then it was time to go home..... we had a massive turn out of people this year, in spite of the chilly wind.

There's the TV helicopter up there...... you can kind of see it if you squint a bit!

Then we went down here to get the next bus to Richmond.

Which is the 419!!!  It was packed busy though, so we didn't get any photos.

And we got of here at Richmond Station.... ummmm, gotta get my bearings now.....

AHA!!!  There it is!!!

We're heading back to Victoria now.

But we visited the facilities quickly and left another CD on the door!!!

We spotted these at Gloucester Road station!!!  Have you ever noticed them?!?!?!

There's a bunch of them!!

And here we are!

Oh hang on..... are we getting another bus?!?!!

We are!!  BUS BINGO ALERT!!!  We're getting the 38!!

They got a CD too!!

We're going shopping in Fortnums!!!  (we'll show you later!)

After that, we walked back to the bus stop

And got another 38 back to Victoria.

It's time to go home!

And we got another window seat too!

There's Battersea Power Station!

Crossing the Thames again.....

You can see our shadow on the fields!!!

And then we got off at Hove Station!!  Then it was just a quick walk in the wind back home for dinner!!

We got some more coffee and bis kwits from Fortnums

And we found another piece of glass ....... looks like a bottle bottom.

What a fab day out!!