Happy Saturday to you!
The area of Aberdeenshire where I live lies on the line of
latitude - 52.7360 ˚ north.
The co-ordinate for Central London
is 51.5073 ˚ north.
For centuries, people have said “I’m going UP to London”
but this phrase didn’t hold much water with my father. Fervently Scottish, born
and bred in Glasgow,
my father thought that was a very silly thing to say. He always claimed it was
impossible to go UP to London
if we were going SOUTH to do so. It’s one of those situations that still causes
some controversy. For people who live in the north of the British
Isles, it seems impossible to travel south and also be going UP.
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| Nancy Jardine - The British Museum |
Of course, the historic use of the phrase “going UP to London… to see the Queen”
wasn’t important to my dad. He wasn’t in any way inclined to the monarchy and
the idea of seeing the queen wasn’t an ambition of his. However, he was a very
polite person and I have no doubts that should he ever have inadvertently been in
the company of the queen, for whatever reason, he would have spoken to her as
to any other person he met.
Growing up, I was curious about the whole affair and going
Up to London to
see the queen was quite an intriguing thing to do. I made a visit to
Westminster Abbey for its 900th centenary celebrations to sing with the massed
Girl Guide Choirs (you’ll find a post made about this on this blog) but was
disappointed that the Queen was not attending. As patron of the Girl Guide Association,
it was Princess Margaret who was there as the representative of the Crown.
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| Nancy Jardine - at The British Museum |
Subsequent visits for me have always meant travelling south
to go to London
and I have always referred to my trips as going DOWN- even at the risk of the
stares which came my way. On Thursday 12th
March, I flew DOWN to London.
I’m presently in the county of Hampshire, not too far from Central
London, to attend a 70th birthday celebration of one of
my husband’s oldest friends, an ex-colleague of many years ago that we’ve kept in touch with over the last four decades. Flying down on Thursday gave us a
free day to visit central London
yesterday (Friday) the party being on Saturday night. Not much time, but just
enough to visit some of the plethora of tourist spots.
It may not come as too much of a surprise that my first stop
was The British Museum. Last year, on
another short trip, I visited The Victoria and Albert Museum
to see its fabulous collections. Yesterday my focus was Room 49 which houses the Roman
Britain Collection. With a narrow window of a couple of hours, I managed to
view that collection and had a fleeting glimpse of some others that I must revisit
to see properly.
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| Room 49 |
What makes a short visit to such a fantastic museum seem
viable is that the main museums of London (and indeed around Britain) have FREE entry- unless you are viewing a
special collection, or a travelling collection from another lending source like
maybe the Metropolitan or another European museum.
There were so many exhibits in room 49 that I’m sure I can
use in my blog writing for my Celtic
Fervour and Rubidium Time Travel
novels. It’s possible to take photographs (non flash) of most of the displays
with only a few exceptions which are in special areas.
They also have some fabulous books that can be purchased
from the Museum shops. My book buying budget has just taken a huge dent!
After my foray at the British Museum,
my husband and I had fun travelling on the London Underground railway to the Tower
of London. Having looked at the map, a walk from the British
Museum to Tower Bridge
was possible, but since it was already late in the day we opted for the
Underground. As it transpired, since many of the Underground lines are so many
levels below ground, we had to change ‘lines’ and negotiate the multitude of
corridors, stairs and escalators to reach our destination. Fun –definitely- but
maybe not shorter, or quicker, than walking between the two areas.
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| Tower of London |
It was too late in the day to make a £25.00 entry ticket to
the Tower of London worthwhile, since it closed at 5.30
p.m., so we opted to walk along the riverside. That was a great choice since the
weather was cold, though dry and not too windy. There is probably no better way
of appreciating the views of the River Thames and the variety of buildings which
adorn its banks.
Glass buildings of many shapes and sizes vie with the older,
and generally much lower, stone buildings. From Tower Bridge the view up and
down river was very clear, the Tower Bridge area full of pleasure tourist
boats, some barges chugging their way upstream and a good chunk of the skyline taken
up with the HMS Belfast. The HMS Belfast,
a ship used over many years from World War II onwards, was decommissioned some
time ago and made into a visitor attraction. More information here http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/hms-belfast
Friday in London,
on a pleasant March day, was most enjoyable.
Now I’m off to party!
Slainthe!
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