London, Take 3

Last weekend Fran and I got on a train and made our way down to London again, this time with the main aim of catching up with Sam and Rachel, who are over in the UK to catch up with their families over here. As always, it’s great to see friends from back home, and we had a great weekend. We started out by purchasing commemorative “Kate and Wills” themed Oyster cards (see below). In the past we’ve gotten by on day passes that came with our train tickets, but as we were in for the whole weekend it was time to become a little more local. While I was purchasing the cards I managed to lose Fran in the crowd, as she went to an unexpected cafe to buy our much needed morning coffees, but soon we were caffeinated and on the Underground.

The whole weekend was fun, but the first highlight (for me at least) was a trip to the Saatchi Gallery. Fran had actually already been with her Father, but she was enthusiastic for me to see it also. It contained a selection of contemporary art of varying degrees of awesome. Two pieces in particular were notable (for me at least). First, a pair of cars which had been in accidents, and had then been contorted into twisted shapes. These were both visually stunning, and also quite thought provoking regarding their nature as people carriers that had been destroyed. Second was the permanent exhibit on the bottom floor, which is a pool of oil or something similar. It expanded the room vertically in a dramatic fashion, and the smell is something else.

That evening we had originally planned to see a show or a play, but eventually this degree of planning failed, and we went to X-Men instead. This was preceded however by a meal in Chinatown. There is a lack of really good Chinese food in Leamington, and it was one of our goals for the weekend to have something a bit better in London. All I can say about that is “Achievement unlocked.” X-Men was OK – it was a solid superhero movie, but really nothing special. I would certainly compare it unfavourably to something like the new Batman movies, and I don’t really feel it was as good as the first Iron Man film either, but the two lead characters were played well, and the setting (the 60s, Cuban Missile Crisis) was fun. It was also nice to see a blockbuster on a really big screen. The Apollo in Leamington just doesn’t really compare. Fran points out however that the cinema had a disturbing smell of gas. I am not sure if it exploded shortly after we left, but this at least is something that the Apollo beats it on.

On Sunday we had a slow day, the most London-y bit of which was a walk through St James’s park. We saw a variety of exciting waterfowl, most of which looked like they would be very tasty (we’ve been working our way through various types of game available from our local butcher). The birds were pleasant, and it was a nice way to spend the last little bit of our weekend with friends. All in all, a successful couple of days.

 

A weekend of local adventures

Or, at least, a Saturday of local adventures. As Fran has already mentioned our friends Bevan and Sarah came over from Germany in the past weekend with the express purpose of visiting the approximate coolness of Warwickshire and the Royal Leamington Spa. OK, so that’s a bit of a lie, but they did come here and stay in our spare room, which was pretty great. We started out on Friday, driving down the M1 to London Luton to pick them up, which was a fairly relaxed drive, regularly punctuated by areas of roadworks. I also managed to get us lost and stuck out near Coventry airport on the way home, but worry not, at home we finally arrived.

We started the next day bright and early, set on finally seeing the inside of Warwick castle, which has to be one of the most impressive castles we’ve yet seen. It’s very well preserved, and really fits the kind of thing a 10 year old boy might imagine when told that they were about to visit a medieval castle. In fact, it fits this so much, that the proprietors (who also run Madame Tussauds) have decided to target it primarily at 10 year old children (dressed respectively as knights or princesses depending on acceptable western gender roles). Nevertheless, it was a fantastic place to visit as the following photos will attest.

There was lots to see there – it’s more of a touristy themed attraction than a historical preserve. There are waxworks, themed rooms, people dressed as ladies, nobles, knights, wenches, and scary monks, and of course the obligatory “pay per arrow” archery lessons, as well as a few pieces of disused siege weaponry. One of the definite highlights however, was the birds of prey show (twice daily), which involved probably the most highly skilled worker in the castle demonstrating his mad skills at controlling enormous birds. We saw three birds: a still youthful owl (“Ernie”), who chose not to pickup his prey directly, but instead landed next to it and examined it before taking it (but extremely cute, and still learning to hunt); a Vulture (“Cathy”), who was flying up to the battlements and back for her dinner; and a massive sea Eagle (“Stan”), who mainly looked like he was about to accidentally kill his handler.

More pics of Warwick castle’s exterior can be seen on our post about our walk there! After we had had a sit down and a cup of tea, we continued our adventure by heading for Stratford-Upon-Avon. One thing that rapidly becomes clear about smaller English towns, is that if they have any significant claim to fame, they rapidly become very heavily focussed on it. Stratford is one such town, being completely incapable of letting you forget that it is the home of Shakespeare’s birthplace. The river you see in the photos is the Avon, which shares much of its water with the Leam (which runs through Leamington). Initially I thought they were exactly the same, but it turns out there are a number of junctions in the river between here and there, so I assume that each length of river has its own name.

 

The sign you see pointing to Shakespeare’s grave is as close as we got to it, as we’re pretty cheap and it turns out you have to pay to actually go inside pretty much anything in Stratford. Nevertheless, it’s a very pretty town and well worth a visit. It’s only a bus-ride away from us, so we’ll definitely be back there another time to investigate further, and maybe burn some excess cash.

We finished the weekend on Sunday with a trip back down the M1 to drop off Bevan and Sarah in the wonderful town of Milton Keynes. Actually, it looked pretty dull, but it did have a reliable rail connection with London – something Leamington could not claim this weekend. On this road we took two diversions. The second (more intentional one) was to a small town called Potterspury to track down Sarah’s ancestral home. The first, was Breakdown City, and was mainly because, you guessed it, our rental car broke down. The AA guy was very helpful and got us going again, but our faith in the car was destroyed (it never really felt the same again). We close then, with the metal horse of our own Knight in shining armour: The AA van.