Henley Walk

We received an email from one of the girls we met on our sail Croatia tour to come for a walk in the country side and jumped at the chance of doing something cool without having to organise it. Petria has apparently organised a few walks during her time in London but this was the first one since the Croatia trip. We met at Paddington station then caught the train out to Hanley on Thames. This area was beautiful! The walk began along a river where we watched the rowers training, apparently there is a huge regatta there during summer. We couldn’t understand how anyone would willingly climb into a row boat as it was bloody cold. Everyone was wearing thermals and Damien had decided it was cold enough to wear his snow jacket.

It was cold, very cold! There was frost on the grass and puddles had frozen over. We walked over a loch, through sheep paddocks, cow paddocks, along muddy tracks and through sparse forests. Finally after 5 miles, we reached our half way lunch stop, The Stag and Huntsman. The food here was really good, so good in fact that we couldn’t even bear to look at the dessert menu after finishing our main. This was a good thing too as after lunch the path began to climb.


We continued up hills through forests carpeted with autumn leaves. Through meadows, where the grass was still frosty even though it was getting quite late in the day. Eventually, as the sun was beginning to set, say around 4pm, we arrived back in town ready to catch the train back to Paddington. We were all very tired and cold so a hot chocolate was well deserved. It was a great day and it was lovely to meet some of Petria’s friends. We hope to do it again soon. Sunday I was having trouble sleeping so I got up early to avoid waking Damien and so I could ring mum. It sounds like everyone is falling apart at home. She is very restricted at the moment after an arthroscopy on her knee whilst Andrew is in a moon boot after breaking his foot in Cairns. Once Damien appeared we made plans to head to the Tate Modern to see the new installation in the turbine hall.
The sky was blue so we walked through Hyde Park. It looks so different every week at the moment with all the leaves falling. The grass is still green but otherwise it has become quite stark. It is always nice seeing all the people using the space to walk their dogs or exercise. From Hyde park corner we caught the bus to Waterloo then walked along Southbank towards to Tate. We stopped for lunch at the Real Greek (another chain) then headed into the gallery.

The current installation in the turbine hall is by a Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who worked with people from the traditional porcelain making region to create hundreds of thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds. Each piece was made in a mould, fired, hand painted, re-fired and then polished. When the installation first opened people were actually able to walk through and interact with the art work but this was stopped due to fears that the ceramic dust would cause health problems. I think that fencing the work off has sucked some of the life out of it as it is now very static, but it is still pretty cool. After the turbine hall we headed had a look around some of the permanent collections then decided it was time to go home. We crossed the Thames on the millennium bridge and just about froze! I think winter has come a little bit early. As I write this it is snowing outside. I think I’ll head to Hyde Park a bit later to see if there is enough snow to make a snow angel.

Oxford and Harry!

Pay Day is always exciting but so much more so when you have been living off tinned soup and discounted bags of potatoes. It is amazing how cheaply you can live in London when you have too, but it is so much nicer to buy things like olives and fresh bread.

This week was our second wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that we have been married for two years now. The time has flown, but I guess we should have expected as much considering that a year and a half of our marriage has been spent abroad.

As it was a special occasion and we finally had some cash we decided to have a day in the university town, Oxford. It was a slow start to the day so we didn’t make it to Oxford until around 1pm. Our first stop was to the undercover market where we visited a cafe for a coffee. Once we had defrosted, we rugged up again and headed to Christchurch College primarily to see the Great Hall which features in the first couple of Harry Potter movies. The hall itself is very nice, way over crowded with tourists, but fun to be in the middle of Hogwarts! The grounds of the college were beautifully manicured and the building very ornate. Wandering down the street we dropped into a couple of the other colleges, smaller, but just as nice and no crowds. Our last stop was the bridge of sighs, which is a replica of the big bridge in Venice. We had planned to do a bit more but it was getting cold and dark. The whole town is full of historical buildings including some very cool pubs. As it was so cold we probably spent more time in the pubs than exploring. To escape the cold we headed down some little lane ways to the Turf Tavern. It was busy, but we managed to get a table pretty quickly. It was an old, low ceilinged pub that used to host fencing duels in the 1700’s. We ate a massive share platter and tried the local stout which wasn’t half bad. Ready to move on the friendly staff told us about The Bear, another nice old pub. We were impressed, it was small, two rooms each seating 10-15 people, we got a seat by the open fire. The walls had collections ties from army officers, politicians and academics that had visited over the years (strange but interesting). Not done yet we went for a bit more of a wander, visited a contemporary sculpture gallery that happened to be open late on a Saturday and then found the Eagle and Child pub (baby and bird as the locals know it). This was another nice looking pub, bigger but also had that ‘British chain pub’ feel about it. After another pint we headed back through town to the bus terminal.
Oxford is a very nice town, nice old buildings, gardens and cobbled lanes. We ran short of daylight (damn UK sunset at 4pm), and never made it down to the river, which is also meant to be nice.
Sunday is pancake day and it is always hard to get moving, especially when you know how cold it is going to be outside. The weather reports have been saying there has been snow all over the UK and we should expect it in London soon. We had had grand notions of going for a walk through the park, but only managed to go to the supermarket to buy cheap Baileys and cereal.
By the time we got moving it was almost time to head to Westfield to see ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’. The movie was great for those who haven’t seen it yet. It was very dark and actually made me jump in one part, we are both looking forward to the next instalment, whenever that may be. We particularly liked the scenes in London, as these are places we see quite regularly. We walked home but stopped off at the Churchill Arms for dinner. This is a very cool old pub with a Thai restaurant at the back. We found a table ordered Thai and admired the collection of Chamber Pots hanging from the ceiling. It has been a pretty good couple of days.

Our wedding anniversary fell on the Monday which made the weekend feel longer. I met Damien in town after he finished work and we headed to Jamie Oliver’s Italian restaurant. We had a drink in a pub beforehand then headed to the restaurant only to discover there was a wait. You can only book tables for 6 people or more so everyone else has to walk in and get a buzzer. We headed back to the pub to wait half an hour or so, but happily it was only a 10 minute wait, not even long enough to finish our drink. The food was lovely and the service was great. I could happily recommend it to anyone who comes to London for a few days.

Full Time Work!

For the first time in a while, Monday morning I was up, putting on my suit and heading off to work. Not so much excited, just happy to have some work lined up. I’m working at Lebara Mobile for 3 months, they are a small telecommunications company offering cheaper call rates than the bigger companies. The week went well, a bit slow and lots of IT problems, their IT department is useless, takes 3-4 days to get simple things fixed like access to printers and a phone!
Other than work the week was very quiet. Were both just settling into being stuck in London again, not a nice thought after our summer of travel. The Dean Court Hotel is dirtier than it has ever been, and some of our good friends have left to go home to Australia or find nicer places to live in London. It was a week of birthdays back home with Nan, Leia and Mums birthdays all this week, we made some phone calls which was nice, but will also be nice to be home this time next year!
We had another quiet weekend, Friday night after work I met Christine at the British Museum. This is open late on Friday nights. We had a bit of a look around, it was nice, no school kids and many of the tourists leaving as it was dinner time.
November in the UK has a big rugby union tournament. This involved 8-10 of the best nations in the world playing off, meaning once again there was some quality sport on the TV. There was also the final race of the F1 season, but sadly Webber, after a great season couldn’t get the points in the final race and finished 3rd overall for the year.

Back in London for Winter

We arrived back around lunch time on the Monday. I did my Obsessive Compulsive cleaning of our room and located all our winter clothes as Damien went to the Laundry Matt. We got settled in ready to head back to work on Tuesday. I have been requested back at a school that I worked earlier in the year and Damien has picked up a couple of days as a Teacher’s Assistant. Hopefully our bank account will begin to look healthier after all our travelling. We don’t have any more travel booked until we can fund it.
Despite being offered teaching work for Thursday and Friday, Damien declined these to start looking for a more permanent accounting role. This paid off. His agency ran 3 roles past him on Wednesday evening and Thursday, an interview on Thursday evening and by Friday afternoon he was offered 3 months as a Project Accountant role, starting Monday!

Friday morning Damien visited the British Museum. This was good and not too busy, given it was a weekday, although plenty of school kids. It was very interesting looking through the Egyptian collection less than a week since being in Egypt. The main item in the gallery is the Rosetta Stone, which is the stone that enabled the ancient Egyptian language to be translated. The stone itself has the same thing written in 3 languages, ancient Egyptian, another form of Egyptian and Greek. The rest of the gallery had all sorts of stones, statues and coffins. The museum also offers free half hour guided tours of particular areas of the gallery. I joined one of these that discussed some of the Ancient Greek collection. This was quite interesting discussing different pots, plates and statues. The museum also has a lot of works from the Parthenon in Greece, that are displayed around the walls of a big gallery. Maybe we will have to visit Greece!
Friday night was Guy Forks night. This was one of first weekends we had in London last year. We have been living in London for a year! Sadly this year the bon fire night was a very cold and wet night, so we never ventured out. Saturday was a more sunny day. We went for a walk in Hyde Park, enjoying the colourful Autumn. We continued walking through Mayfair and over to Regent St. This weekend is the London to Brighton Vintage Car Rally. Regent street is closed so that the cars could be displayed, all of the cars are over 100 years old.
Sunday morning Damien got up early and headed to Hyde Park for the rally which started at 7am. It was cold but fun to see the old cars driving into the London traffic. Some were breaking down 200m after the start line. The afternoon was spent relaxing watching the rugby and F1 on TV.