London - City/Country mix

23rd October 2007

It's a funny place, London. So often you're caught trying to get somewhere, stuck in the crushing heat of the Tube with your nose up somebody's smelly armpit and your bag still hanging half out of the door. On the streets, you permanently have to dodge tourists, slow-walkers and various people with clipboards and insane smiles. So when Gav was here last week and the weather was gloriously cold and sunny, we thought we'd get away from it all. Fresh air was what we needed. A nice walk in the countryside. And that's exactly what we got - without having to leave London.

Our original idea to go to Kew Gardens and see the Henry Moore exhibition was stymied when we realised it was £12 just to get into the gardens. No fear! PAY to walk around a garden? I don't think so... So we headed over to Richmond Park instead. It took us a while to find it, but that ensued in quite a pleasant walk through Richmond (once we'd dodged aforementioned tourists, slow-walkers and people with clipboards). There are some lovely views to be had in that area. We also spied a handy looking pub, which was duly noted as we sauntered past on the way to the park gates...

Richmond Park is the largest piece of open land in London - nearly 1000 hectares of it - and a Royal park. It has a small road running straight through the middle of it, which is a bit incongruous, but oddly not really intrusive. We just wandered off up the nearest path - pausing only briefly whilst I made a telephone call to Tiscali and shouted at them for being blithering idiots, but that's another story - rounded a little copse, which I thought looked a lot like the Hundred Acre Wood, to find ourselves looking at a pretty impressive stag. We'd read that there were deer in the park (650 of them, no less) but didn't really think we'd see any. But there he was, this stag, sitting in the grass, bathing in the sunshine. After walking on for a while, we came out onto another open meadow to find a whole group of deer. It was lots of does with their dominant stag, which was just amazing to see. They were sitting quite close to the road that runs through the park, with people walking past on all sides. The deer didn't seem to be fazed by it at all. I got a bit scared as we walked past cos the big massive stag chose this as the moment to start chasing off all the young bucks in our direction!

We escaped unharmed (phew!) and, having reached our usual 1-hour limit for activity/contentration, we headed back to the gates. It would be a lovely place to come back to on the bike some time. We only saw a tiny fraction of what there was to see, but the pub was calling and we were powerless to resist. Turns out the pub was interesting as well, with a moody and stressed lady-man (or technically, a man-lady) at the bar.

Heading back to Richmond Tube, we made a short stop-off at Wagamamas for dinner, making a swift exit once we'd finished as the place had started to fill up with mums and dads with millions of kids in tow (half-term) and went off to...the theatre! Rather than the usual musical offering, we had an evening of Kung Fu delights with the Shaolin monks. They were very impressive, the music was not. Odd oriental music with heavy dance beats don't half make your head thump! Highlight of the night - a little boy doing something quite spectacular involving a collander, his belly, two poles and some hooks. Tsk, these buddhists!