London 2026: Part 1--An Introduction

We haven't crossed the Atlantic since 2019, which marked our second visit to Vienna.  In 2018 we made our previous journey to London, my 16th.  Combined with our summer in Madrid/Barcelona and two weeks spent in Denmark, this marked my 20th crossing, and Deb's 17th.  Since then flights now cost much more, and leg room in economy has shrunk to alarming levels.  One now pays for luggage to be transported, to choose one's seat and to change a reservation, on top of the basic fare.  We chose a fare that allowed us one piece of luggage each and an opportunity to change flight times.  We did not pay to choose a seat.  All this extra money still gives you a seat with a very small personal space, far too close to the seat in front.  Deb and I are in the medium small size of human being--there must be others who suffer terribly or pay exorbitant fees for slightly more leg room.  We did take out cancellation insurance, a separate expense, on the flights and the hotel.

 

 Clapham Junction, a rail hub, with central London in the distance.

 

We stayed at the same hotel in Croydon that we like, now called the Leonardo.  It is the most convenient hotel anywhere in London with quick access to East Croydon Station, which connects to London Bridge via a direct and very frequent train service, and to London Victoria via Clapham Junction.  It also gives full access to the south of England.  There is a tram stop right outside the hotel with links to many other areas with connections, and the SL7 bus to and from Heathrow stops 6 minutes walk away.  The area near the hotel has a shopping mall, small restaurants, cafes and businesses, as well as five reliable pubs and one craft taproom.  In short, the area is perfect for us.  The hotel is very comfortable and features a bar/cafe and restaurant.  Our room, number 708, featured two beds, a view north, and a four minute walk to the main rail station.

 

Many things about London have changed.  It is more expensive than ever, both ales and food.  Transport is expensive but travelers get what they pay for.  The service is mostly on time, reliable and very frequent.  This includes buses, trams, overground and underground trains and National Rail services, all of which were used on this journey.  A sad change was the number of people who are permanently facially buried in their phones.  It is disconcerting to see a whole carriage of people on a subway or train or bus staring constantly and scrolling on their phones.  They do it while walking, eating during restaurant meals, while talking with others in their company, smoking (there is still far too much of this) and just about any other activity in which they engage.  Humanity continues to devolve, everyone transported to their own little world.  In addition, while there is an indoor smoking ban, smokers are allowed to stand right in front of open doors and puff away, their second hand smoke very noticeable from within.  This is clearly wrong.  Also, a lot of outdoor seating allows smoking, so we do not often sit outdoors.

 

The city is more crowded than I can remember.  It is a multicultural pot of stew, and some days we heard very little English spoken.  Ethnic restaurants abound and people of every conceivable colour, size and shape mix and mingle.  London now has 9.1 million people, with a metro area population of over 15 million.  At any given time there are likely an additional 1 million tourists clogging up the sidewalks and Zones 1 and 2 underground services.  This compares to Detroit's metro population of nearly 5 million, making London not only at least 3x more populous, but at least 10x denser, despite its many parks and green spaces.  And Detroit's tourism, while quite impressive, has a long way to go to catch up with almost any European city.

 

We actually spend very little time in central London any more, other than passing through it to the outer areas we have been exploring in our more recent trips.  We paid a visit to Camden Market, once a favourite area to browse funky shops, but now a hell hole for thousands of tourists to simply come and hang out.  We visited Stanford's, our favourite bookstore in the world, as it is dedicated to travel books and maps.  They have moved (to our surprise) but we managed to find the new store and cafe.  We did not visit any of the large museums.  Being free, they tend to attract enormous crowds, something we usually choose to avoid if possible.  And we spent a day pub crawling in the area of the Strand.  The rest of the time was spent in outer zones of London, far from the madding crowds, and twice we left the city completely to explore smaller cities.

 

We prefer to be as far from central London as possible.  This is a view from our first hike.
 

We flew from Windsor to Toronto on a turbo-prop plane.  Randy G. drove us to the airport and was there to pick us up two weeks later.  Thanks again, Randy, for saving us the hassles of parking and having to drive ourselves home after a very long day of return travel.  We chose a late night jumbo jet flight from Toronto, leaving at just after midnight.  Pearson International Terminal 1 was its usual overcrowded mess.  It is our least favourite terminal in the world, and offers a nearly mile long walk from our Windsor gate to our London gate.  The Air Canada flight to London only takes about 6 1/2 hours (8 1/2 for the return), and we arrived on time near noon hour at Heathrow.  The SL7 bus is itself another epic journey, and this time it was a bad one.  Sunday afternoon traffic was miserably dense, and on top of the 120 minute journey (usually around 90 minutes) we had to wait about 20 minutes for a bus.

 

We had followed our reliable jet lag program religiously, and it paid off.  We were asleep by ten that night and slept through till next morning.  We awoke ready to go.  Our first big hike awaited.

 

Brief Itinerary 

 

April 25th:  Flew to Toronto from Windsor.

April 26th:  Flew to London Heathrow from Toronto.  SL7 bus to Croydon.  Checked in to the Leonardo Hotel.

April 27th:  London Capital Ring segment 10 walk.

April 28th:  Rochester Cathedral and Castle.

April 29th:  London Loop Segment 10 Pt 1.

April 30th:  Fleet St. pub crawl.

May 1st:  London Loop Segment 10 Pt. 2.

May 2nd: Camden Market and The Albert, near Victoria Station.

May 3rd:  London Loop Segment 10 Pt 3--solo walk.  Local pubs.

May 4th:  Croydon day.  Rest and local shops and pubs.

May 5th:  Capital Ring Segment 11 Pt 1.

May 6th:  Lewes and Seaford day.

May 7th:  Capital Ring Segment 11 Pt. 2.  Stanford's books and Dovetail pub.

May 8th:  Bethlem Museum.  Local pubs.

May 9th:  Croydon to Amherstburg via Heathrow and Toronto.

 

to be cont'd.... 

London, UK, Spring 2015: 1) Flight and Arrival

We have not been across the pond since late 2011.  Deb's illness precluded any long haul flights.  However, since her remarkable recovery, we have been traveling a lot for the past year.  In the spring of 2014 we visited Albuquerque, traveling via Amtrak.  We did some impressive hiking while there, too.  Then, in September of the same year, we rode the train all the way from Detroit to Los Angeles and back, once again with some impressive hiking accomplished.

In April 2015 it was time to try our luck crossing the pond again.  This was my 12th visit to London and vicinity, and our plans for this trip were centered around walking.  England has the most civilized walking available on the planet.  We are currently chipping away at two long distance paths.  One is the Capital Ring, which circles London in 15 segments, approximately around Zone 3.  It is about 75 miles long.  The London Loop, the second trail, originally in 15 segments but now broken up into 24 parts, circles London approximately around Zones 5 and 6, and is about 140 miles in length.  We began walking these trails several years ago, and were now ready for more.  The rationale for these paths is to find as many parks, woods and commons as possible, and steer the route in and amongst them.  More on the paths later.

Though we are Canadian, we live in a border city across from Detroit.  We usually use Detroit's airport when we wish to get away.  However, this time mostly due to a rapidly deflating Canadian dollar, it was cheaper for us to fly out of Windsor to London, via Toronto.  This meant flying with Air Canada, a first for us.  While the departure and arrival times were similar between Toronto and Detroit, we had a much better choice when coming home.

We arrived at Windsor's little airport around 3 pm, departing at 4 pm for Toronto.  It is a short flight in a small turboprop.  Our luggage (one medium suitcase and one small suitcase) had been checked through to London.  We had boarded with a small backpack each, filled with Clif bars and Lara bars in case our vegan meals had been messed up by the airline.  Our flight took us over Michigan on the west side of Lake St. Clair, then back into Canada over the bridge at Sarnia.  We also came right over downtown Toronto on our approach to that city's airport.

 12,000' over the Bluewater Bridge, looking towards Sarnia from Michigan

 Downtown Toronto, on our approach to the airport there.

Midtown area of Toronto

Once we touched down in Toronto, we taxied for just over 15 minutes to get to our gate, which seemed pretty distant from the main gates.  Our plane was a small one, and we had to go down its steps, walk outside across to the terminal, then back upstairs to get where we needed to be.  We walked at least 15 minutes indoors to get to the international terminal.  Our i.d. was checked every time we passed through a door.  When we finally arrived near our London gate, we were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the terminal.  Copious amounts of I-Pads were available, free of charge.  We had about 45 minutes to wait before our plane began to board.

Back in the mid 1980s, when we first began crossing the Atlantic (Spain, Denmark, England), we chanced upon a book detailing how to overcome jet lag.  This condition had affected us for days on our trip to Spain, and our return home.  We tried out the detailed plan for our Denmark trip, and it worked perfectly!  Used by the US rapid deployment services, and even by presidents, we now have access to the best kept secret on how to travel comfortably across time zones!  It requires a bit of discipline, but is worth every effort.  Anyway, the program required us to drink 2 or 3 cups of strong coffee and/or tea immediately after 6 pm, and then to set our watches to London time (11 pm) and try to sleep.

We were pulling back from the gate around 6:15 pm, in a plane with 9 seats across a row, separated by two aisles.  Our window faced north as we flew.  It was a good flight, we got our meals, and it was pretty quiet.  However, neither of us slept much if at all.  Not to worry!  Lying still with eyes closed and breathing slowly is nearly as good as sleep, believe it or not.

We were in Heathrow Terminal 2 by 7 am, quickly passing through passport control.  Our luggage was already on the carousel and we breezed through HM Customs.  We decided to have some herbal tea at the Costa Cafe after exiting the secure area.  It helped us relax and gather strength for the trip to our hotel.  Caffeine was not allowed for us today.  For the second time we would be staying at the Jury's Inn, East Croydon, probably the best place to stay in London.  Though way the hell out in Zone 5, there were fast trains to Victoria Station every few minutes.  We could be in central London in about 25 minutes after leaving our hotel room!   More about London Transport later.

We used the Tube to get to Victoria Station from Heathrow, and we were there around 9 am.  We were only 25 minutes from our hotel, but our room would not likely be ready until 1 pm or so.  We sat and enjoyed another cafe stop at Victoria Station, then caught a train towards East Croydon.  It made only one stop, at Clapham Junction, but what a stop it was!  The train, which had been quiet and nearly empty until then, suddenly filled with Watford football fans.  They were merrily on their way to Brighton to watch their team play.  Our car filled with costumed and beer-drinking fans, all in high spirits.  Deb and I had been alone in a six-seat section, but were soon joined by happy fans.

We struck up a conversation with three older gents and a younger lad.  If Watford won today's match (noon, and on the telly) they would advance to the premier league (they ended up winning the match 2-0).  It was a jolly ride to East Croydon.  

We were able to leave our suitcases at the hotel, and we went off to explore a bit of Croydon.  A large section of the High Street is pedestrian only, and another area of road was closed down for a fruit and veggie market.  There are also two shopping malls, as well as pubs, restaurants, theatres, small shops and cafes, all in a pretty compact area.  Our local pub would become The George, just a few steps from the hotel.  We ate lunch here then went back to the hotel.  Our room was ready and we checked in to #711.  By London standards this was a big room, and the bed was extremely comfortable.  We had free wi-fi in the room, a table and chairs, a huge desk, a widescreen TV, tea, coffee, and a bathtub and shower.  We lay down and rested.  Our London friend would be arriving at 3 pm and we would be off on our second mini-adventure of the day.

 

The Whitgift Almshouse, Croydon, has been 

helping the poor since the 1600s.

 

Detail of Almshouse courtyard.

Street scene, Croydon

Once Caroline arrived, we headed out for our afternoon adventure.  Leaving from East Croydon Station we caught a train to Caterham.  Our travel cards were good for one week, and would get us on buses, trams, trains and the tube in Zones 1-6, any time of night or day.  These cards are handy, inexpensive, and indispensable to us.  Caterham has its own branch line, and is the final stop.  The town is situated in a valley that leads up to the North Downs.  It is in Zone 6, being a considerable distance from London.  However, even on weekends, there is a train every 15 minutes!

The main shopping area is right outside the station, along with the East Surrey Museum.  We visited the little museum, speaking at length with some of the elderly volunteers, who, as expected, were rather knowledgeable about local history.  We explored the small shopping area, had tea at a cafe, then walked uphill to see the local church.  Caterham is a pleasant place to spend an afternoon, with a few pubs I wished to visit.  However, as per the jet lag program I had to keep alcohol to a minimum today, so we skipped the pubs this time.

East Surrey Museum, Caterham

St. John the Evangelist, Caterham.  Note the waxing moon.

We try to travel during non-astronomy weeks, when the moon

is too bright to observe well with telescopes.

 Portico insert, St. Johns.

The trick to surviving Day 1 abroad is to try and stay awake as long as possible.  We enjoyed a late dinner at The George back in Croydon (I had two half pints of ale, which came with the meal), then returned to our hotel.  We lasted until just after 10 pm before succumbing to our battle fatigue.  Tomorrow we had a big walk ahead of us, and we needed our beauty sleep.

Cont'd in Part 2