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  • London – Richmond upon Thames (Borough of) – Roebuck

    London – Richmond upon Thames (Borough of) – Roebuck

    This is the only Good Beer Guide listed pub in Richmond, worth the walk up the hill given the extensive views over the Terrace Gardens and beyond. It’s a Greene King operated pub and it has won a number of local CAMRA awards in local years, as well as attracting some rather influential customers. They certainly have an enviable location and there has been a pub here for over 200 years.

    The real ale selection, which is better than I had anticipated for a Greene King pub. The service was, well, unusual. I don’t intend for this blog to ever be a platform to criticise bar staff, but I did find the environment really quite strange. Visitors, including myself, were welcomed with a slightly abrupt “do you want a table?” which is a question I’m still not sure I entirely understand. Everyone replied yes and I can only imagine that perhaps some customers perhaps want to take food or drink away because of the lovely views. I’d prefer a more gentle welcome. Anyway, my confusion put to one side, I noticed a table that looked handy for my needs.

    I wasn’t given any of these nice tables (and nor the one that looked handy for my needs), I was given a table with no view that really wasn’t ideal. I found the situation quite humorous with how the staff member behind the bar told her colleague “give him table 3” rather than let him perhaps check if I had any aspirations to sit somewhere in particular in the nearly empty pub. Compare and contrast to the welcome at the pub I’d been to before…. I must admit that the staff member did provide me with quite a lot of entertainment, including her thoughts at times about other customers, colleagues and her housing situation. I’m not entirely sure significant chunks of that conversation were really for customers to hear, but I can’t deny that I like listening to gossip like that.

    It’s not entirely clear, but the views from these tables is extensive and really beautiful. The pub was very quiet, but it was clean and comfortable throughout. It’s had something of a modernisation recently, but it’s sympathetic to the character of the building and it all felt in order.

    The Citra from Oakham Ales, which was fine. Well kept, refreshing and as the name suggests, made with citra hops, which I’m rarely disappointed by. The server that I had was pleasant and helpful, he seemed keen to help and engage, with made things easier. The pricing was moderate, so that all really rather lovely.

    I’ll missing some of the story out for fear of looking too critical, but the staff member completed her show by shouting “can I help you?” as I was walking to the toilets. I did hear her say this loudly the first time, but I tried my best to ignore the situation as it was already inappropriate and I dreaded to think how she was planning to assist. It then seemed clear to me that she had managed to forget that I was a customer and thought that I was someone who had walked in when she wasn’t looking. My walking merrily onwards towards the toilets wasn’t the clue she wanted and the request was repeated. I did feel the need to comment that I had actually been in the pub all the time, had ordered and was going to the toilet before leaving, and she mentioned she was only seeking to show me where the toilets were. Given that I was nearly at the toilets, I wasn’t entirely sure how she thought I was at that stage going to miss them.

    There was nearly no-one in the pub, which struck me as fortunate because she had made quite clear to everyone that a customer was going to the toilet. I did note that at the previous pub the staff member saw I had a laptop and was keen to point me towards a table where I could plug it in. That’s the kind of pro-active service I’d rather have if I’m being honest.

    Anyway, I don’t want to sound too harsh as I think that the staff member was over-enthusiastic and it would seem churlish and unkind to be too critical of that. But, it’s not a pub that I would come back to because the lack of professional discretion about other customers wasn’t really appropriate and I feel that it would be remiss of me not to mention that. However, judging from the positive reviews, it’s clear that my experience isn’t necessarily one that’s widely repeated and the view from the windows is excellent and the beer selection is perfectly reasonable given it’s a Greene King pub. It probably just needed a manager present to ensure everything flowed beautifully, as the pub is clearly usually operating to a high standard.

  • London – Richmond upon Thames (Borough of) – Railway Tavern

    London – Richmond upon Thames (Borough of) – Railway Tavern

    There are no Good Beer Guide pubs in the centre of Richmond, so I thought I’d have a little visit to the Railway Tavern, which is run by Nicholson’s. Their web-site notes that this pub was opened in 1855 as the Railway Hotel, back when it offered overnight accommodation.

    The pub wasn’t very busy, but it’s a sizeable location with a large extension to the rear. There was a friendly welcome from a team member who let me in, as there’s a rope across the entrance to ensure customers are welcomed and comply with Covid-19 rules. I was told that I could sit anywhere, which was rather lovely.

    The rear section of the pub, all clean and perhaps a little generic in terms of its design.

    The real ales available were Nicholson’s Pale Ale, Sharp’s Doom Bar and Fuller’s London Pride, which isn’t exactly the height of decadence, but at least there was a choice. I went for half a pint of the Nicholson’s Pale Ale, which was well kept and at the appropriate temperature. As a beer it’s fine, although unexceptional. I paid using the app, which told me that the order had failed, but the drink was served about five seconds later anyway. That was fortunate, before I tried to go through the ordering process again. These apps still have some teething troubles, but I’m glad that they’ve been introduced.

    What was exceptional was the Irish barman who had got customer service down to a fine art. Friendly, engaging, conversational, pro-active and all the other epithets I use when I’m made to feel welcome. I liked how he suggested a spot which had a power-point, he offered more drinks but also made quite clear that I was “welcome to chill” for as long as I wanted. As the pub name suggests, it’s next to the railway station, which means they might get quite a few customers just popping in. His service was so friendly that I commented on it when I left the pub, and he replied “it’s takes nothing to be nice”. He’s right, and what a wonderful way to run a pub.

    Nicholson’s are a reliable pub chain, not too jazzy (not sure I’ve used that Inbetweeners quote for a while) but their food is consistent (not that I had any today) and the service is usually all fine. And as a pub, I liked this one, primarily because of that really rather wonderful service. I didn’t get chance to linger because I needed to move on, but this is the sort of pub that someone could linger in comfortably. The Pret down the road was packed with people with laptops, but they could do worse by moving down to the Railway Tavern.

  • Matlaske – St. Peter’s Church (Exterior)

    Matlaske – St. Peter’s Church (Exterior)

    As I was back in Norfolk for the weekend in between London visits, I took the opportunity to visit three churches with Richard all of which very much had their own character. This is St. Peter’s Church in Matlaske (also known in the past as Matlask), with its round tower which dates to the Saxon period. By any definition, that’s a remarkable survival, especially as sections of the nave are from the same period. More on the interior of this church in another post, there’s a fair amount to write about here as it is.

    I mentioned how rather lovely it is that this church’s tower and nave survive from the Saxon period. The chancel was less fortunate, as it fell down. And it didn’t just fall down, it fell down during a service on 19 March 1726. No-one was hurt, but that does feel like a message from God if you’re preaching and a chunk of the building collapses. A decision was made not to rebuild it (probably by the vicar who was likely considerably put off by the circumstances he faced), so it was just walled off.

    The join section is still visible, the section to the left and the buttress is original and the section to the right is the walled off part following the collapse.

    A really good decision was made, although I’m not sure when, to preserve some of the stone from the collapsed chancel. On top of the churchyard’s wall, which seems much more recent, are chunks of stone from the old building.

    There’s a section of lead which once held a piece of stained glass in the window. I very much like that these stones remain, a connection with the past.

    The southern side of the church, with a helpfully located bench for the tired to rest on. Or just the lazy, no-one will judge…. The south aisle was roofed in 1710, which was handily noted on the building, although the entire church was restored to some degree in 1878 and the current roof is more recent.

    This drawing is from the early nineteenth century (I think around 1825) and shows the building from the same angle as the above photo. Some things puzzle me, such as the window in the chancel end has been replaced, perhaps in the 1878 restoration. It looks quite a simple window here, perhaps as things were financially limited at the beginning of the eighteenth century when the repairs were needed following the chancel collapse. Also, at this point the south porch wasn’t blocked.

    The original Saxon tower has now been modified, but I still find it quite special to know that parts of this were here around 1,000 years ago. The top octagonal section dates from the fourteenth century. God was on the side of Arthur Boulton, a plumber from Great Yarmouth, in 1904 who was engaged in covering the church’s roof with lead. He managed to fall off the scaffolding, a distance of 41 feet, but was remarkably nearly unharmed by his little disaster.

    There were once three bells inside the tower, but financial issues (mostly relating to a fear that the tower might collapse) meant that in 1731 two of them were sold. In the little guidebook in the church, it notes that the remaining bell was cast in around 1480. I find that equally remarkable, that the bell was raised to the top of this church when it was still Catholic.

    The blocked up porch. I’m not sure why this was ever deemed necessary, as although I suppose the space was repurposed for clerical reasons, it seems a bit final to block the entrance up. Maybe a nice sturdy door would have been a little more attractive here.

    Anyway, more on the interior of this church in another post. It’s a beautiful building in such a quiet place and I’m very grateful that it was unlocked so that visitors could go inside.

  • National Express : Norwich to London Victoria Coach Station

    National Express : Norwich to London Victoria Coach Station

    Tonight I’m offering some variety to my usual Greater Anglia stories about my trips from Norwich to London and back. Indeed, I haven’t bothered even writing those up recently unless something has annoyed me. I’m not really a coach person, not least because people like Liam will make an Inbetweeners reference. Anyway, the cheapest rail ticket to get from Norwich to London were £15 today and I’m not made of money, so I looked for alternatives. I discovered that National Express have got rid of booking fees for those with an account (I like this, as booking fees annoy me), and they were offering this journey for just £4.60. I think that’s a bargain, so I bought it.

    Gone are the days when customers needed to print out National Express tickets, it’s possible now just to show the driver your phone with the ticket on it (or print it out if you want). And I have some words about the driver today. He was simply brilliant and was just one of those personable and warm people that could lift the journey of a customer. Someone wanted to board without a ticket and they didn’t have time to buy it. He suggested they buy a ticket online from Thetford to London when onboard the coach so that they didn’t have to wait a few hours for the next service. He didn’t have to do that, but he made someone’s day much easier and National Express got some money for the trip that they might have lost. The driver engaged with enthusiasm and, as might be evident, I thought he was a shining role model of customer service. I did post on Twitter about the friendly driver and National Express have at least liked what I put, so I’m pleased they’re aware of the whole situation (specifically their friendly driver rather than me being happy, which I imagine isn’t at the top of their corporate list of worries).

    Then I had to choose a seat after boarding. This is tricky, the two with the most legroom are at the back. But, they’re near the toilets. That’s a convenience for me in some ways (no pun intended), but also a danger if the toilets don’t smell too fresh. Fortunately, the gamble paid off today, all was pleasant and lovely. The bus set off on time and the air conditioning worked. The power sockets didn’t, but I was content as the coach wasn’t too hot and everything was clean. The service runs from Great Yarmouth to London (NX491) and it was relatively empty throughout, maybe 15 people on board at its busiest.

    I liked the emergency exit seats where I was located, they reminded me that I might be on an aircraft in a couple of months. Now, that’s a nice thought for me.

    This is the best photo I could get after arriving into Victoria Coach station. We arrived pretty much on time and I could hear the driver was still being friendly. I remember a Megabus a few years ago where the driver spent most of his time in London shouting at other road users and I’m surprised he didn’t give himself a heart attack or similar with the level of anger he had. The driver today seemed calm, even when confronted by idiotic other drivers, including one in Thetford who seemed perplexed on how to deal with an oncoming bus on a narrow road.

    It would be hard to fault a service that only cost £4.60 and achieved its aim of getting the customer to their destination. But, National Express did this with style, with a clean coach, easy to book service and a driver who was simply a decent guy doing a job he gave the impression that he loved. This was an impeccably run coach service, and I’m very impressed at National Express. How very lovely.

  • London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Travelodge Greenwich High Road

    London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Travelodge Greenwich High Road

    It was too hot when earlier in the week I visited the Travelodge on Greenwich High Road, a hotel which is likely usually busy with tourists at this time of year, but is currently selling rooms at under £25. When I arrived the helpful man at reception seemed quite hot, which coincided with how hot I was as well. He was satisfactorily agreeable about how hot it was, so I liked him.

    Travelodge have two hotels relatively near to each other, this one at Greenwich High Road which is next to the railway station, and another simply known as Greenwich, which is next to Deptford Bridge railway station. I suppose tourists find the name of Deptford Bridge as being perhaps not quite as appealing. When I told the receptionist my name, he couldn’t find the booking, and I knew what was coming, he was going to politely tell me that I was at the wrong hotel. Fortunately, Google had already alerted me to there being two hotels, and I was at the right one. All was well. And another thanks to the receptionist for giving me paper so that I could handwrite the witness statement for some Norfolk and Suffolk LDWA group members. Actually, now I’ve written that, it sounds wrong. They weren’t in court, it was evidence that they had finished the LDWA 100. Anyway, I digress.

    The receptionist, who I felt I had built up a rapport with as we didn’t like the heat, gave me an ideal room right at the end of a corridor which he said would be quiet. He was absolutely right, I heard pretty much nothing from within the hotel, although I think it was fairly busy. I was pleased to discover that there was a fan in the room, so that stayed on the entire night. It was also clean, comfortable and sufficiently well maintained for me to be entirely pleased.

    I usually use the stairs in a hotel (unless I’m on the top floor or something tiring) but I never worked out where they were (and I didn’t take much care to look) so I used the lift. Which gave an interesting (well, not very interesting, but I’ll mention it) lift etiquette issue. With this virus, hotels ask for guests not to share lifts. So I go down in the lift, which stops at the floor below. That irritated me slightly as we were now on the first floor, and I thought that I was pushing it not finding the stairs to go down from the second floor. Anyway, a moderately drunken man who seemed very friendly asked politely if he could get in the lift. I think the words were “am I alright to get in with you mate, I’ve got no virus”. I wasn’t, to be honest, much concerned of the pandemic risk and it also prevented an awkward social encounter where I told him to wait for another lift. But, being British and avoiding conflict (I mean in a Very British Problems way, not making reference to the nation’s empire building in the nineteenth century), I wonder how many guests would have politely told the man to wait. I’ve digressed again.

    A view from the hotel room window and there’s a DLR train at the station in the centre of the photo. And, yes, I did stand there waiting for a train to arrive to take that photo. I really do need to get out more…..

    I very much liked this hotel as it was clean, cheap, comfortable and the staff member didn’t like the hot weather. Frankly, I’d be willing to stay at a hotel far more willingly if I knew that they had a staff member complaining about the hot weather at reception, that’s something I’d find very beneficial for my stay. The hotel did have a bar and restaurant, and was also offering breakfasts, but I didn’t partake on this occasion. It’s a convenient hotel to get to though as it’s next to the station, which also has regular trains which go straight into the city centre. All very lovely.

  • London – City of London – Old Bank of England Pub

    London – City of London – Old Bank of England Pub

    London is a strange place at the moment to establish when and where it will get busy. Usually when I’m walking down Fleet Street and this part of the city, pubs would be pretty packed out in the evening. I walked by this pub and thought it looked interesting, but also thought it might be one of those decadent food pubs who hardly wanted someone in there for a quick pint before their train home. But, whilst merrily walking by and already having pre-judged it, I checked CAMRA’s Whatpub and discovered that it was in the Good Beer Guide. So I walked back again, trying to not look like a confused tourist.

    I had guessed the bit about decadent correctly. However, it wasn’t a gastropub at all as I had thought it might be, although their pies are apparently pretty decent. The building was from 1888 until 1975 used by the Bank of England as their Law Courts and then it was for a while used by a building society, before it was used for a much better purpose, as a pub. The building once had gold bullion in its cellars and the Wikipedia page for the building notes that it might have held the Crown Jewels for a time.

    Going back to the pies that I just made reference to, the pub themselves mention that it’s located between where Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett operated (or allegedly operated since it’s likely entirely made up), noting:

    “It was in the tunnels and vaults below the present building that his victims were butchered before being cooked and sold in the pies to Mrs Lovett’s unsuspecting customers”.

    What a lovely selling point for the pies today…..

    The service was professional and efficient, although it seemed slightly over-staffed, so maybe they had been expecting more customers. It got a little bit busier during my visit, but nothing that was going to be a challenge for the staff to cope with in terms of the numbers.

    It’s a pub run by McMullen brewery, so it had their beers in, which is fair enough for their perspective, but gives less incentive for me to return to try something new.

    Slightly mispoured, but by no great margin as I think this was a lined glass, but the beer range was slightly less riveting. I had half a pint of the AK and half a pint of the Country, which were both well kept and tasted fine, but they were perhaps just a bit routine. The Country had some interesting flavours, not least being biscuity as promised, and I like that clean taste. The prices were actually quite moderate (and looking through the food menu, they were reasonable too given the location), fortunately not matching the decadent surroundings.

    One unfortunate omission is a photograph of the double decker bus that they’ve managed to move into their beer garden. I was going to take a photo from the beer garden after leaving the pub, but it transpired you now need to go through the pub, and I decided against meandering around the building again looking for it. But it’s worth Googling this double decker bus they’ve managed to position into their central London location.

    All in all, I’m pleased I popped into here before my train back to sunny Norwich, certainly a memorable interior and the staff were friendly. Maybe I’ll come back for one of their pies at some point…..

  • GeoGuessr 3 – The Story

    GeoGuessr 3 – The Story

    As I posted yesterday, I’ve decided to restart the GeoGuessr ‘adventures’ that I was going on, as I really rather enjoyed them. In short, it’s using the GeoGuessr web-site to find a random location in the UK and then going there. The reason is to see what stories can be told about any random place in the UK, as I am a little obsessed with random things. The plan was that I’d generate a new location and then plan how I was going to get there and who with.

    Then, something slightly bizarre happened with my first choice. It was located within 0.6 miles away from Paddington railway station, where I needed to go today anyway. I’m taking that as the universe’s message to tell me to get on with these. That’s the uplifting upside, but the downside is that it also means that it’s bloody difficult to tell a story when walking such a short distance, so this is my best effort. Don’t expect War and Peace….

    The starting point I decided on was where I needed to be anyway, which is Paddington railway station. The railway station was first opened in 1838 and the present Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed structure was completed in 1854.

    The GWR trains, but unfortunately the Great Western Railways branding will soon be going to be replaced apparently with Great British Railways, a name with simply no heritage attached to it at all. It sounds like it’s being rebranded in honour of Michael Portillo and his television series. Anyway, I won’t get distracted with politics.

    The not unimpressive station clock. The station is the busiest I’ve seen it in some time, although it was hardly packed with passengers during my visit. Things seem to be slowly returning to some form of normality on the rail network, but there’s still some way to go.

    Paddington wouldn’t be Paddington without the bear….. This is apparently in usual times very hard to get a photo as children want to sit by it, as this is the location where the bear was discovered by the Brown family in the Paddington film. I suspect my friend Liam’s eldest child might be a bit too old to want to see this, but the younger two might well be convinced for it to be included as part of a day trip to London (via McDonald’s, the cable car, the Houses of Parliament and wherever else children want to go, or at least, where I think children should go to learn about beer, history and fast food). Anyway, I digress.

    The Great Western Railway War Memorial which was unveiled on Armistice Day in 1922 by Viscount Churchill, who later became the longest serving chairman of GWR. There’s a page just about the war memorial on Wikipedia.

    It’s possible to leave the railway station from the rear, which gives access to some underground platforms, and also to the Grand Union canal, which I thought I’d meander along for a bit.

    I’d never noticed these heritage photos of the railway before.

    I like this one in particular, with the planks visible that were helpfully placed to allow residents to get to their front door during the construction of the underground. It doesn’t look ideal and I can think of some friends who would likely fall straight off those planks into the abyss below.

    This is the Darcie & May Green, a barge designed by Sir Peter Blake which is used as a restaurant or bistro type arrangement.

    This whole area is quite vibrant and I’ve never been to this part of London before, so it’s new to me.

    A bridge over the Grand Union Canal, which is 137 miles long (the canal, not the bridge) and stretches from Birmingham to London.

    There were two sculptures here by Sean Henry, and I’ve seen one of his works before in Holland Park. The two figures look at each other along a long strip of paving, which looks like it rather gets in the way of the nearby restaurant’s seating. A good talking point though.

    There was a lot of bubbling at this point of the canal which seemed odd.

    A sign explained what was going on……

    Not a “wildlife jacuzzi”, but I like that phrase.

    This all felt a little continental, or it would have done if the weather wasn’t quite overcast. There were families having picnics and the more wealthy (or more frivolous families) were dining on board the restaurant boats that are moored up here.

    The area is known as Little Venice and as the sign suggests, it’s not clear whether this name was thought up by Robert Browning or Lord Byron. At that point I left the canal and walked a short distance along Westbourne Terrace Road.

    This property on Westbourne Terrace Road has a plaque noting that the author Margery Allingham (1904-1966) lived here between 1916 and 1926.

    The area around here was all a bit, well, roady, for my liking.

    And here we are at the destination already and I slightly risked life and limb to get this photo. It’s the best that I can get under the circumstances, although the underground sign on the right isn’t quite visible. It’s near enough to the spot of the random location that GeoGuessr served up though, so I was content with the state of affairs I had managed to deliver.

    The entrance to the Royal Oak underground station and I’m actually not sure I’ve ever got on or off here before, which must be one of the very few underground stations within Zones 1-4 I can write that about. Based on that, this destination was a little bit of a voyage of discovery, albeit quite a small voyage.

    The station is located on the Circle Line and also on the Hammersmith & City Line, having first opened on Monday 30 October 1871.

    The station was named after the nearby pub the Royal Oak, but a little annoyingly for the rail company, that then changed its name and it’s now known as the Porchester. Today, the station is a two platform affair with a central staircase going to the main station hall. However, when it was first built there were three platforms, something long gone due to a reconfiguration required for the mainline services into Paddington.

    Not much of particular note, but this is the underground’s station central platform. This could have become a more important transportation location recently when there were plans to move the coach station from its cramped and inadequate accommodation at Victoria into a larger purpose-built site. The neighbours didn’t seem delighted and it’s also not really that well linked into the city centre, so I’m not sure that it was ever that good an idea.

    The closeness of Paddington is evident here, the six railway lines which run into and out of the mainline station.

    And so that was that. OK, it rather lacks the depth of excitement that the two previous GeoGuessr expeditions had. I also couldn’t find any nearby pubs that didn’t seem to be gastropubs mainly serving food, so I couldn’t pop into anywhere obvious for a quick drink.

    I’m not entirely sure that this mini expedition gave me any new outlooks on life either, but at least it was an easy adventure to organise, even though it wasn’t particularly adventurous. But, it at least gets my little series of GeoGuessr meanders back up and running.

    Anyway, the next thing to do was to generate a new location for GeoGuessr 4. And I managed to get a location near Banbridge which is in Northern Ireland. Under the rules we’d set for previous ones, we were rejecting Northern Ireland for the moment (due to the difficulty in getting there in a weekend).

    So, this is the second location. I know exactly where this is (not through the image above, but by scrolling about) but I’m fairly sure that no-one else will. As a clue, it’s 2 hours 58 minutes from Norwich by car, or 16 hours by public transport, involving five bus journeys. This could be quite an adventure to get there….. How lovely.

  • London – Southwark (Borough of) – Hawkes Cidery (Wasted Apples)

    London – Southwark (Borough of) – Hawkes Cidery (Wasted Apples)

    I’ve written about Hawkes Cidery on the Bermondsey Beer Mile before, but I hadn’t noticed this warning about food waste before. Every second the UK wastes enough apples to create 3.5 pints of cider and that certainly does feel like a crime….

  • London – Camden (Borough of) – The Hardy Tree

    London – Camden (Borough of) – The Hardy Tree

    This ash tree is located in St. Pancras Old Church, located just a short walk away from St. Pancras railway station. And the railway is relevant here as in the 1860s a new line was needed which ploughed straight through the middle of the church’s graveyard. A decision was made to carefully move all of the bodies to another location, but that meant there were a big heap of gravestones that needed to be dealt with.

    The task of dealing with this problem was given to Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899) who was a leading architect who designed and modernised countless churches and other buildings. Blomfield really didn’t want to deal with the moving of the bodies (which all ended up together in a large hole), or indeed the moving of the gravestones either, so he gave that little task to his assistant Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Fortunately, Hardy is now better known for his literary achievements later on in his life rather than moving bodies and gravestones around.

    Since Hardy’s time, the tree has become bigger and started to almost take on the gravestones as part of its own growth. The stones have been preserved, but they will likely never be moved from their location, which brings an interesting question about whether it was a useful preservation. It has though become a little bit of a tourist attraction and there’s now fencing around the area to stop people even getting up as close as the iron railings around the tree.

    I think it’s quite majestic, putting aside the caveat that I like gravestones to be accessible and readable. I note that there are quite a number of tombs in the current graveyard and although I don’t know, I suspect that these were moved with rather more care than the individual gravestones were. Wealth can be a very useful thing, even in death.

    This whole burial ground has had a slightly traumatic history as not only have many of the bodies been removed for the railway, many were also removed in the early nineteenth century by body-snatchers wanting to sell cadavers to medical schools.

  • GeoGuessr – Starting Again…..

    GeoGuessr – Starting Again…..

    One of the little side projects that I greatly enjoyed was randomly selecting locations using GeoGuessr and then going to them. When Nathan and I were doing this, our rule was that we would use the United Kingdom map and then go to wherever the random location was in England or Wales. If it selected somewhere in Scotland, we would skip to the next round, but if we got Scotland again, we’d go as that was what fate was telling us.

    Due to a new arrival, Nathan isn’t doing any more GeoGuessr adventures and so I’ve found some new willing (and probably unwilling and slightly sceptical, but there we go) participants as I can’t let this little project fade away. The joy is to try and tell a story of the journey to a location and be open to whatever experiences come along, and we had a fair few on the two trips we did make, the first to St. Osyth’s and the second to Rugeley. I will select a random location and will then have to pick someone who has the time to go there with me from my little panel of friends. What could possibly go wrong…..

    I consider it bad luck to fix this adventure, so I have to go wherever it says. I have scrapped the third location that we had lined up for early 2020 (before Covid-19 hit), primarily as I can’t remember where it was and that’s not ideal. That means I have just selected a brand new location, and it’s above, click on the image to see it in more detail.

    And, yes, that’s a bloody London Underground sign. I’m in London and I’ve managed to get a location in London. Fate is telling me something, although I don’t know what it is. I didn’t know where the location above was, and congratulations to anyone reading this who does know from just that image, but I was able to move about the map to find out. Given where it is, I might as well just do that tomorrow and I’ll try and add a craft beer bar in to the arrangement as well.

    How exciting! (well I think it is)