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  • London – Hammersmith and Fulham (Borough of) – Ibis Earls Court

    London – Hammersmith and Fulham (Borough of) – Ibis Earls Court

    I’ve written about this hotel a couple of times before (Earls Court Ibis and Earls Court Ibis) although I’ve stayed here on around eight or nine occasions now I think. I thought I’ll add this visit just because it’s the first time that I’ve been since the on-site pub has opened, it’s never been busy enough before for them to open. I admit that it’s not hugely breaking news, but it’s something new…. This is a hotel where conferences usually take place, so I can imagine that this gets very busy when these are in full flow.

    This is the former bar, which is just now part of the general reception area. There was quite a queue for check-in, typically when I was in a rush and I needed to be on a Zoom call and had just been stuck on the Victoria line for over half an hour. I tried to look slightly annoyed but there was little point as the staff were working through the queue quickly and they were polite with large smiles. The staff member who checked me in was bouncy and welcoming, mentioning that he had the same first name as me which was a reminder he had been at reception the last two times I’d visited. The reception staff here always seem friendly, it’s a positive introduction for guests.

    All of my previous visits have seen me placed higher up the building (as in on a higher floor, not on the roof), with some rather lovely views, but I was down on the third floor this time. I suspect that they’ve done up the rooms in the higher levels of the hotel with a more modern design, as this is the older Ibis room interior. However, it’s still clean and functional. This remains one of the few hotels that keeps Bibles in the room, something that I haven’t seen for some time.

    I haven’t seen an Accor hotel do this for a while, but these have the dual purpose of being decorative and also advertising other locations from the brand around the world. A nice touch I think, JD Wetherspoon used to do this in their pubs as well to advertise new openings from around the country.

    Anyway, this is the hotel’s own little pub which is located on the first floor. The George and Dragon is designed to look like a traditional British pub and I quite like this, as often hotels go for something with a theme which isn’t local to their environment at all. Without generalising, this is at least something a little authentic for American guests and the like. I say authentic, it’s a hotel bar, but it’s all relative.

    There was a sizeable amount of space inside the pub, although it was also quite busy with many customers getting food as well as drink. It all looked a bit expensive, but since my drink was free I didn’t dwell on this matter for long. They looked a little short-staffed and empty plates started to pile up on most of the tables, but they seemed to be doing their best. These remain challenging times for the hospitality industry, so I’m just impressed that the hotel is still functioning.

    I found myself a high table to monitor proceedings from….

    The beer choice was acceptable, albeit a little orientated towards lagers, but there were at least some choices. I can always tolerate a nice Goose Island IPA for my welcome drink and they didn’t seem to have any limits on what I could pick as my free beverage.

    Anyway, another lovely stay with friendly staff, a clean environment and no noises issues either internally or externally. I shall hopefully stay here again, despite Accor annoying me (which I may have mentioned several times….)

  • London – Newham (Borough of) – Travelodge London City Airport

    London – Newham (Borough of) – Travelodge London City Airport

    I used to live down the road from this large Travelodge hotel, so it was rather lovely to be able to use Pontoon Dock DLR station again all week. It was a reminder of just how many steps there are to get to the platform level and I’m sure I used to get up them quicker than I do now. Such is ageing….

    This hotel usually benefits from being nearby to London ExCeL (I have to look that up every time to remember which letters need capitals and it annoys me very slightly every time) and London City Airport. Neither are quite the draw that they were a couple of years ago, meaning that this hotel has become just a little desperate to get customers in. I paid £21 per night, which was lower than usual as Travelodge have a “buy four nights, get one free” deal in London at the moment. That was a bargain as far as I was concerned, just over £100 for five nights.

    For those interested in the history of this area, if we went back 100 years there were terraced houses lined up here rather than a chain hotel. Today, there’s little residential here, primarily as it’s nearly underneath the flight path of London City Airport. That has been evident from the thundering noise of aircraft from the airport all week, although I find it quite soothing. I accept that a lot of people don’t find aircraft noise as soothing, but there we go.

    The room is on a business floor, which seems to solely mean that they’ve taken out the sofa beds from the rooms. It’s quite a spacious room and entirely functional, although the carpet probably needs replacing. Everything worked as it should and the windows open. I like it when the windows open and I might have mentioned that several times in recent weeks. There was a radiator and fan to give me choices, although it has been a little hot in London this week. I say a little, it has been far too bloody hot.

    The hotel isn’t cleaning rooms on a daily basis, instead giving guests these. The one on the left is a bit pointless, as the default is now to do nothing anyway. The one on the right means that coffee is restocked, towels are replaced, the bins are cleaned and the bed is ignored. I put the one one on the right out on three days and they did do as they promised.

    As one of my irrelevant asides, I’ve noticed on Facebook that people seem genuinely furious, livid and shocked that hotels charge more for the same room at different times of the year. I’m amused that Travelodge ruined a family’s hotel plans as they wanted to pay £29 per night for a week in Blackpool. I’m slightly puzzled that people think hotels charge the same amount every night, although perhaps I shouldn’t be shouldn’t be surprised by these things. It did mean I had a little look at the hotel reviews to see what palatial accommodation some people had been expecting.

    George (surname unknown) annoyed this customer:

    “Extremely bad customer service specially from a member of management called george wast very determine on giving his last name but just to be precise he where’s glasses and has curley hair very bad manner and extremely poor customer service skills and should definitely be removed from site as he is giving and providing a bad reputation for travelodge very unhappy and will be reporting with audio and camera proof of such bad customer services from the BBC”

    Unfortunately, I can’t find any footage on the BBC…… Another guest wanted to punish the chain for their incompetence:

    “Terrible hotel! Manager was so rude and unhelpful. Ended up booking another travel lodge it was that bad”

    Hmmm, I’m not sure that Travelodge lost out here. There is another Travelodge handily located about a three minute walk away though….

    I did quite like the brutal nature of this review of the hotel’s SuperRooms though:

    “Spent a little more for a super room and found it was the same as a normal room but had a coffee maker in which made really bad coffee”

    I’m not actually sure they’re far wrong, but as I know from my friend Richard’s experiences, you do get a free Kit Kat. Another customer really battled the elements:

    “Despite the dust hanging from the lamp on our bedside table, we went to sleep.”

    So brave…..

    I hope that Travelodge don’t mind if I say that they’re something of an earthy hotel chain, although perhaps not in the literal sense. They’re down to earth, generally affordable, honest and clean. They don’t pledge anything they’re not, so I continue to be entirely pleased with my stays. Accor and myself have fallen out with each other (although technically I think I’ve fallen out with them, they probably just think I’m an idiot), which is awkward when I’ve got an entire section on this blog about them. I can’t see myself falling out with Travelodge and what better praise could they want than that…..

  • LNER : York to London King’s Cross

    LNER : York to London King’s Cross

    This is really handy when you’ve looking for platform 5 (I was on platform 6 at the time).

    Anyway, this was the journey I took a few days ago from York to London King’s Cross. I’ll let the guard’s words speak for themselves about the state of this journey:

    “I really wish I hadn’t been on this service, I wasn’t meant to be on it, I’m angry that I am on it”.

    I certainly felt for him, LNER had served him badly, let alone the customers who had paid to be on it.

    It is possible to try and work out where to stand on the platform by following the little code at the bottom. No-one bothered judging by the rushing around from place to place when the train arrived, it’s all a bit complex.

    The LNER Azuma train sweeps into York. In fairness to LNER, these are perfectly nice trains, or would be if they were operated by a proper company.

    I’m normally more polite, but LNER really can’t run a rail service very well, the service is ridden with managerial incompetence.

    They insist that customers book a seat as part of the reservation system. This is so often a policy set for disaster, as LNER don’t bother putting anyone on the trains to enforce this policy, they just dump that problem on the guard. And on this occasion, he was busy dealing with the British Transport Police who were lifting a customer off the service. Nor indeed is the seat reservation policy enforceable anyway. My reserved seat was taken, so I just sat nearby. The problem is that this happened to nearly every customer. We had this ridiculous situation that some seats were kept free as customers thought others would be sitting in them (as the sign by the seat said they were reserved), whilst other customers gave up and sat in the aisle (as visible in the above photo).

    This would be much easier if LNER did what most other rail companies and just make reserving a seat optional when buying a ticket. I don’t want to reserve a seat, I wish they’d stop making me as otherwise I can’t buy a ticket. If someone wants to reserve one, then let them. LNER’s system just forces customers to cram into carriages hunting for their seat, which isn’t ideal during Covid times. I suspect there was a carriage somewhere on the train where there was open seating and there weren’t any reservations, but I have no idea where that was.

    Anyway, the guard put an announcement over the tannoy that British Transport Police had already been called to the train on two occasions and he was now dealing with a third problem. The poor guard sounded fed up and he vaguely attempted to check tickets, but was continually called to deal with seating issues due to LNER’s hopeless reservation policy. Drunken customers were also making his job harder and he reminded them over the tannoy that he would ask the British Transport Police to board again if necessary. He also suggested that customers text British Transport Police themselves if they couldn’t find him on the train. This announcement was made when we had just left York railway station, so it hardly felt a friendly welcome to LNER.

    As an aside, to be honest, people don’t really need to buy tickets for this service (although I’m too well behaved to risk that) as there is no gate line at York and the one at King’s Cross wasn’t enforced.

    The poor staff in the catering section were trying to walk up and down the train to supply food and drink as LNER have this great idea that customers can order at their seat. The system didn’t work as the staff couldn’t find the customer who had ordered it and they had to battle to get past the customers sitting in the aisle.

    As this journey unfolded, there was more excitement just before Peterborough, someone had started smoking in one of the on-board toilets. This positively annoyed the guard who made another tannoy announcement about the situation, evidently just entirely fed up with this service.

    And into King’s Cross, admittedly on-time. The guard must have been relieved that the service was over. I certainly was. The rail network perhaps needs to consider some significant modernisation to its processes as otherwise I suspect more people will just give up and start flying rather than getting the train. Or perhaps they could let British Airways take over the East Coast Mainline……..

    I accept this all sounds a bit ranty, but, to be fair, the guard was too and I agree with him.

  • London – Barking and Dagenham (Borough of) – Travelodge Barking

    London – Barking and Dagenham (Borough of) – Travelodge Barking

    The cheapest accommodation option (or at least the cheapest that I considered safe) in London was the Travelodge Barking, a hotel that I’ve never stayed at before. The frontage is certainly colourful and it’s above a Tesco Express store for anyone who wants some snacks or the like. I arrived just before 23:00, which is never really an ideal time to arrive at a hotel on a Saturday night, but all was well. Other than I managed to get behind some other customer’s crisis at reception, but that was soon resolved. I always have to try and stand in a way that makes me not look annoyed whilst I have to wait for staff to deal with crisis matters like this (as it’s not their fault), despite being slightly annoyed that I am having to wait.

    The room, all clean and tidy. Travelodge are consistently decent in terms of their accommodation, there was nothing here for me to be disappointed by. The only limitation for me is how far the plugs are away from the bed, but Travelodge seem to be fixing that when they modernise the rooms.

    I can’t recall having an electric window in a hotel room before, but because it was recessed some way back there was a little switch to open and shut it. I like having an open window, although it meant listening to some rather drunken conversations outside which kept me awake because I was insistent on listening in and not missing out on anything interesting. The temperature in the room was fine and there was a fan available for anyone who was too hot.

    One of the harder to read fire escape plans that I’ve seen, but I decided not to let this bother me. The reviews for the hotel aren’t exactly ideal, although by far the lowest rating on Google is for the location. I’m not sure what the hotel is meant to do about that given that it’s two minutes away from Barking railway and underground station, but there we go.

    One guest stayed at the hotel before her wedding and was disappointed that there was no air conditioning, car parking or intercoms in the room (I assume that’s a phone). I can sense the disappointment for anyone staying in a Travelodge as a pre-wedding night treat…… There was another guest annoyed that they had to wait five minutes for a receptionist who told them to wait until the check-in time when they arrived early, but that definitely comes with the territory of a Travelodge for those who don’t want to pay for an early check-in.

    Anyway, I liked this hotel, the room was just over £30 for the night and everything was quiet, clean and organised, with the staff member being friendly (although she looked exhausted trying to do everything herself). The hotel could do with something of a refurbishment of the public areas, but it was all still serviceable. If the Ibis down the road is a bit expensive, I’ll likely stay here instead in future.

  • London – Westminster (Borough of) – Marble Arch Mound

    London – Westminster (Borough of) – Marble Arch Mound

    I’m a bit behind with my blog efforts at the moment, but I’m now in London after a successful few days in York at the LDWA NEC meeting. But more about all that in other posts.

    It’s fair to say that this project at Marble Arch on Oxford Street in London has been causing some controversy recently. It’ll an artificial construct which is there for just a few months until January 2022 and it’s effectively lots of scaffolding with some earth dumped on top. It’s quite unpopular judging by the local press, but I really like it, I think it’s quirky. And, I’m an expert in hills as everyone knows as I’ve summited Beeston Bump in Norfolk.

    The opening was a bit of a disaster and everyone was refunded their admission fee money. Given that, the nice thing about this is that the mound has been made free of charge for everyone in August, so I took advantage of that little deal. I had to pre-book on-line yesterday for a visit today, but there was lots of availability.

    The ticket checking process was all a bit informal, with two young team members jostling over who could get my QR code to scan first. I quite liked the informal approach, although I suspect they’ll get some complaints if they’re not careful from some grumpier people. The security process was also informal and the team members conversational, although this a project that is heavily overdone with staff at the moment.

    I started my ascent and it was raining, which wasn’t ideal if I’m being honest. I wouldn’t say that the steps were slippery, but the entire scaffolding structure is visible through the gaps and I didn’t like that as I’m scared of heights. But, I remained very brave as everyone who knows me would imagine….

    The trek up the scaffolding continues and it’s 25 metres to the top (so, that’s nearly a mountain).

    The views now start to become apparent. There have been some complaints that the views aren’t very exciting, but to slightly misquote one of my favourite BBC comedies:

    “Well, may I ask what you expected to see from Marble Arch? Sydney Opera House, perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically?”

    More views from the top. There was a sheer drop on just one side, and I didn’t dare poke my phone through the fencing at that point in case I dropped it and it smacked onto someone’s head (likely breaking their head and my phone). Otherwise I thought that it was a different perspective of this part of London.

    There is going to be an exhibition reached by going down those stairs, but it’s closed at the moment. The popularity of the summit is visible here, with two team members sheltering in the rain.

    Stuart Love, the Chief Executive of Westminster City Council, said:

    “Now is the time to bring the buzz back to central London and to see people visiting the West End again. We are working hard to resolve the outstanding issues and create an attraction worthy of our fantastic city. It’s going to look great and be an amazing experience once we’ve got it ready!”

    And time for the descent. My biggest complaint about this arrangement is that it’s not there long enough, it’s being taken down in a few months. So that’s a lot of resources to build a big fake hill and then take it down again, without any real meaning. It was meant to increase the number of people visiting the area, although I’m really not entirely sure that Oxford Street has many problems with that. I’m not negative about what they’ve done though, I like it as it’s quirky, it’s a talking point and I can imagine that kids will like it. I’m quite pleased to have experienced it and hope that it increases a bit in popularity over the next few months.

  • London – Redbridge (Borough of) – Ibis Styles London Seven Kings (Update 2)

    London – Redbridge (Borough of) – Ibis Styles London Seven Kings (Update 2)

    I complained quite a lot on this blog about what I considered to be the badly run Ibis Styles London Seven Kings (Post 1 | Post 2) which I thought was brand damaging to Accor Hotels. And, just ten days after opening, the hotel appears to have decided to scrap tens of bookings so that they can accept a larger block booking. The room inventory has been removed from aggregate sites for months with, if reviews are to be believed, no real attempt to deal with the number of disappointed Accor customers given just hours notice.

    Hopefully, this hotel management company won’t get the opportunity to damage Accor’s brand further and hopefully that Ibis Styles signage will soon be taken down.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Grave of Joseph Grimaldi

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Grave of Joseph Grimaldi

    I came across this grave by chance at the weekend in what is now known as Joseph Grimaldi Park, but which was once the burial ground of St. James’s Church. For anyone interested in visiting, it’s about a ten minute walk from King’s Cross St Pancras railway station, just walk along Pentonville Road.

    Here’s the church from 100 years ago, but that’s now gone (demolished in the 1980s) and the churchyard has been turned into a park which seemed to be a sea of litter when I visited. A few graves remain, most notably that of Joseph Grimaldi who is considered to be one of the people who has most influenced the clown and their performance methods. There is also an artwork in the park where apparently if you dance, then it’ll play some music or something. I didn’t fancy giving that a go to be honest….

    At least the renaming of the former churchyard in honour of Joseph Grimaldi means that his grave isn’t forgotten, although sadly many of the other graves here have now become rather neglected.

  • Chiltern Railways : London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill

    Chiltern Railways : London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill

    I can’t recall travelling with Chiltern Railways before, but they offered a £12 fare to get from London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill, which seemed excellent value to me. Marylebone Railway Station is a fascinating location and one I rarely go to, and it nearly closed entirely in 1986 and was saved only at the last minute. It opened late for a mainline railway station, starting service in 1899 and it was 100 years before another entirely new station of its size was to be built again. It’s compact compared to the other London mainline railway stations, which means that there’s a limited amount of seating and facilities.

    I sat down to check Facebook for the eighth time in an hour, just as the platform number was called, number 4, which was around twenty minutes before the train departed.

    It’s the train on the right and I’m not much into trains or train spotting, but for anyone interested, it’s a Class 168 Clubman diesel. This route between London and Birmingham hasn’t been electrified and it’s a route that was nearly lost in parts, but like Marylebone, it has managed to survive.

    The train was never that busy, so I had my bank of four seats to myself for the entire journey.

    Nicely functional seats, with a pull-out section of the table for laptops and two power points. All comfortable and practical for anyone who wants to get work done. There was a ticket check from a friendly and cheerful guard midway through the journey, although he said he had no scanner to check my digital ticket and so he wouldn’t need to verify it. That seems to be a slight flaw in the ticket checking process, but there we go……

    I wasn’t in a rush, so I was happy to stay on the train for a little longer getting things done if there was a delay. This came to pass as the train in front of ours broke down and we were delayed for 20 minutes at Banbury. This meant that I was getting hopeful of a 30-minute delay so that I would get half my fare back. Unfortunately (for me), the train’s delay was limited to 20 minutes and, as Chiltern don’t operate compensation for 15 minute delays, I didn’t have a Delay Repay claim to make this time.

    And here we are safely in Birmingham Snow Hill. There’s a theme in this post of things nearly being shut down, but with this railway station it was closed in 1972 and demolished in 1977. It was then realised that this was something of a mistake and a new railway station, which was smaller and less architecturally interesting, was built and opened in 1987.

    I had a look at the Birmingham Daily Post from 13 March 1970, when there was some excitement that there would be four tower blocks on the site of the station that they were demolishing, as well as two hotels and a cinema. They were looking at using the rail tunnels to be used by buses instead to help city transit. A completely idiotic decision, as was clear given they had to rebuild the railway station not much more than a decade later.

    Anyway, I was very impressed by Chiltern Railways as they delivered a cheap fare, a comfortable train, friendly staff, updates when there was a delay and there were no issues. All rather lovely and it’s a convenient way of getting between London and Birmingham. It’s not clear what will happen after HS2 opens, but I assume that this service will continue in the same form.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Brewhouse & Kitchen – Islington/Angel

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Brewhouse & Kitchen – Islington/Angel

    This chain has 24 locations across the country, but I’ve never managed to visit a Brewhouse & Kitchen before. The concept is that they brew their own beer and customers are welcome to just have a drink, but there is also a substantial food menu as well.

    I deliberately waited until just after 14:00 as I thought it might be busy on a Sunday lunchtime in this part of London. As is evident from the above photo, it wasn’t. I was welcomed immediately on entry and the staff member was helpful and friendly. I didn’t quite understand the ordering system, but it transpired I had chosen the one table without a QR code to the ordering process, something I worked out eventually. The drinks were brought over soon afterwards which meant the system worked well after I had understood it.

    There was some effort to make the decor interesting and a little quirky. I always felt comfortable in the pub, it was clean and there were signs saying which tables had been sanitised.

    The menu, although not many customers were ordering food. Actually, there weren’t many customers to order food.

    What could possibly go wrong…..

    On another matter not related to nine-pint dispense at the table, this is one of those pub chains which is encouraging the shift to flexible working and people visiting pub environments during the day. They offer unlimited soft drinks such as coffee and coke for £10 per day.

    I went for two half pints, one of Myddleton Tropical IPA and one of Hotblack Desiato. They were both fine, the former had a refreshing tropical taste and the latter had a rich chocolate taste. Neither had quite the depth of flavour to make them exceptional, but they were reasonably priced and entirely acceptable. Given these are brewed in-house, it’s not a bad standard at all.

    This location is well reviewed on sites such as Google and TripAdvisor, with the beer tasting they offer seeming to be popular and I thought that’s a rather good idea for a pub such as this. Anyway, I thought that this was a perfectly pleasant visit with friendly staff and a choice of various different beers. I shall look out for others in the chain.

  • LDWA – Fleet Street History Walk

    LDWA – Fleet Street History Walk

    This is the first walk I’ve been on that was listed in the new national LDWA history group and although it went from Kensington High Street to Canary Wharf, it was centred on the Fleet Street theme. The walk was led by Dame Julie Welch who worked in Fleet Street as, amongst other things, a sports journalist. She has written a book about women in Fleet Street, which is well worth a look and I’ve linked to it at the bottom of this post. There were fifteen or so people on the walk and it was interesting to meet LDWA members from other parts of the country.

    The walk started outside High Street Kensington underground station.

    This is Northcliffe House in Kensington, current home of the Daily Mail.

    It’s fair to say that the weather was hot and there were plenty of people in Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We bravely kept up quite a pace to cross the park.

    Buckingham Palace.

    The Royal Courts of Justice, which are on the Strand, which is at the end of Fleet Street. Incidentally Fleet Street is named after the river, a walk I went on a few weeks ago led by Des.

    The former Strand underground station, which closed in 1994 as usage was low and the cost of repairing the lifts would have been too expensive. It’s today used for filming and there’s an underground train down there which can be used if required. There’s a connection to the Piccadilly line should there ever be a need to bring the station back into usage, although that’s not very likely.

    The former Wig & Pen club, more about this at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/nov/29/pressandpublishing.uknews.

    It was interesting to hear about what Fleet Street was like in the 1970s and 1980s. A male dominated environment where drinking and smoking was commonplace, but Julie also explained just how vibrant and exciting a place it was to be. They would hear the news first and it felt like a separate town within London, with the clattering of the print presses and the smell of printers ink in the air. I must admit, it sounds a working environment that must have been challenging (especially for women), but endlessly exciting.

    One of the locations that Julie showed us was El Vino (more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Vino) which for a long time required men to wear ties and didn’t allow women to order at the bar. This was only overturned in 1982 when the matter went to court, with the bar fighting hard to maintain their right not to serve women. There was work going on at El Vino, so no photo of the frontage, but instead I took a photo of the tempting doughnuts in the shop next door.

    We had time for a drink at Black Friar pub which is located at the end of Fleet Street and Julie pointed out some other pubs that I’ll visit on Fleet Street during the week. Many of them are now closed on the weekends, but back in the day when Fleet Street was in its prime, they’d be open every day.

    Julie mentioned that every newspaper would have its own pub where journalists and workers would go. It was possible for anyone to go to any pub, but people just tended to stick with the pub that their newspaper most commonly used. Above is the White Swan (also known as the Mucky Duck) on Fetter Lane, just behind Fleet Street, which I think Julie said was used by the Daily Mirror.

    Nothing to do with the walk itself, I just liked the Poland Consulate building with its Polish and EU flags when walking by.

    I left the walk at Wapping as I had to go and have my second jab at Guy’s Hospital (I was very brave), but Julie led the others on to Canary Wharf. Wapping was an essential part of the walk as the opening of the printing presses there by Murdoch in the 1980s saw an effective end to Fleet Street as the heart of the newspaper industry in London.

    A few minutes before a group photo was taken. Thanks again to Julie for leading this walk, something very different.

    Julie hopes to lead the walk again, so look out for it in the LDWA history group and LDWA London programmes. Julie also wrote the book below which was published by Trapeze last year.