After yesterday’s exertions we decided to set ourselves a more manageable itinerary today: just two targets on a single theme, Lord’s and Wimbledon. Both are about 15 minutes’ walk from their respective stations, and the walk to Lord’s goes up Baker Street. We had already discussed whether or not to visit the Sherlock Holmes attractions, and decided against it. SH was not a formative influence for either of us, and there is plenty of other stuff to see. But as we walked up Baker Street we saw a small crowd outside 221b and wondered about reconsidering. But it turns out the museum is not included in our pre-paid London Pass tourist ticket, so, nah. Actually, what kept running through my mind was Gerry Rafferty: “Light in the head and dead on your feet.” Except, isn’t the first line “Winding your way up Baker Street”? It seemed pretty straight to me.
A few minutes later we found Lord’s, and a couple of minutes after that we arrived at the gate we could go in at. We joined the 10 o’clock tour, along with lots of Indians and a few Australians. It’s always interesting to see behind the scenes, and the tour took us inside the hallowed halls, even if photography was a bit restricted. But stay off the grass! Afterwards we had lunch at Lord’s Tavern next door, but we forgot to use the discount voucher we got from the tour. Luckily, my first English fish and chips (haddock) and Stephen’s Cumberland sausages weren’t too exorbitant (and pretty good.)
We had been on our feet all morning, it felt like, so we decided to get a bus back to the station rather than walk, but we discovered that just a bit past the bus stop was Abbey Road, so we couldn’t miss that. And yes, okay, we took a photo on the crossing. Luckily there was not a lot of traffic, being Easter Sunday. Can you imagine what it would be like if you had to drive through that intersection every day? We saw two busloads of tourists arrive in the few minutes we were there. I hope the locals have an alternative route.
Anyway, we went back to the bus stop, and took our first double-decker ride. It was unnerving being upstairs, in that every time I glanced forward I got a fright from seeing no driver in the front seat. There was a young man sitting there, but he kept looking around and paying no attention to the road! Luckily the bus kept turning corners and avoiding other vehicles anyway, so it turned out alright.
It was beautifully easy to transfer across to Wimbledon. 1500m to walk from the station, but we were willing. We thought we might hop on a bus if one came along, but when it did we were too far from the stop to bother even trying to catch it. Joined another tour around the venue, but although it was pretty cool being inside Wimbledon and all, it wasn’t as exciting as we’d hoped. Possibly this was because we’d already been at the Australian Open, and so had seen and felt an Open close up. But in Melbourne we had only had a ground pass, so this was the first time we had been into a Centre Court. The score from last year’s final (Djokovich vs Federer) was still up on the scoreboard. That was a nice touch.
Afterwards we waited for the bus back to the station. The knowledge that even after we get back to Mile End, there’s still nearly a kilometre to walk home tempers one’s enthusiasm for exercise. And then later we have to walk around some more to find somewhere for dinner. We thought we’d try a place we passed on Friday: pizzas and healthy stuff. But it was closed today, along with nearly everywhere, so we ended up back where we had eaten on Friday: a fairly cheap diner. Almost empty, but not horrible.
Question: Has anyone ever counted London’s bricks? Every house on every street, every large building (except the most magnificent – they’re stone); so many bricks. There is a variety of colours, from muddy mustard yellow to dark blood-brown, so they come from all over the place, but how has this island not cannabalised itself into a black hole? And even assuming the clay is all British and not imported, then the weight of the bricks is about the same as the clay it was made from, but why has the concentrated weight of all those bricks in London not sunk us into the mantle of the Earth?