London 3 - Museum Day with the Kids

It's Sunday and a balmy high of 19, so lots of people dressed for summer. A fair number rugged up as well, no doubt tourists, we had jackets on. We were intending to do a hop on hop off tour but many of the stops were cancelled today due to a Rejoin the EU protest. So we decided to visit local museums with tons of kids.

First up was the Postal Museum where we rode the Mail Rail train. In 1911 road traffic congestion was causing unacceptable postal delays and plans evolved to build an underground railway 10.5 km long from Paddington to Whitechapel serving the main sorting offices along the route. By 2003 it had become uneconomic and was closed. In it’s heyday it employed a large community of people and moved a substantial amount of post. A very interesting tour.

Second was the Charles Dickens Museum. Charles Dickens came from a working class background and had been in the Debtors Prison. He was ambitious and had a very active social life by all amounts; he liked his liquor. He married Catherine and they were apparently very in love. Until he wasn’t, “she made him uneasy and was not his intellectual equal” at which point he made a public written statement of separation. Catherine was given a house and took the oldest child with her. Her sister moved in to look after the remaining nine kids. It turns out that 45 year old Dickens had fallen in love with an 18 year old actress and had mistakenly sent a bracelet intended for her to the house which Catherine discovered. The house is over five floors including the basement/wine cellar and furnished as it would have

been in his time. It even has the bed and clothing he died in.

I’m not sure we would have chosen to visit either of these museums if they weren’t included on the London Pass and so close to home but they have been really interesting visits. I almost feel inspired to read some Dickens work….

We had lunch in Russell Square and set off to the British Museum. The queues were huge, we kept going on to Covent Garden for a wander. Lots of buskers and people lunching. Spotted the Transport Museum so thought we would have a look. Interesting explanation of the development of the London tube, rail and bus networks, bits of which were separately owned and quite disjointed initially. It was amusing to see separate women carriages was an issue, we are still having these debates about women spaces albeit now a modern version of the gender issue.