Hidden London
Having had an interesting day wandering round the less-known bits of London, ridley_walker and I thought we'd do it again; mostly to see a museum which hadn't been open when we went the first time.
A short walk from St Pancras station, there's Camley Park nature reserve which was once a coal yard and now looks like . . . you're nowhere near London
Ok, you've still got the noise of the trains, but the view is pretty screened. If I worked near there, I'd definitely go there at lunchtimes.
Most of the area round Kings Cross is / has been a complete building site for ages but one of the things that's now finished and amusing is the transformation of one of the old gasometers into Gasholder Park
I'm glad they've done that, as I thought it was a real pity when the gasometers were taken down; it lost some of the history of the area.
Working south, the next stop was the sculptures on Blackfriar's bridge. Ok, not the most spectacular bridge, but I'd seen somewhere that the bridge is at the Thames' tidal limit and so the carvings on the downstream side are of salt water birds and plants, and on the upstream side, freshwater, like this rather Art Nouveau iris with swans.
Not being an ornithologist, I've no idea what most of the rest are, and sadly some are quite damaged.
The main thing we went to see was the Kirkaldy museum; a Victorian materials testing site which is run by volunteers and only open a couple of days a month.
Probably only of interests to industrial historians, materials scientists and lovers of random shiny brass gadgets . . . ok, that's most of my readers :->
Of more general interest is the even smaller Chocolate Museum in Brixton. A tiny and very chic coffee/chocolate shop, chocolate making workshop and museum of the history, myths and science of chocolate.
Fab place; the French ladies who run it just adore chocolate and everything to do with it, the packaging, the history, the gourmet varieties . . and are so enthusiastic about their little gallery.
Not so successful was trying to get to the Subway outsider art gallery in the wonderfullt named Joe Strummer subway which seems to have shut up shop :-(
So we headed back into central London to spot random cat statues as we went back up to Kings Cross.
From the well known Hodge
to the chance find Humphry, in a kids' playground,
and the extremely cute and lifelike Sam Penn
A short walk from St Pancras station, there's Camley Park nature reserve which was once a coal yard and now looks like . . . you're nowhere near London
Ok, you've still got the noise of the trains, but the view is pretty screened. If I worked near there, I'd definitely go there at lunchtimes.
Most of the area round Kings Cross is / has been a complete building site for ages but one of the things that's now finished and amusing is the transformation of one of the old gasometers into Gasholder Park
I'm glad they've done that, as I thought it was a real pity when the gasometers were taken down; it lost some of the history of the area.
Working south, the next stop was the sculptures on Blackfriar's bridge. Ok, not the most spectacular bridge, but I'd seen somewhere that the bridge is at the Thames' tidal limit and so the carvings on the downstream side are of salt water birds and plants, and on the upstream side, freshwater, like this rather Art Nouveau iris with swans.
Not being an ornithologist, I've no idea what most of the rest are, and sadly some are quite damaged.
The main thing we went to see was the Kirkaldy museum; a Victorian materials testing site which is run by volunteers and only open a couple of days a month.
Probably only of interests to industrial historians, materials scientists and lovers of random shiny brass gadgets . . . ok, that's most of my readers :->
Of more general interest is the even smaller Chocolate Museum in Brixton. A tiny and very chic coffee/chocolate shop, chocolate making workshop and museum of the history, myths and science of chocolate.
Fab place; the French ladies who run it just adore chocolate and everything to do with it, the packaging, the history, the gourmet varieties . . and are so enthusiastic about their little gallery.
Not so successful was trying to get to the Subway outsider art gallery in the wonderfullt named Joe Strummer subway which seems to have shut up shop :-(
So we headed back into central London to spot random cat statues as we went back up to Kings Cross.
From the well known Hodge
to the chance find Humphry, in a kids' playground,
and the extremely cute and lifelike Sam Penn