Le Tour de Londres

On the last day of my parents visit, we were privy a new experience in London. The Tour de France was due to start it’s epic race in London for 2008.
On the Saturday before the race began, London had transformed itself and put on its cycling gear. The first thing we noticed was that you could walk in the middle of the road on Westminster Bridge without being tooted at by cars, busses, vans, trucks and other four wheelers.


The tour village where the press and cyclists were staying was just next to St James Park. We took a walk there and looked at tour buses, the mechanics preparing the bikes for the next day and even saw one of the cyclists signing autographs.


I was lucky enough to have the first day of the race cycle right past my apartment blocks! So all I did on that Sunday morning was role out of bed at the allotted time, pull on track pants and a tee shirt and wonder outside.

I stood right by the barrier watching the parade of colour stream past. First it was the cyclists themselves who flashed by so fast, I barely saw them. Then for at least 20 minutes after came the tour busses and cars with spare bikes. It was full of colour, green bikes, red buses, orange bikes, yellow cars, blue buses – it went on and on.
It was quite an amazing experience!

Photo 1: Mom and Dad on Westminster Bridge

Photo 2: Bikes, mechanics and busses

Photo 3: Me and some of the decorations in honour of the Tour de France

Photo 4: The cyclists

Photo 5: The tour's entourage of bikes, cars and buses

Meet the Parents June/July 2007

I was lucky enough to have my parents visit twice in 2007. The first was in late June. They arrived on a Thursday morning and that weekend we travelled up to stay with Richard and his family. It was a nice relaxed weekend spent ambling around the Saturday morning Ilkeston market and taking a little walk in the afternoon, eating, chatting and relaxing. On Saturday evening, my mom opted to baby sit Kai and Sian while the rest of us wondered into Ilkeston town centre for a pint at one of the many pubs.

On Sunday we went to a country pub and had the most fab roast lunch, with beef, vegetables, roast potatoes and my favourite, Yorkshire puddings.
I caught the train back down to London back to work on Monday, while my parents stayed at my brother’s until Wednesday. I’d taken leave on Thursday and Friday, to spend some time with them.

On one of these days we caught the train to Winsor, having tea in the lovely arcades there before visiting one of the Queen’s official homes, Winsor Castle.
Winsor Castle is such a lovely example of a working castle, its majestic grey bricked walls and turrets are happily situated on a hill overlooking the surrounding countryside.
Inside, I really enjoyed seeing a huge story high dolls house given to one of the royal’s, which has real electric lights, vacuum cleaner and many, many rooms. A little bigger than the one I had when I was little!
The royal weddings room was fabulous too. It displayed many of the presents the Queen and Prince Phillip received for their wedding as well as telegraphs received from all over the world and pictures of the event.
We wondered along the Thames at Richmond after looking at the barges on the river before having a quick drink at a pub while waiting for our train.
We then had an evening of excellent red wine and pizza at a local Italian.

Photo 1 - Mom, Dad and Sharon

Photo 2 - Winsor Castle

Photo 3 - The Thames, a boat and Mom

Photo 4 - Mom and Dad having a quick pint

Supercalifragilistic…. June 2007

My next exciting weekend was a visit from Emily, my cousin, who came up from Cardiff to spend the weekend with me.
After work on a Friday afternoon I fetched her from Paddington Station, where she said she’d felt exactly like Paddington Bear in the big station, with all the people and trains while waiting for me!
We spent the Friday evening eating supper at my house and then taking a walk down the Thames before getting a yummy chocolate brownie pudding to have with our evening tea.
The following morning we got up and caught the tube to Oxford Street before making our way down to the famous West End to pick up the Mary Poppins tickets Emily had booked online for us. The tickets had not yet arrived at the theatre, so we wondered down to Leister Square where they were having a display of bits of West End musicals on a stage, and found an Italian restaurant to have lunch in.
I hovered up a calzone pizza in no time, and tried not to breathe too heavily after, sharing my fabulously flavoured garlic breath.
London is such an interesting place to eat lunch at a restaurant’s outdoor table as the most interesting people walk past. We had no lack of fascinating characters to scrutinise while waiting for our food.
Thankfully when we got back to the theatre our tickets had arrived and we went and found our seats.
The show is lovely, the singing is fab, the costumes good and the props are very impressive.
Only two things marred the impressive show, the first were two technical problems with the sets in the first half, which was understandable, it happens. The technical issue that affected us far more was the one-sided conversation that seemed to be coming out of a speaker to the left of us which sounded like someone on their cell phone or someone giving stage direction in the background. Only when we complained in the interval did they finally sort out the issue. Both Emily and I enjoyed it a lot.
We walked home after that and were too exhausted after our event-filled day to do more than watch a DVD and eat salad and soup for supper.
On Sunday morning the English weather was at its rainy self again, so we went for a walk around St. James Park brollies in hand.
We stopped at The Park Inn (the park’s little restaurant) and had coffee and a almond croissant.
Soon it was time for Emily to make her way back to Cardiff, and I went home to sort out loads of washing and ironing.

Photo 1 - Emily and I at St James Park