Blogs from Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe

When we planned this trip, the UK had announced that they would open to everyone on July 10th. Consequently, we purchased tickets for theater, Highclere Castle and the Globe for dates after that. After we left the US and were well underway in our travels, the UK announced that they would not open up until July 19th. Anyone arriving before July 19thwould need to quarantine for 10 days. We had lots of discussions on what to do, our options: 1. Go to the UK and take our chances that things would change, 2. Go to another location from Paris and wait for July 19th, 3. Go home. We decided quickly that we didn’t want to go home so we started thinking about where we might want to go for 10-days and how we’d spend the 5-days ... read more

We did the trekking course on Dollis Valley Greenwalk from Whetstone to Mill Hill East on 11th May and found its northern route course – we decided to do the latter course on 31st May. I felt that we would be doing country walk; so we would have a picnic lunch at Arnos Park in the lunch time before approaching Whetstone/Totteridge. The 251 bus was running as normal on the Bank Holiday and it brought us to Whetstone/Totteridge station. There were two concrete paths running northwards – one was footpath and the other one was cycle path – we were advised to stick to the right-hand path. Like the Dollis Valley Greenwalk towards Mill Hill, the course was running along Dollis Brook, but we were largely shown open space surrounded by wide variety of trees, rich ... read more

Our Highgate Literary Walk on 2 May finished at Waterlow Park – we liked its beautiful scenery of the park – and we decided to visit there on 9th May. We took the No.41 bus to Archway and walked up on the Highgate Hill High Street towards the park. We strolled through main ponds, looked at waterfowls, aquatic plants and explored the park in the sunny afternoon. We found the park was situated on the hill; after climbing up towards Highgate Village, it offered breathtaking views of central London and skyscrapers. We also found the cemetery and Gothic architectural style of buildings on the Westside of the park, which we visited the previous Sunday. While looking at the nature around the lakes, we found a very intriguing scene – there were a couple of turtles sitting ... read more

We travelled to central London a couple of time last year to visit Wakehurst Place and Ashridge Estate, but have not gone into the West End since the pandemic began. We visited Holland Park near Kensington High Street several years ago and decided to visit there on 12th May. Firstly, we strolled around formal gardens next to Holland House. In Dutch Garden there were collections of two coloured, Pink/purple and white tulips and bed flowers and they were blooming beautifully in knotted gardens. Secondly, we went to Kyoto Garden, traditional Japanese zen garden. There were signs shown on the footpath – visitors are asked to walk around in the clockwise direction and not to stop especially on the stone bridge near the waterfall. Some people seemed to be ignoring signs – the annoyed visitor asked them ... read more

In order to enhance our staycation, I’ve bought a couple of walking guides – one was ‘Walking Literary London’. I suggested to Mark we would do a walk in Highgate on the 1st Bank Holiday. Weather forecast on the 1st Bank Holiday wasn’t promising; so we decided to do on Sunday, 2nd May. We started the walk from Parkland Walk at Muswell Hill and walked towards Highgate Wood. We had a picnic lunch at Highgate Wood before starting the trekking course around Highgate village. Quite a few shops and were opened up on Highgate High Street as of 2nd May. After leaving Highgate Station, we turned right and walked uphill on Jackson Lane. I noticed that there were a number of beautiful, stylish red-brick houses and modernist houses in Highgate. This charming residential suburban residential area ... read more