Highgate Cemetery, Richmond Park & Windsor

Highgate Cemetery in North London
12th April 2008
We met up with the Seymour's and secured some cover as the hail past over us and when it was safe we headed off on the tube for our outing to Highgate. Some may think that the Highgate Cemetery is a rather unusual place to visit, but we discovered it on the "Top 10 places to visit in London" lists. Not only are many famous people like Karl Marx buried there, but it is truly a unique experience going there. It is one of the best-known 'garden cemeteries' of the Victorian era. The curving pathways wind between trees and make it a popular place to visit. The cemetery is overrun with plants and trees, and many of the gravestones look like they have been there for centuries. Matt embraced the opportunity to take many photos, some of which turned out great. (You can see some of them on the link on the right side of the blog.)


After visiting the cemetery, we walked back towards central London and discovered Hampstead Heath, which is London's largest ancient parkland, covering 3.2 km² (320 ha; 791 acres). This grassy public space sits astride a sandy ridge, running from Hampstead to Highgate. In the south of Hampstead Heath lies Parliament Hill, which offered pretty decent views of London, although the weather was a bit average. While we were there we saw some cute squirrels, as you will see on the photos.

Deer spotting at Richmond Park
19th April 2008
The following weekend we caught a bus to Richmond Park, which has to be the biggest park we have ever been to. It is a 955 hectare (2,360 acre) urban park near central London, and is Britain's largest urban walled park, as well as the largest of the Royal Parks in London. It is close to Richmond, Ham, Kingston upon Thames, Wimbledon, Roehampton and East Sheen. The park is also famous for its Red and Fallow Deer, although I think we went to the wrong part of it, as we only saw one of them... It was a nice afternoon walk though nonetheless.

A visit to the Royal town of Windsor
26th April 2008
It was a beautiful sunny day for UK and we headed off to catch a train from Paddington Station around 11am. We caught an overground train to Windsor changing trains at Slough and immediately took a liking to the town after getting off the station and walking through the shopping mall, where you are surrounded by the world famous Windsor Castle. We were surprised by how quickly you can walk around Windsor - it's actually not very big.

By the time we had settled in, it was nearing time for lunch, so after a quick look around the main street, we decided the get some lunch at the Crooked House of Windsor... a special little crooked timber-framed building, which is now a gastronomic jewel in Windsor’s crown, serving over 50,000 guests annually.

After lunch we decided that it wouldn't be a trip to Windsor without going inside the Castle. So after a rather boring 45 minutes or so queue we made our way inside. It took a couple of hours to walk through all the amazing rooms inside Windsor Castle, and it was really amazing to see how everything was so well maintained.


Windsor Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world and, dating back to the time of William the Conqueror. The castle's floor area is approximately 45,000 square metres. Together with Buckingham Palace in London and Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, it is one of the principal official residences of the British monarch. Queen Elizabeth II spends many weekends of the year at the castle, using it for both state and private entertaining. Her other two residences, Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle, are the Royal Family's private homes.

As usual, many photos were taken and we even got to annoy a traditional Royal guard and take our photo next to him! You can see some photos on the "Windsor" link on the right side.

Afterwards, we looked through the Lonely Planet guide and walked to a really awesome English pub, where we stopped for a couple of quick pints. People even had their dogs inside too which was a bit strange to us, but since then we've seen quite a few dogs in pubs and other buildings too.

There were many white swans hogging the banks of the River Thames as people were feedings them. We bought a ticket and took a boat ride down the Thames as the sun began to set. It was really relaxing and we're definitely glad we did it. The next stop was a walk across the Thames from Windsor to Eton, a neighbouring town. As it was starting to get late in the day, pretty much everything was beginning to close, but we did manage to walk around quite a bit and get a feel of the place.

After that it was back on the train to London. We ended the day with a quick dinner at home of baked beans on toast.

God Save The Queen

Just a super quick blog for those who check regularly.  We went out to Windsor on the weekend, and have added some photos - see the link on the right-hand column.

We will write a proper blog soon though…

Don't forget to leave your comments, we love hearing from everyone!

Blog, blog, blog, blah, blah, blah

So what have we been up to lately? Seems like so much has happened, so this might take a while.

What happened over Easter then? We decided that we'd stay in London after researching our Easter travel options, as it was going to cost a fortune, and the weather was going to be terrible too. It turned out that Matt got the flu (again) for the first couple of days, but this didn't stop us getting out and about.

Over the Easter weekend we visited a few more London sights including the Bank of England, St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern. Not to mention that Easter Monday brought the first sign of London snow. Logically, you would expect it to snow in winter not spring, however this is London after all.

Last week was quite a busy one both at work and socially, as we went to three theatre productions in 7 days. The first was Stomp - a performance that uses the body and ordinary objects to create percussive physical theatre. Then Anna scored some bargain half-price tickets to see Chicago on Wednesday, which Matt surprisingly enjoyed. The seats were 6 rows back, and the live music and performance was very entertaining. Last Saturday we watched a high energy dance theatre called Into The Hoods, as Anna got 50% off tickets on lastminute.com.

We bought tickets for the O2 Wireless music festival at Hyde Park which is held over 4 days from the 3rd to the 6th of July. We are going to the Saturday and Sunday shows. Saturday has Fatboy Slim and Underworld, while a change of pace on Sunday with Counting Crows, Ben Harper, Powderfinger and Donavon Frankenreiter.

After spending an hour or so last Monday night attempting to buy tickets for the Reading Festival and thinking that they were all sold out, Matt was ecstatic to discover that he could buy some today. Metallica are headlining the Sunday shows, and it was one of his goals to witness the glory of another Metallica thrash session...

While we are on the topic of festivals, the grand-daddy of all festivals went on sale this Sunday morning, 9am GMT - the Glastonbury Festival held at Worthy Farm on 27th, 28th and 29th June. Working together in teams, Operation Worthy Farm was headed up by Jay Edmondson, and proved to be a huge success as we all managed to get through (eventually) and bought tickets! Awesome!! Well done to all of those involved.

So as you can see, we have been very good at spending money. So much so that Matt was down to £58 in the bank, and Anna was down to £46. But now we're back in saving mode as we need to prepare for our 3 month travel extravaganza in September to the end of November when we return home.

Some more exciting travel news, is that we have booked in 2 holidays for May. The first is a 9 day discovery through Egypt, starting at Cario, we work our way south to Abu Simbel, spending 2 days on a felucca. Also, we are meeting up with a group of friends in Barcelona and spending a few days with them as they will be traveling through Europe.

Anna finished working at Tower Hamlets Friday week ago and is now working for Hackney Social Services as a JARP co-ordinator. She is really hating the distance as its taking around 2 or more hours one-way each day. She's in the process of looking for something more convenient, let's hope she gets a new job much closer to home.

Last weekend was the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, which conveniently starts at Putney Bridge. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible, but the crowd still came out in their 1000's and lined the banks of the Thames down to the finish at Chiswick Bridge. After the start, we rushed back home to catch the end on the tele.


The next day we caught the tube over to North Greenwich, where we saw The O2 Arena, aka the Millennium Dome. A massive dome structure which is a popular venue for big artists, complete with its own mini-shopping district inside the dome.
The main purpose of our trip east was to visit Greenwich Park and see where the prime meridian line where longitude is defined as 0.

Greenwich Park is the oldest enclosed Royal Park. Situated on top of a hill, we enjoyed views across the River Thames and The O2. The main highlight was probably seeing so many squirrels all in one place. They came out in great numbers, being encouraged my people feeding them peanuts, which made for some amazing photo opportunities. Things were'nt helped by the dogs that kept chasing after them!


This weekend we went for a walk through the crazy punk-territory of Camden and checked out the markets there. We were rained out, but still enjoyed the unusual shops and surroundings. No doubt we'll return on a day when the sun is out.