7 May 2016 - Crystal Palace Caravan Site, London

We had planned to do three days intensive sightseeing, one day off, then repeat the process, and so Friday followed the plan. We caught bus #3 from near the camp and travelled through to Trafalgar Square just as we had the previous day, then descended into the bowels of London’s Underground to find our way up to the British Museum. 

The British Museum

The crowds filing into the Museum, albeit  in  a very orderly fashion, amazed us. Curious as I am, I checked out the visitor numbers; in the 2014/15 year the Museum was the leading visitor attraction in the United Kingdom for an eighth year running, with 67 million visitors and a virtual audience of 43.7 million. That equates to 18,356 visitors per day averaged over 365 days, a figure that did not surprise me considering the crowds of people on Friday. The visitors included school parties of all ages, masses of foreign tongued folk and locals like the chap we entered with who had never been before and did not have a clue as to what the museum offered! While neither Chris nor I had been there before, a little pre-search had suggested we were in for a treat with an eclectic mix of exhibitions from all over the world, spread over all the years we consider we have been civilised, and a whole lot more.

The British Museum was established in 1753 and is now home to over six million artefacts, ranging from small archaeological fragments to massive objects from past and contemporary cultures. The brochure describes the museum as “a vast place” and that is truly the very best description: vast! It is simply not possible to even race through the entire museum for a cursory look in one day.

The building itself is the grandest of London’s Greek Revival edifices, with its central Grand Court featuring a remarkable curving glass and steel roof designed by Norman Foster. At the Court’s centre stands the copper domed former Round Reading Room of the British Library, where Karl Marx penned Das Kapital. 

The roof over the Grand Court, a glass and steel construction built by an Austrian steelwork company, is the largest covered square in Europe, and was opened in 2000. All of this makes for an incredible expanse of exhibition area, today one of the largest museums in the world, covering an area of over 92,000 square metres. It is simply all rather overwhelming and as such, defeated me in my attempt to explore in a meaningful manner.

Regent's Park

Today we spent about three and a half hours wandering through a few of the galleries, or rooms, trying to absorb knowledge, which quite frankly, was exhausting. I was interested in the Islam History rooms and Chris in the European history rooms, so we did give them a good go. Massive collections of porcelain, jewellery and other antiquities do tend to dull my receptive sensors, although I was fascinated to see the re-assembled dug-up 2000 year old Lindow man and the lovely mosaic floors of the Romans in Britain. To be honest, there was a lot to see, but one would enjoy this museum more if one lived in the city and made a point of visiting every two or three weeks for a few hours each time.

However I will appreciate more those programmes on television where the English archaeologists dig up curious patches of the countryside and then clean up and cart off their discoveries. All of these end up in this museum.

 Defeated by all of this, we caught the Underground from Russell Square through to Great Portland Street, from where we walked to Regent’s Park, one of the Royal Parks of London. Within the one hundred and sixty six hectares area lie Regent’s University London and London Zoo, the first to be skirted about and the second far beyond our own planned route.

Within the park, apart from the two important landmarks referred to above, is a lake with a boating area and a large part barricaded off for waterfowl, sports pitches and children’s playground. The day had heated up to resemble a summer’s day and there were numerous folk spread out on the grass developing their pre-Mediterranean holiday tans. New buds and glorious blossoms were everywhere and it gave us hope that spring was well under way. 

Morris Dancers outside the Tate Britain

We spent about an hour wandering at leisure then made our way back to Baker Street,  that made famous by the fictitious Sherlock Holmes, and took the Underground through to St Pancras, changing onto the Victoria line and travelling south to Brixton. Here we disembarked to explore the town centre seen two days in a row from the top story of a London bus.

What an incredibly vibrant place this is; our white faces certainly a minority amongst the Caribbean immigrants and the Moslem stall holders. The market, caught sight of in the morning, was still as busy as it had been earlier, and a happy black reggae singer entertained the crowds emerging from the station. Similar music played through speakers all through the kilometre of market stalls, even all about the halal butcher outlets. It was all quite wonderful however we returned to the Iceland shop and bought our fish from there rather than the fishmongers whose wares had probably been lying out in the sun all day waiting for the commuters to buy.

Back on the bus, we soon found our way back to camp and were pleased to relax at the end of our second sightseeing day, regaining stamina for the next.

Interior of the Tate Britain

Today being Saturday was to prove a little more unreliable for public transport. While the official line was that the remedial work on the Crystal Palace line was only to be undertaken on Sunday and then completed by 8.30 am, the reality was somewhat different. Ready early, we walked down through the Palace Park, fitness freaks our only companions, arriving at the railway station about six minutes before the first scheduled departure for Canada Waters and beyond. Minutes before time, it was cancelled.  A further twenty minutes on and yet another cancellation, and so it went on. We were not the only frustrated folk left standing on the platform, but possibly the only ones that wished we had caught the bus from the stop close to our camp. We waited a further ten minutes and took the slow train through to London Bridge, from where we connected with the Underground through to Pimlico, the station nearest the Tate Britain.

I spent some time explaining this gallery a year ago when we last visited so shall not repeat myself, or at least not too much. Then we had arrived about an hour before it was due to close for the day and had only had time to poke our nose into the Turner gallery. 

Today as we arrived we were treated to a group of Morris dancers at the entrance and spent at least five minutes watching them prance about, however our time was too precious and limited to spend more. We were keen to deal with the omissions of last time.

We spent a couple of hours back in the Clore Gallery enjoying the Turner works and those smaller exhibitions beyond that corner; a small but fabulous collection of works by John Constable and  William Blake. After lunch we happened upon a free tour as we so often seem to do; this one related to the history and archives of the gallery, quite different to the art class or overview of the gallery work we normally encounter.

Buxton Memorial Fountain in the Victoria Tower Gardens

Rita was wonderful, holding our attention in a small circular room explaining the evolution of the gallery from the days when the site was occupied by the Millbank Prison, that originally constructed as the national penitentiary which for part of its history served as a holding facility for convicted prisoners before they were transported to Australia.

The Emmeline Pankhurst Memorial

Millbank was downgraded to a local prison, then from 1870 a military prison, and finally closed in 1890. Demolition commenced in 1892 and continued until 1903, by which time the site had been reinvented as an art gallery.

After a half hour’s education by Rita, she set us free to explore the gallery for ourselves, and Chris and I continued our wandering through the wonderful work of the gallery for a further hour and a half, escaping before exhaustion set in.

From there we wandered eastward along the embankment of the River Thames, on past the Lambeth Bridge approach, to the Victoria Tower Gardens beside the Houses of Parliament. After the obligatory dozen or so photos, we caught the No 3 Bus back to camp via the ever vibrant Brixton, to enjoy yet another quiet evening recuperating for the days ahead.

Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais"

Truth be told, tomorrow is scheduled as a lay day; a day to attend to the mountain of laundry begging our attention and to replenish our stores. But it would be a shame if we failed to exercise our Oyster cards in some way, albeit Sunday and no doubt with even more unreliable public transport.