Tag Archives: london

Distant Farewell to the Pumas

The RAF retired its Puma helicopter fleet at the end of March after 54 years in service. They undertook a tour of various parts of the country with three Pumas. Sadly, I wasn’t able to be in place for any of the flypasts. However, one of the last legs included a flight across London using the Thames helicopter route. I was working in the London office that day and so I did head up to the roof to see if I could see them. We are too far from the river to be in a good spot, but it was better than nothing. I also only had my phone. Stills were pointless so I decided to try and get some video instead. Here is what I got.

BT Tower

Leave a Reply

As I look from our office on Tavistock Square, the BT Tower is the conspicuous landmark to the west of us. When I was a kid, this was called the Post Office Tower. Then it became the Telecom Tower and then the BT Tower. In those days, large microwave antennae were mounted on the structure to communicate with other parts of the country. The need for them is now gone and so there is a rather bare part of the structure beneath the floor space at the top. It changes the whole look of the building. I believe it has recently been sold to a hotel group so maybe I will get a chance to finally go up it. I shall probably make the effort to get closer to it in the coming months to try other photo angles than just looking out of the window.

Parakeets in Their Natural Habitat?

Leave a Reply

Parakeets must be remarkably adaptable birds. When they escape, they seem to rapidly establish themselves in cities from which they did not originate. When we lived in Chicago, there was a park on the south side of the city which had a large parakeet colony. Richmond Park in London is a similar spot. We heard the parakeets before we saw them, but their bright flashes of color made them easy enough to spot when they got moving. They just seem to flourish wherever they are, even if they really should not be there.

How Much Purple is There on These Houses?

Leave a Reply

While walking through Richmond, we came along a street of older houses in what seemed like quite a desirable neighborhood. The dominant feature of most of these houses was the preponderance of wisteria on their frontages. Some of the plants were confined to one house while others seemed to span whatever property that they felt like. The purple blooms were most impressive, and it seemed like they were competing to see which house could be more purple than the next. I don’t know how long wisteria blooms for so did we get lucky with our timing, or could we have been there at a wider range of times?

Jackdaws Searching for Snacks

Leave a Reply

We stopped for a small snack at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park after our walk. We were heading to lunch later, but you don’t want your energy to drop so a cake of some sort is a necessity. The tables around the café provided plenty of food for the local jackdaw population and they were very keen to get whatever fell from the plates of the customers. With the sun on them, they looked really cool. I didn’t know what they were at the time, but the grey heads were quite distinctive, and I did a search later on t identify them. Funny to learn these things so long after I had lived in the UK.

Deer in the Royal Park

Leave a Reply

Richmond Park is famous for its deer. You don’t have to go far in the park to come across some. They seem pretty relaxed despite the presence of so many people nearby but I imagine it is a long time since anyone in the park was hunting them, so they don’t see us as a threat anymore. As we went for a stroll, we came across a few groups of deer busy munching away. Occasionally, they would look at us as we got closer but their lack of interest most of the time was obvious!

Richmond Park Scenery

Leave a Reply

I last visited Richmond Park in 1990 in my last year at university. I went there with a couple of friends for a day out in the sun. For some reason, I have not been back since. Why we never went there, I do not know. Nancy was quite perplexed to discover such an amazing park that she never got to see when we lived in the UK. Definitely something we missed out on.

Anyway, be that as it may, we did make the time to have a trip to the park when we went up to Richmond during our UK visit so we could meet up with family and see some other parts of the area. I really had no idea about the layout of the park. It was way hillier than I remembered. We drove through the park for a while and then found a spot to leave the car and take a stroll.

It is a gorgeous place to wander. We didn’t have a huge amount of time so weren’t going to walk a long way but we did have a nice stretch of the legs. Plenty of deer to see in the park but they will get their own post. Being spring, the trees were starting to look full. While plenty of people were around, you felt like you were alone quite quickly. We passed an enclosure that was designed to give the deer their own space. They didn’t seem too interested in it and were quite comfortable everywhere else! Our route back brought us to a garden as part of Pembroke Lodge. This was also the spot with a café which was far more important. Next time we are back, it would be good to explore the park more extensively.

Some Ted Lasso Tourism

Leave a Reply

On one of our days in the UK, we made a trip to Richmond. It is over 30 years since I have spent time in Richmond, and it was nice to go there again. A first for Nancy too. We were having lunch with family but got there a little early to walk around. One of the things we wanted to do was check out the area around Richmond Green. This was a location for many of the scenes in the TV series, Ted Lasso. It was on our way anyway, so we stopped to have a look around.

Looking like a tourist is never too appealing and I imagine plenty of people come by because of the show. The pub that they feature apparently has fan memorabilia for the show’s imaginary team. Some of the shops also have “Believe” signs above their doors. TV does a good job of cutting together unrelated spaces, but you can easily recognize some of the places. We did struggle to identify one or two other spots, though. There is some demolition and construction underway now, so I wonder if that took out any bits that were previously used.

Royal Exchange

Leave a Reply

We were walking through the city checking out areas that we didn’t normally go to when we worked in Town during our visit last year. Our route brought us up to the Royal Exchange. It is a really cool looking old structure but one that has been adapted to modern uses. The inside is some pretty high end retail and we weren’t buying whatever they were selling. However, I did love the look of the place. It was also quite funny because I bumped into an old work colleague that I knew from Seattle (who has moved back to the UK). Not what you expect in a city the size of London!

St Pancras Sculptures

Leave a Reply

While walking through the station at St Pancras, I realized that there are more sculptures than I had thought. The one of Sir John Betjeman I knew of from previous visits, but the others were new to me. I rather like the stark nature of their textures and imagery. They have a rather aggressive feel to me which got my attention. It’s nice that public spaces make the effort to add art to the functional areas.