Sights of London

  Having visited our grandchildren Tori and Robyn - what we most missed in London - it was time this week to take a day trip to catch sights in London not seen for six months. I sanitised the handles of a Santander bike and pedalled through Hyde Park where I noticed Rotten Row was being levelled. Did you know the ancient horse track formerly sloped across its width? Another change I noticed was the new patterned front Westminster residential and commercial centre towering across from the Abbey on Victoria Street. Joy to attend evensong there with a choir of seven and a congregation just three times that number. Great to be back in London on a mid-September day trip from Haywards Heath made on quiet trains. I sanitised my Santander bike and headed for my online pre-booked visit to the National Gallery where I caught my first sight of Cezanne’s bathers for six months. I like the way the figures blend into their natural setting. My London experience was a more prosaic blending of mind...

Take the bus, underground or walk from Victoria Station to Marble Arch which once itself travelled a similar route, brick by brick, from its original site at Buckingham Palace when the latter was expanded in 1851. It stands incongruously on a traffic island north of Hyde Park the largest of four Royal Parks that form a chain from the entrance of Kensington Palace through Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and Green Park to St James’s Park. Our tenth tour takes in Speaker’s Corner and Reformers’ Tree, both linked to Britain’s tradition of free speech, descends to the Serpentine lake turning right then left by the Serpentine Sackler Gallery to cross the bridge, then left to view Princess Diana Memorial Fountain continuing alongside Rotten Row to The Dell. Speaker’s Corner ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’ is a saying attributed to Voltaire. Across the road from Marble Arch there’s a public space that gets crowded on Sundays wher...