Sussex, Hampstead and Richmond

Our last day in London as we fly out tonight. My blog has languished of late. We have been busy and I have been too tired to do any writing. However I want to note what we have been doing during our week here.

We have spent some time getting out of central London.

Our first venture was in to Sussex. We went by train to East Grinstead a lovely medieval town. However our target was a ride on the 11 mile Bluebell Railway, a restored steam train. The countryside is beautiful, bluebells were starting to bloom in the forests and the restored train was very well done including original railway stations from when passenger services used to run there.

Another trip was to Hampstead village and Heath. The village has many unspoiled Georgian precincts and lots of blue plaques on buildings. Many literary and artistic people have lived and worked here. These days you need serious money even to rent here. The Heath was wonderful, mostly quite wild. Heaps of dogs having a wonderful time up there and great views over the city. Very windy and a bit showery while we were up there so we didn't exactly linger-rather a brisk walk instead!

Finally, on a more benign day, we went up to Richmond. We took the tube and overground to get there but returned by boat down the Thames to Westminster. This took 2 hours and was really worth doing. It is always an interesting and different perspective from the river. One striking thing in London is the continuing redevelopment of the former dock areas. The one we especially noticed this time was at St George's dock. The development appears to rise out of the water like some science fiction landscape. It is both fascinating and horrifying at the same time. It's size and scale is very disproportionate to the surrounding areas.

While in Richmond we walked up to Richmond park, another wildish nature reserve where wild deer roam. We took in the view of the river that Turner painted (we saw the painting in the Tate Britain the other day), and did a 45 minute return boat trip further west up the river to Teddington Lock.