We made the journey to Sutton, on the outskirts of London, on Tuesday night for a farewell dinner with our friends Gabby and Jarrod. Without having told their family or anyone else, they’d packed up their flat and booked tickets to fly back to Australia the next day. Dinner was at The Moon on the Hill, a Wetherspoon pub (see previous post for more information on what this means).
The following evening, Wednesday, we had a more upmarket cultural experience out at a Broadway theatre show. We saw The Kion King at Lyceum Theatre, and although Brendan had already seen in a few years ago in Sydney, there were minor differences. Today's show in London has been updated slightly to make it more relatable for children of 2015, and is just more "British" than the one Brendan had previously seen.
On Thursday, Brendan had to take part in his work's Knight Frank Day of Giving event for charity. Right across the UK, each Knight Frank office had their own charity fundraising event and his office had chosen to do a team Iron Man. 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride and a marathon 26.2-mile (42.2 km) run. Luckily it was split up between the 18 people in the office so they only had to cover these distances cumulatively. Not everyone was willing to participate however, so there were still significant distances to be covered. Quite daunting!
The swim was fairly straightforward, the 5 people who were brave enough to get in the water had to complete 8 laps of the lido (English word for an outdoor swimming area) in the Serpentine (essentially a big duck pond, with questionable water hygiene).
Next it was onto the bike ride. Due to the informal setup (i.e. nothing was actually planned, we just turned up as a group and started doing an Iron Man...) the group of us wound up on hired Boris bikes cycling around with no real idea of where we needed to go or the distance that we'd covered.
The run was next and Brendan had worked out that between the 9 people who were running, they only needed to cover about 4.7 km each (and that was all he’d prepared for). But much like the bikes, nobody was tracking how far they’d gone and by the end he’d completed 7 km in 45 minutes. Not particularly quickly but still, an achievement for someone who is far from an athlete.
On Sunday we went over to Greenwich so we could get a typical touristy photo standing on the meridian line. The main line is strategically positioned inside the courtyard of the Royal Observatory, which attracts a £9.50 entry fee. We didn’t end up actually going in, but still managed to get our photo on the line that we found outside of the courtyard, on a concealed walkway. The Observatory sits atop a hill in the 74 hectare (183 acre) Greenwich Park, and affords a spectacular outlook down the hill towards the National Maritime Museum, and across the River Thames to the rest of the city.
We decided to head over to Oxford Street to see the Christmas decorations and start our Christmas shopping. On entering the tube station on our way there, we saw a film crew set up and most of the escalators closed as part of this. There were signs warning that there was filming in the area and by entering we were giving permission for them to use footage of us. They didn’t however have signs warning that there would be a lifeless looking body sprawled out on the floor at the bottom!
Highlights for the week:
- Farewell dinner in Sutton for Gabby and Jarrod
- The Lion King at Lyceum Theatre
- Brendan taking part in an Iron Man
- Aussies in London drinks at The Big Chill House
- Greenwich Park
- Stood on the meridian line
- Saw a giant ship in a bottle outside the National Maritime Museum
- Oxford Street - saw Christmas decorations and started Christmas shopping!
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