Life's about experiences. These are mine.
A year ago I arranged as a present for my dad for us to go up the Shard. This didn’t work out that well as we were thwarted first by the London Fire Brigade and then by Thor. So it was with some trepidation that I booked to take my in-laws up to Sky Garden …
We’re not great museum goers in the Thompson household, although the Pitt Rivers in Oxford is excellent. However, we do make exceptions when there is something a bit different going on. The last Friday in the month the Natural History Museum in London opens late (until 10pm) and what sealed the deal, for Helen at any …
As someone who thinks that the best place for royalty is on a stamp or coin it was strange to find myself on a tour around Buckingham Palace and gardens but the place isn’t open that often and I wanted to see just exactly where my 56p pence was going. I’m sure you will be …
It’s time once again for the annual Heritage Open Days when interesting places all over the country open their doors as payback for public money received. Last year I went into the Reading Abbey, which is normally closed to visitors, and this year I went to the Reading Museum stores. Here are held all the …
Continue reading “Reading Museum Stores, Heritage Open Days 2015”
We had decided to spend the day in Bath and given that it is easy to get to from Reading we elected to do so by train. It is always cheaper to buy train tickets in advance and as we also had a railcard it made it reasonably cheap too. When we picked up the …
It’s been about 35 years since I last went to the horse races. On that occasion it was Ripon and I was too young to bet (well, directly anyway. I do seem to remember bets being made by proxy). However, I was given a pair of tickets to go to Newbury for last night’s meet …
It was last year, I think, that I first saw London Zoo advertised and thought that it sounded like an interesting idea – to open up the zoo in the evening over a few weeks in the summer and to lay on other events and food too. Tickets are cheaper in advance but, of course, …
“All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” Well, they built a bloody great big wall running from the River Tyne to the Solway Firth, a total of 70 miles, and over the weekend …
Fresh from an exploration of a hidden London gem on Saturday we visited somewhere that has been hiding in plain sight pretty much all my adult life. For four years I went to Portsmouth University (or Polytechnic as it was then) and twenty odd years later my son did the same. In the intervening years …
I like London. It’s a great city. I wouldn’t want to live there and nor would I want to have to commute up there everyday to work but it is a beautiful and richly varied city. A great example of this is the almost jarring contrast between Camden Market, with it’s brash high street and …