Time out in London and Guildford
Thursday evening: Arrive at London Waterloo on the Eurostar from Brussels. Take the 188 bus to Bricklayer's Arms. 'Check in' to my mate Steve's apartment in the Jam Factory, a housing and office complex on the site of the former Hartley's Jam factory in Bermondsey. Cross to the other side of Tower Bridge Road for dinner in The Hartley, an award winning gastropub. I have a prawn cocktail followed by a lamb and parmesan burger with a side serving of old English mustard. The grub is nice but not spectacular, the venue trendy, but not achingly so. Two criticisms: no air con (a complaint that applies to 90% of venues in London) and a rather bland selection of beers (Boddingtons is the only ale and there are no artisanal brews).
Friday: Stroll from 'Sobo' - as estate agents and style mags have taken to calling the gentrified, bohemian edge of hard-as-nails Bermondsey (the acronym stands for 'South of Borough', don't you know?) - via the remnants of the antiques market on Long Lane to Borough Market. Walking round the place that launched the farmer's market revival on a beautiful sunny morning is a lovely experience. Pick up some Red Leicester cheese straws, a Melton Mowbray pork pie and some freshly squeezed orange juice before popping into the Monmouth Coffee Company for an ice filtered Sumatran brew.
The market backs on to Southwark Cathedral, a charming early 12th century gothic building that contains the tomb of king Henry IV’s poet laureate John Gower.
Crossing the road and walking past Vinopolis, the remains of Winchester House and the replica of the Golden Hinde, I follow the Thames Path westward before crossing into North London via Southwark Bridge, taking in the view of Docklands, Tower Bridge, Swiss Re and St. Paul's.
Reaching the Millennium Bridge, I cross back over the river and take a detour round the third floor of Tate Modern. Surrealist films from the 1920s and the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois were the things that connected best on this visit - next time, who knows?
Continuing along the South Bank, I pause for some lunch at a cafe attached to the National Theatre. My arrival coincides with one of the events in the Watch This Space season - a performance by Moya (African-jazz-folk and roots rhythms from Swaziland). The sweet voices of the two female singers aid the digestion of a cheese sandwich washed down by a dandelion and burdock flavoured drink.
After lunch, I head over the Thames again via one of the Golden Jubilee Footbridges and make for Fitzrovia, where I have a five o'clock rendezvous with some old friends. Passing through Trafalgar Square, I pay the National Portrait Gallery a brief visit. A BP sponsored portrait competition is on display. Works by Gregory Cumins, Jon Jones and Andrew Hilling stand out.
I head through Leicester Square and China Town, followed by a spot of browsing on Oxford Street. Feeling peckish I recall a fish and chip shop close to Pollock's Toy Museum on Scala Street. The food tastes good, although it is just too hot to really appreciate battered cod and chips.
Meeting my mates on Mortimer Street, we have a few pints outside the Crown and Sceptre on Great Titchfield Street, an old after work haunt and one of the nicest pubs in the area, especially when the sun is shining.
I'm staying overnight in Guildford, so my friend Nick and I decamp to the Surrey commuter town. It's a surprising place: "A bit of a Jekyll and Hyde town" as one of Nick's pals put it. By day, a well-heeled piece of archetypal Middle England, by night, a pissed-up regular on security cam documentary, 'Booze Britain'. Appropriately, while sitting outside the Royal Oak pub I take the opportunity to sup a Cheeky Vimto for the first time. Known as a favourite of Charlotte Church, this combination of port and the Vodka-based alcopop Blue Wkd does indeed taste like the fruit-flavoured drink Vimto, long a favourite of children in the north of England.
Guildford is also popular location with film and TV location scouts. The town's appearances range from 'The Omen' (the final scene takes place at Guildford Cathedral) to 'The Bill' (the plodding feet of the famous end title sequence were filmed on Guildford's cobbled High Street, hard to imagine given the steepness of the gradient - it always looked flat to me on the telly).
Saturday: Heading back into London around midday I meet up with another old pal at the Duke's Head in Putney. This charming riverside pub does a very tasty Ploughman's Lunch and still charges only 30p for a pint of lime and soda. Bargain.
Check in to the Portobello Hotel. I'm offered a discount as the lift is broken. My room is small but very comfortable, with a large Bang & Olufsen TV. I wander down Portobello Road and have a drink in The Duke of Wellington (aka Finch's), an old stomping ground from the days when I worked at the Music & Video Exchange on Notting Hill Gate. Later I decide to take advantage of the evening's membership of the Cobden Club offered to all guests of the Portobello Hotel. The lack of air conditioning in this former working men's club is a drag on such an oppressively humid evening. But the decor is grand and the bourbon-based cocktails I sample (including a house special 'Grape Crush') are, as they say in Ireland, grand too. The upstairs disco (tedious rare groove and men with goldie lookin' chains round their necks) and reading room (with oohh, maybe 10 books!) are not so grand.
Sunday: After an excellent continental breakfast I check out and head into Hyde Park. It's still very warm and very cloudy, so I take a break in a deckchair (£1.50, pay when asked) next to the Round Pond. I carry on towards one of my favourite London spaces, the Serpentine Gallery. Thomas Demand is the featured artist. I was previously unfamiliar with his work (photographs of domestic and office interiors that upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be photos of sculptures made from paper and cardboard) and am impressed. Demand has also decked the gallery out in wallpaper with an ivy motif that he designed in collaboration with a manufacturer that uses a traditional block printing motif.
Demand's wallpaper also finds its way into this summer's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a bizarre clear plastic and white fabric dome created by architect Rem Koolhaas and structural designer Cecil Balmond. This temporary building is the sixth to be erected outside the gallery since the pavilion concept, a scheme that enables some of the world's leading architects to build a structure in Britain for the first time, was launched in 2000.
After enjoying a '99 Flake from an ice-cream stand, I round off the weekend by buying some books ("A short history of tractors in Ukrainian", Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and, for my fiancee, Alison Weir's "Isabella") and DVDs ('Peep Show - series one', 'The Machinist', 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (only £2.99!) and some episodes from 'Minder' (series four, natch)). Having shopped, I drop to the ground in Soho Square, enjoying sandwiches (Wensleydale and caramelised carrot chutney) and crisps (salt and vinegar squares) from Marks & Spencer in the sunshine and the shadow of the British Board of Film Classification and the headquarters of the Football Association.
Friday: Stroll from 'Sobo' - as estate agents and style mags have taken to calling the gentrified, bohemian edge of hard-as-nails Bermondsey (the acronym stands for 'South of Borough', don't you know?) - via the remnants of the antiques market on Long Lane to Borough Market. Walking round the place that launched the farmer's market revival on a beautiful sunny morning is a lovely experience. Pick up some Red Leicester cheese straws, a Melton Mowbray pork pie and some freshly squeezed orange juice before popping into the Monmouth Coffee Company for an ice filtered Sumatran brew.
The market backs on to Southwark Cathedral, a charming early 12th century gothic building that contains the tomb of king Henry IV’s poet laureate John Gower.
Crossing the road and walking past Vinopolis, the remains of Winchester House and the replica of the Golden Hinde, I follow the Thames Path westward before crossing into North London via Southwark Bridge, taking in the view of Docklands, Tower Bridge, Swiss Re and St. Paul's.
Reaching the Millennium Bridge, I cross back over the river and take a detour round the third floor of Tate Modern. Surrealist films from the 1920s and the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois were the things that connected best on this visit - next time, who knows?
Continuing along the South Bank, I pause for some lunch at a cafe attached to the National Theatre. My arrival coincides with one of the events in the Watch This Space season - a performance by Moya (African-jazz-folk and roots rhythms from Swaziland). The sweet voices of the two female singers aid the digestion of a cheese sandwich washed down by a dandelion and burdock flavoured drink.
After lunch, I head over the Thames again via one of the Golden Jubilee Footbridges and make for Fitzrovia, where I have a five o'clock rendezvous with some old friends. Passing through Trafalgar Square, I pay the National Portrait Gallery a brief visit. A BP sponsored portrait competition is on display. Works by Gregory Cumins, Jon Jones and Andrew Hilling stand out.
I head through Leicester Square and China Town, followed by a spot of browsing on Oxford Street. Feeling peckish I recall a fish and chip shop close to Pollock's Toy Museum on Scala Street. The food tastes good, although it is just too hot to really appreciate battered cod and chips.
Meeting my mates on Mortimer Street, we have a few pints outside the Crown and Sceptre on Great Titchfield Street, an old after work haunt and one of the nicest pubs in the area, especially when the sun is shining.
I'm staying overnight in Guildford, so my friend Nick and I decamp to the Surrey commuter town. It's a surprising place: "A bit of a Jekyll and Hyde town" as one of Nick's pals put it. By day, a well-heeled piece of archetypal Middle England, by night, a pissed-up regular on security cam documentary, 'Booze Britain'. Appropriately, while sitting outside the Royal Oak pub I take the opportunity to sup a Cheeky Vimto for the first time. Known as a favourite of Charlotte Church, this combination of port and the Vodka-based alcopop Blue Wkd does indeed taste like the fruit-flavoured drink Vimto, long a favourite of children in the north of England.
Guildford is also popular location with film and TV location scouts. The town's appearances range from 'The Omen' (the final scene takes place at Guildford Cathedral) to 'The Bill' (the plodding feet of the famous end title sequence were filmed on Guildford's cobbled High Street, hard to imagine given the steepness of the gradient - it always looked flat to me on the telly).
Saturday: Heading back into London around midday I meet up with another old pal at the Duke's Head in Putney. This charming riverside pub does a very tasty Ploughman's Lunch and still charges only 30p for a pint of lime and soda. Bargain.
Check in to the Portobello Hotel. I'm offered a discount as the lift is broken. My room is small but very comfortable, with a large Bang & Olufsen TV. I wander down Portobello Road and have a drink in The Duke of Wellington (aka Finch's), an old stomping ground from the days when I worked at the Music & Video Exchange on Notting Hill Gate. Later I decide to take advantage of the evening's membership of the Cobden Club offered to all guests of the Portobello Hotel. The lack of air conditioning in this former working men's club is a drag on such an oppressively humid evening. But the decor is grand and the bourbon-based cocktails I sample (including a house special 'Grape Crush') are, as they say in Ireland, grand too. The upstairs disco (tedious rare groove and men with goldie lookin' chains round their necks) and reading room (with oohh, maybe 10 books!) are not so grand.
Sunday: After an excellent continental breakfast I check out and head into Hyde Park. It's still very warm and very cloudy, so I take a break in a deckchair (£1.50, pay when asked) next to the Round Pond. I carry on towards one of my favourite London spaces, the Serpentine Gallery. Thomas Demand is the featured artist. I was previously unfamiliar with his work (photographs of domestic and office interiors that upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be photos of sculptures made from paper and cardboard) and am impressed. Demand has also decked the gallery out in wallpaper with an ivy motif that he designed in collaboration with a manufacturer that uses a traditional block printing motif.
Demand's wallpaper also finds its way into this summer's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a bizarre clear plastic and white fabric dome created by architect Rem Koolhaas and structural designer Cecil Balmond. This temporary building is the sixth to be erected outside the gallery since the pavilion concept, a scheme that enables some of the world's leading architects to build a structure in Britain for the first time, was launched in 2000.
After enjoying a '99 Flake from an ice-cream stand, I round off the weekend by buying some books ("A short history of tractors in Ukrainian", Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and, for my fiancee, Alison Weir's "Isabella") and DVDs ('Peep Show - series one', 'The Machinist', 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (only £2.99!) and some episodes from 'Minder' (series four, natch)). Having shopped, I drop to the ground in Soho Square, enjoying sandwiches (Wensleydale and caramelised carrot chutney) and crisps (salt and vinegar squares) from Marks & Spencer in the sunshine and the shadow of the British Board of Film Classification and the headquarters of the Football Association.
Labels: On the road
posted by Justin Toland at 9:53 pm
2 Comments:
One blight on the weekend - Paris Hilton's 'Stars are blind' on the radio and jukeboxes everywhere.
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