Westminster Abbey

[floydraser]

And on a lighter note......................

First, get a railcard. Any railcard. It's 30 quid, or nothing if you have Tesco points. Apart from 1/3 off rail travel you also get discounted days out. We did the Cutty Sark with a two for one deal at the end of August and yesterday we did Westminster Abbey, two for £27 instead of £54, so there's your railcard paid for again!

It was great to be able to relate to what we have been seeing on tv lately but I was amazed by the amount of stuff inside the abbey which is never shown. There are innumerable monuments to the great and the good and with a bit of research, maybe the not so good. So many that some are hidden behind others. An incredible amount of work must have gone into the carving and stone mason work and parts are showing the results of the millions of people brushing past over the years.

It was very busy and we were always in a bit of a crowd so not the kind of place to be enjoyed in a group I wouldn't think.

I accidentally trod on Charles Darwin and I think David Livingstone. At least, I presume it was him. 

Cream tea in the cafe was very reasonable.

Well worth the trip and like the Tower of London, makes you proud to be British.

Then to London Bridge and a walk along the south bank of the Thames to Hornimans, level with the pointy bit of HMS Belfast. They do Timothy Taylors Landlord and Adnams gin along with the best fish and chips we've had in ages at a very reasonable price – for London. It got very noisy though, once we moved inside to eat and the city workers piled in for apres work drinkypoos.

St Paul's for the next trip but that two for one runs out mid December.

[kpnut]

Very interesting, thankyou. 

Are those discounts through using Tesco points, or through using a railcard?

[YnysMon]

Westminster Abbey is wonderful. Thanks for posting.

I was very fortunate a few years back to go to Westminster on a trip with our church, which has a special connection with Westminster. Our church was built in 1660 and paid for by Richard Busby who had bought the local manor. He had been headmaster of Westminster School, where he had taught Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Hooke designed our church. There's a memorial to Richard Busby in Westminster just around the corner from the altar area.

So our church has a special connection with Westminster. We were invited by the Westminster Trust members to attend an Evensong service and afterward we were treated to tea and cakes in the Jerusalem Chamber, which has a whole history of its own, being where Henry VI died - apparently it had been foretold that he would die in Jerusalem - not quite the one he expected! After tea, when the Abbey was closed to visitors, they divided us up into groups of five or six and a guide took each group around the Abbey on a very personal tour, which is how I managed to take some photos with hardly any visitors in the background!

[SwanR]

Thank you for sharing your trips. Having grown up in London a lot of these places were my school trips many years ago now. I count myself as fortunate to have known a city that was quieter and older than it looks today. My dad worked in a job loosely connected with the Port of London when the docks were operational. And I remember a trip down the Thames to Greenwich past the old warehouses before anyone probably dreamt of Canary Wharf. In my memory it was more like something out of the film Oliver.

St Paul's is one of my favourites, and one I did take my own family to visit. I believe that with any new building in London there is a condition that the view of St Paul's on the skyline must never be obscured.

 

 

[floydraser]

4 hours ago, kpnut said:

Very interesting, thankyou. 

Are those discounts through using Tesco points, or through using a railcard?

You can use Tesco points to purchase the railcard. The actual two for ones are through the railcard website. 

Just check the Tesco thing first as it may be a time limited thing. I don't have a Tesco card myself.