London: Thurs Sept 29 – Mon Oct 3
Accommodation link.
Friday 30th September
It was a sunny start for our first full day in London but we didn’t head out for an early walk. We had two walking tours booked for the day so we thought we would pace ourselves.
Both tours were with London Walks and our first was through the Victoria & Albert Museum at 10.45 am. Our apartment was just a 10 min walk from Victoria station so that made catching the tube around for the day very easy. Fares are capped at £7.70 each day making getting around fairly economical. The V & A is a vast museum filled with thousands of specimens and so it was a good way to have a curated spot light put on to the highlights of the museum. Our guide, Simon, who I recognized from a previous walk some years ago and then he said he recognized me, started off by giving our small group of 8 some background to the inception of the Museum. Apparently Queen Victoria’s husband, Price Albert, built a temporary (6 month) exhibition space in 1851, The Crystal Palace, and it was such a huge success that he then went on to purchase a cheap track of land, down from Kensington Palace, to develop into a more permanent exhibition space. The land previously held Brompton Boilers and was renamed South Kensington as this was deemed more appropriate than being named after boilers. This is why the area today houses the V &A Museum, the Science museum, the National History Museum and even Imperial College London. Sadly, Albert died before the area was completed but his legacy lives on. The original V & A museum was founded in the 1850s as more of a museum of manufacturing and arts and was a place where people could come to learn practical crafts. Albert had hoped it would appeal to the common person and that is why the original building is made of simple red brick and not limestone or marble so as not to intimidate the working class. It was hoped the working class would come to the space and rub shoulders with the elite and thereby, through what I assume they must have thought would operate like osmosis, they would be infused to achieve greater things.
Our guided walk through the V & A finished up at 1 pm and I’d thought we’d have lunch at Harrods. That was until I realized fish and chips would be £40 so off to a pub we headed for a pub lunch where we both ate and drank for 3/4 that price. After that is was home for a rest before our next London Walk, an evening Along the Thames Pub Walk; I bet you can guess who chose this particular walk!
