Work Trips to London, Newcastle, Chester and London

Sometimes the work trips came thick and fast and this time we'll take a look at just a few of them over the period of May-June 2005.

We will start off in London on Friday 6 May 2005. London was a regular stopping off point as it was easy to get there for national meetings, there were lots of universities and colleges in and around it who could travel in for training sessions and there were several important partners that Jisc worked with, such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Association of Colleges and their subsidiary arm, the National Information and Learning Technolgies Association (NILTA). All three of these organisations were based in Centrepoint, just off New Oxford Street.

At 30 storeys, it was one of London's tallest buildings at this time and the view never failed to entrance me. On a clear day you could follow the line of the River Thames down to the Tower of London and make out St Pauls Cathedral, HMS Belfast, The Gherkin Building (30 St Mary Axe as the owners tried to name it, though once the nickname had taken hold of the national imagination it was going to struggle to be anything else) and further down the river to the Canary Wharf building.

Tuesday 10 May 2005. The Sage Building on the Gateshead side of the River Tyne as seen from the Newcastle side. Jisc infoNet was hosted by the University of Northumbria who were my official employers and I would regularly hoist myself over for meetings and sometimes for training (both giving and receiving) or project work.

Sometimes it would be onto a train with a choice of Blackpool to York then York to Newcastle or Blackpool to Preston; Preston to Carlisle and finally across country from Carlisle to Newcastle. Sometimes it would be by car up towards Kendal, then through Sedbergh and Kirby Stephen over the moors and hills of Cumbria and North Yorkshire up to the A66 at Brough to the A1M at Scotch Corner. From there it was north on the A1M to Gateshead, passing right next to the Angel of the North and finally crossing the Tyne Bridge into Newcastle.

Thursday 26 May 2005. Back in London again. Due to the time it took to get there any training sessions in London meant I had to travel the day before and whenever possible I tried to fit in a meeting with either someone from the London or South East RSCs. This evening I remember going for a drink with someone from the London RSC who took me to see the Peter Pan statue at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The following day was spent running a training course for Further Education colleges at International House on Piccadilly, opposite Green Park. This park was enclosed by the Poulteny family on the site of what had been described as a medieval swampy burial ground for lepers. It passed to King Charles II in 1668 and was officially named Green Park in 1746 as it was mainly meadow land with trees but very few flowers.

Charles II's queen, Queen Catherine of Braganza must surely have been one of England's most unhappy queens. She, as a Portuguese princess, was a Catholic which made her highly unpopular both at Court and generally with the population. Also she struggled with the English language and whilst Charles on occasion defended her, he was not shy about making known his many affairs. Indeed he made her accept his official mistress, Barbara Palmer, 1st Duchess of Cleveland as one of Catherine's Ladies of the Bedchamber. When Charles first presented his known mistress to the Queen, Catherine fell into a faint. Lastly she was unable to bear the King a child, suffering three miscarriages during their married life.

There is an oral history (i.e. not written down) that Catherine had all the flowers in Green Park pulled up in revenge after King Charles picked some, only to give them to one of his mistresses.

Friday 24 June 2005. Chester Racecourse on a soggy morning after setting up a stand that I was manning at the annual Summer e-Fair of Jisc's Regional Support Centre Northwest. The RSCs supported colleges with e-Learning which included both online learning and any use of Information Technology inside or outside the classroom. The day before I had been giving a training session in Wales and rather than drive another two hours to home and back again on the following day, I stayed overnight in Chester with the RSC team.

During the period covered in this article there were more trips including Lincoln, Taunton, Tynemouth and probably more that do not appear in any other articles published on the index linked below. Sometimes it rains just too much even for me to contemplate taking photos...

Work Index

Wet London Wrap-Up

Wednesday 6 December 1995. Our final day in London and we awake to the sound of sleet hammering on the window. The TV news showed pictures of snowbound cars and we were thankful that we were to travel back to Blackpool by train later in the day!

Our 24-hour tour bus tickets are good until lunchtime so we hop on and ride down to Piccadilly where we jump off and walk a little way down the famous street. This is Fortnum and Mason, the famous purveyors of food to Royalty and Nobility. The original Fortnum had been a footman to King George III.

Piccadilly Arcade has bowed windows that are very narrow, this being a very difficult technique in glass-making for their day. If damaged I imagine they would be hideously expensive today also...

The Ritz, favourite for a spot of tea at the Ritz, you know! We were on a budget so we opted for a spot of tea at Manky Joe's...

At the far end of Piccadilly as you approach Park Lane, this is Green Park. It is so called because at one time deer were kept in an enclosure made of the upper park and at the time it was almost treeless. The deer cropped the grass so closely that the park was a great sward of green. We were trying to walk to Harrods, but the subway was closed and with a walk of half a mile in the wrong direction in order to cross the very busy road, we succumbed to the cold and got back on the bus! When we got to Harrods I was immediately pounced on by an officious little man in a top hat who pointed accusingly at the camera around my neck and snarled "You can't take photographs in here!" The lens cap was on and I wasn't showing any signs of wanting to eagerly snap away, so why so aggressive? I expect many of their customers, who would think nothing of spending hundreds of pounds on their dog's dinner, would be put off by hordes of flashbulbs going off, but sheesh it's just a shop... It must be shit being rich and having to keep thinking of ways to be obnoxious to people...

The gates to Downing Street. This short street is where the Prime Minister of England lives (at No. 10) and the Chancellor at No. 11. The gates were erected in 1990, to deny access to the public and terrorists. The IRA showed how effective they were a year later, when they lobbed mortar bombs from a parked van.

Once more from the bus and this is the Savoy Hotel. This short street is the only one in England where traffic drives on the right hand side of the road. This is to allow taxicab drivers to reach through their windows and open their passengers' door without having to leave their vehicle.

It looks beautiful and peaceful in films of Royal weddings and such occasions, yet Wren's Masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral sits facing Fleet Street, one of the busiest roads in the City. The view of a royal couple on the steps may be romantic, but they have an appallingly dirty and depressing view of a city street as they come out! This is our last photograph of the three days in London, though not the last one that I took. I took several photos inside St Paul's but the film was still in the camera at the end of the month when we were burgled just two days before Christmas. The camera, our NICAM VHS recorder (yes, I know - what the hell's that???) and a good deal of Fran's jewellery all went to make Christmas better for some unspeakable low-life scroat. Still, it gave us a reason to go again to retake some of those photos!

Return to London Weekend 1995 index page