Fleet St., St Pauls and Golden Tableware

Saturday 30 November 2002. In my revious article we finished on The Strand with a look at St Clement Danes. We'll start in more or less the same spot then walk along Fleet Street to St Pauls, across the river to Shakespeare's Globe and then take a bus to the West End shops.

From St Clement Danes, we turn to admire the facade of the Royal Courts of Justice or as they are more usually known: The Law Courts. This is the home of the UK's High Court and Court of Appeal, although it also tours the circuit to sit in major cities around the UK. For most of England's history such courts were held at Westminster Hall - they are not called "Royal" for nothing.

Creating a purpose-built home for the Justices required two Acts of Parliament to be written and passed into Law and the displacement of families from 450 houses which had to be demolished to make way for the building which commenced in 1873 with the building being officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1882.

Standing opposite the Royal Courts of Justice is the venerable survivor of the Great Fire of London, The Wig and Pen. Named for the tools of the legal profession it was one of no doubt many such establishments catering for the lawyers, judges and clerks in the area. Dating from 1625 it was set up by the Gatekeeper of Temple Bar - then the western gateway into the City of London - as a handy place to buy food and drink from the curious who paused to view the severed heads on poles above the Temple Bar gateway. It lost a lot of regular thirsty customers when Fleet Street ceased to be the centre of newspaper publishing and since the mid 2000s has traded as Thai Square providing flavours probably unknown in the 17th century! Talking of which... Oliver Cromwell is said to haunt the place.

The old gate of the City was a wooden arched wall across the roadway but unsurprisingly that didn't survive the Great Fire of 1666. A new stone archway with three arches was built 1669-72. Once again the good folks visiting London could look upon heads on poles but by the late 1800s the gate was creating a barrier to the vastly increased amount of horse-drawn traffic.

It was dismantled in 1878, each of the 2,700 pieces of stone catalogued and stored and in 1880 it was bought and taken to Hertfordshire to be re-erected as the gatehouse at Theobalds Park. It stayed there until 2003. The following year it was returned to London stone by stone on 500 pallets, the most travelled gatehouse surely in all England. (I haven't researched that - just watch all the comments prove me wrong in the coming weeks...) It now stands just north of St Pauls Cathedral in Paternoster Square. I must go again to see and photograph it sometime.

Nowadays a tall column stands dividing the carriageways of the road and is decorated by the statue of a dragon rather than heads on poles. It marks the meeting point of The Strand to the west and Fleet Street to the east and is halfway between the former royal residences of the Tower of London and Westminster Palace.

Now on Fleet Street we find The Punch Tavern, formerly the Crown and Sugar Loaf it was renamed in the 1840s in honour of Punch magazine, which was published at nearby Fleet Street premises.

St Pauls Cathedral is one of the great visitor attractions of London. Built to the designs of Christopher Wren (who had long wanted to replace the previous incarnation, luckily for him the Great Fire of London gave him an opening). We were not allowed to take photos in St Pauls - which is a bit annoying as there are few postcards on sale. It would have been better to ban flash and tripod photography and let people get on with it as long as there were no services taking place. So no photos of the interior I'm afraid, but we went to see the tombs of both Christopher Wren and Lord Nelson.

Nelson, having travelled back from the site of his death at Trafalgar in a barrel of brandy, camphor and Myrrh, laid in state for three days at Greenwich, was transferred on a State Barge used originally by King Charles II, the coffin transferred to the Admiralty to rest overnight before being taken by funeral procession made up of 32 admirals, 100 captains and 10,000 soldiers to St Pauls.

At St Pauls there was a four-hour funeral service following which his coffin was lowered through the floor of the nave and placed in a sarcophagus originally supposed to have been Cardinal Wolseley's from Tudor times. King Henry VIII had planned to be buried in it himself in a grand monument, but this was never completed and Henry today rests in a coffin in St George's Chapel, at Windsor.

Coming out of St Pauls Cathedral we had our first viewing of the Millenium Bridge. This was after it had been cured of wriggling about of its own accord and before (just!) the spells of dark wizards chasing Harry Potter made it wriggle all over again... So we walked over with confidence, part of a quite large number of people doing exactly the same, but only half of whom were doing it in the same direction!

On the southern bank of the River Thames is the recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The original was built in 1599 using materials from an earlier theatre which had been demolished elsewhere in London. It burned down during a performance of Henry VIII when a cannon used as a prop, misfired and set fire to the thatch and wooden beams. No one was hurt, although one man had his pants catch fire. The flames were put out with a bottle of ale. (I wonder if he was a liar...?)

We had a look, found we couldn't go in, breathed a sigh of relief - I'd had more than enough of Shakespeare at school - and walked back over the Millenium Bridge and caught a Routemaster red bus back towards the West End. Miss Franny, for some strange reason, seemed to want to look around the shops...

I'm not 100% sure where we saw these but it was either Selfridges or John Lewis and I think the latter - a set of 23 carat gold on silver plate full cutlery service. A bargain at the knock down price of £5,675 from the original price of £11,359. A salesman asked if he could help. "I don't really think so..." I said with a note of sympathy for his lost commission. He shrugged, "You never know!" he said.

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Sur Les Pieds (On Foot)

Saturday 29 May 1999. Penultimate round-up of the day as we find ourselves out of the coach with a couple of hours to ourselves. We've already used a good chunk of it in a shop... So let's crack on.

We left the Galeries Lafayette and promptly got lost by coming out onto a different street than we had entered from! Well, not exactly lost, because all we had to do was circle the building, but a bit more of our precious two hours away from the coach tour was being eaten up. We found our way back to L'Opéra and made our way down the boulevards back towards the Louvre, which had been in silhouette when we were there in the morning.

Cafe de la Paix. We thought we had better wait until we were coming back to see if we had time left to lounge at a table with a glass, so we carried on walking. It took longer than expected to get to the Louvre and by then Fran's foot was sore. She thought her shoe had been rubbing but then found when she took it off that her sandal had left patterns of sunburn on her foot and the straps had been rubbing against that. She had seen a Scholl shop somewhere from the coach and has always liked their shoes but we hadn't been able to find the shop.

So we didn't exactly stay a long time at the Louvre. Just about long enough to take a quick photo and then we thought we had better head back, not knowing if Fran's foot would get worse and slow her down. We didn't want to miss the coach!

We passed this teddy bear, busily blowing bubbles, then Miss Franny saw the shop she had been looking for and dragged me in. Would my French be up to this I wondered... Fran found some shoes and I managed to ask if they had them in her size (which luckily she knew, continental sizes being nothing like our modest numbers).

So I ordered what to me sounded like a pair of clown-sized shoes and was told "Assayez la," which I knew meant either "wait" or "sit" over there so we waited for a bit then - oh no! She came back with a different pair! But my thanks to the lady on the ice cream van for reminding me of the word for "same"!

I probably mixed up my verbs a bit but, "Ces n'est pas la meme," elicited another look at them from the sales assistant, who drew a breath and tutted at her own mistake and she tootled off and brought back the pair Fran wanted. Phew! Success!

I felt ridiculously proud of myself, Fran acted as though it was nothing at all and she knew I would cope (huh???) and she changed into them straight away and by the time we were back at the hotel preparing for our evening out for a meal and night-time coach excursion she declared herself fit for a marathon.

Refreshed and changed, we got back on the coach and headed back into Paris for our meal, where we sat next to the resident musician. Now regular visitors to my site will know I play the odd instrument myself... So I know that playing to a totally unresponsive audience can be soul destroying and I made a point of applauding after every tune. Which was obviously appreciated and although he didn't speak English, I knew enough to get talking to him and we got on famously. I declined his offer to turn round and play the piano that was behind me as, although I play keyboards, if my left hand gets a rhythm going on piano, my right hand seems to want to play at windscreen wipers...

He played both clarinet and saxophone and was very good on both. I asked him how long he had played and he told me he had played since being a young boy. After the meal we parted with smiles and I even got the traditional French embrace and then a rather merry group weaved its way back to the coach to find Lucy and Elizabeth, two young girls on the trip who had not come for the meal, sitting waiting and tapping their watches at me with a huge grin on their faces - they had been 5 minutes late back onto the coach that morning and had a few comments from Les Miserables on the coach!

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Cassis Town

Wednesday 29 August 2007. We move away from the beach and into the town itself. The town of Cassis is quite busy this morning. There are market stalls set up, so perhaps it is market day.

A biscuit shop! There was such a wonderful smell coming from it that we had to go inside just to soak in the flavours. They obviously bake a lot of their stock themselves in the shop. Their way of selling was fun too. You could buy an empty decorative tin and cram as many biscuits as you could fit inside all for one price! We did!

We come out and of course have to immediately try one of the biscuits each! The market is a riot of colour and bustle. All sorts of food, meat, vegetables, breads, fruit and of course fish. But lots of other goods also from textiles to CDs.

Did I mention the hand-painted tiles, flowers and pot plants and rolls of linoleum floor covering? Well I have now! Not to mention tablecloths that come in a choice of rectangular, round or oval!

The pigeons on the ornamental fountain make a very appealing picture. Cassis (you do not pronounce the final 'S') is twinned with our own Burnham-on-Sea. The site was first occupied 600-500 BCE by the Ligures (the Italian Liguria region was named after them). I love a sentence from Wikipedia: "...Cassis could have been inhabited by the Greeks, though no proof has yet been found." Brilliant. It could also of course have been inhabited by a three-legged race of pygmies from Planet Bxsvi but strangely no proof of that has been found either...

It's time to walk back to the meeting spot and as we waited for the coach I took a photo of the expensive looking villa or hotel high up on the cliff.

We got back from Cassis to the Island Star and found our favourite spot by the pool. I'd got through the Bernard Cornwell book and was starting Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid" and so was chortling happily when a look of concern came over Fran's face. Cissie and Ada were struggling to the table. Cissie was bent over to the right and Ada was holding onto her as they crawled over. I went over to help.
"What on earth have you done?"
"It's only my back, it's gone!"

We got her sat down - lucky I was there otherwise she'd have done a sideways somersault over the arm of the chair... I'm still not sure exactly what she'd done but: "Heineken Light - two for one!" she hailed a passing waiter. After half an hour she was as right as rain. It really must reach the parts other beers can't...

"Are you going on the talent show?" asked Ada. I was a day late in asking if I was going to and I wasn't all that bothered anyway.
"Is it..." Cissie leaned over, either because of her back or to look into my eyes in a vague hope of reading my mind "...Grumbleweeds?"

Return to Mediterranean Explorer Cruise, 2007 Index

Brighton and Eastbourne

Wednesday, 5 June 2019. Having left Anne of Cleves (see previous entry) we headed towards Brighton where after swooning at the cost of parking, we went in search of some lunch.

We found a tiny sandwich shop that had a few tables for diners up a small arcade and had lunch there. Then we set about exploring the area known as The Lanes.

It was cold and breezy and somewhat overcast after the fine morning that we had had.

We had a stroll up the pier and had a coffee, sitting on an open air table with benches, huddled against the wind. After the parking rip-off I'm not going to remember this visit with a great deal of affection I'm afraid...

It was the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings. When we got back to Eastbourne we saw massive crowds on the seafront. Expecting the event to happen tomorrow on the actual anniversary we all but missed out on the sight of several DC3 Dakotas with fighter escort flying in formation over the town (but not over the seafront). We heard the drone of engines and caught a glimpse of formations from the hotel window. My camera was in the car boot two streets away and by the time we got out with Fran's small camera I managed a very brief, i.e. one second, video of a single straggler...

That night directly opposite the hotel there was a Proms concert in the bandstand. Whilst we couldn't see, we heard bits of the music from the hotel's conservatory. As the time came for the advertised fireworks display we put on jackets and crossed the road for a closer look.

I'm sure Eastbourne had much more to show us than we allowed it to. We had spent all our time simply using it as a base to go elsewhere. But who knows, some time we may come back and do it a bit more justice!

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Hasting to Hastings

Monday 3 June 2019. We had motored down to Eastbourne on the previous day and booked into a hotel for a few days. Today after the 300 mile drive we were to take it easy and we caught a local bus to Hastings.

Hastings wasn't the bus's final destination so once we recognised Hastings seafront we hopped off the bus and walked the rest of the way to the far end of town. It was glorious weather. In fact we got more suntanned than we had done on the Mediterranean last month!

Above this cliff is William the Conqueror's castle. Below it a large unit boarded up and spoiling the effect of the classical feel to the buildings behind. William of Normandy actually landed a few miles west of here in Pevensey, but the town has come to be synonymous with the famous battle - which also wasn't fought here... A funicular railway affords a less strenuous way up the cliff to the castle, but we left that for another visit.

By the time you reach the eastern side of Hastings you are approaching the old town and the Georgian rows of hotels and guest houses make way to less uniform and somewhat more varied and interesting buildings. Weatherboarding covers many of them and it is here that you will find pubs, restaurants and fish and chip shops with the odd seafood stall thrown in for good measure.

There's a bit of competition amongst the buildings to be the oldest of some type or trade. One is labelled "Britain's Oldest Brewer". This turned out to be more the boast of the brewery supplying the pub than the pub itself. Shepherd Neame Brewery was founded way back in 1698, owns more than 320 pubs and exports beer to more than 35 countries. But here I must point out that I'm not talking about The Dolphin pub pictured here, which is a Free House and just looked nice!

Standing on the shingle beach at the eastern end of Hastings are these fishermens' net drying huts. Tall enough to allow nets to be hung up and dried they can also be used for mending nets.

Not to be outdone by the cliff towards the west, this end of Hastings also has a cliff which has its own East Hill Lift funicular railway. I do love a good funicular. They are rare enough to not have become too familiar and any railway that has "fun" as part of its descriptive name can't be bad!

Talking of railways... Amongst the grounded fishing boats and drying nets on the borderline between beach and concrete we found preparations ongoing to ready the miniature train along a stretch of the seafront. Another steam locomotive was poking its nose out of a nearby shed and a diesel locomotive was partnering this one, which must be a visiting engine as it is not included on the firm's website.

Amongst the net drying sheds are the equipment and vessels, current and past, of Hastings' fishing fleet. Stacks of crab and lobster pots are lined up amidst tangles of old fraying ropes. Boats and shells of boats lie on chocks or leaning on the beach with sun-faded paintwork. Bits of marine engines lie waiting for someone to need a spare part.

Two ladies were sitting, sketching in books. They were together but were sitting so far apart to get different viewpoints that I wasn't sure until I asked. They had driven out for the day from home around 20 miles away. "I hate doing boats..." one confided. I generally feel the same. They are very hard shapes to get right.

We said goodbye to the artists and, with my own sketchbook still tucked under my arm, moved away from the possibilities of the object-rich beach and towards the shop-rich streets of the old town...

Before the advent of national housing regulations, architects and builders, most towns were a delightful hotch-potch of different building design and appearance. You can still see this along older streets, such as the main routes into and out of towns, as building styles change every or every few houses. Now most of us live on estates with just three or four designs to share between the scores or even hundreds of homes.

Ye Olde Pumphouse still has its old pump. It is mounted on the external wall just behind the swinging pub sign. I can think of three reasons why this might be the case: (1) it was thought it would be easier to water the hanging flower baskets; (2) it was sometimes necessary to douse the more drunken customers in order to sober them sufficiently to walk home; or (3) it was originally somewhere much more sensible and was only put up in its lofty position when the landlord woke up to a tap on the door. "Very nice, but can it go over the sink instead?"

This street (George Street) is full of antiques and artisan shops, old timbered pubs and buildings and the odd emporium catering to some dwindling specialist function, trade or habit.

Speaking of which, we followed a sign for cream teas only to find that the small pot of clotted cream that I received with some misgivings, once opened had more empty space than clotted cream... And two tiny individual breakfast jam portions for two whopping big scones? Pah! Head much further west and get a decent cream tea would be my advice.

We spent a bit of time on a bench whilst I do a spot of sketching myself. The little railway runs behind me as I'm doing this. At intervals I jump out of my skin at the horn blast of the diesel loco or cough and choke in the smoke of the steam loco...

Then we re-trace our steps along George Street for a second look and head towards the railway station where we can catch our return bus.

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Off The Usual Track in Venice

Monday, 16 October 2017. We are in Venice for the day and counting ourselves lucky that yesterday's fog did not prevent us from getting in this morning, which it had been threatening to do. We left the ship on our own and found the ticket office for the water bus to St Mark's Square. We bought return tickets for 15 euros each that allowed us to return within 30 days. Nice thought but we only had one day here!

The trip was with the Alilaguna company whose boats use a mooring point to the left of St Mark's Square as you view it from the water. Whilst we waited to board we fell into a conversation with a couple from Texas who were living in Germany and had arrived like us on a ship - the Aida Blue.

We have been to Venice a number of times and have tended to walk the same route between St Mark's Square and the Rialto Bridge. So today, having got off the water bus we turned away from St Mark's Square and without the aid of maps or prior knowledge headed into new territory!

The sheer number of churches in Venice is staggering. Without the benefit of a map I haven't a clue which churches we saw, but none of them are plain or unadorned!

There had been a hint of mist about in the early morning but it soon burned off and the sky turned a deep blue. Whilst we truly had no idea just where we were, I knew that the Grand Canal was to our left and that it curved around us to the Rialto Bridge somewhere ahead and to the right of us, making it inevitable that we would either find the bridge or, more likely, come out onto the canal so that turning right along the canal bank would lead us to the bridge. So I didn't even bother trying to remember the way we had come in case we had to retrace our steps.

What a shame, all those empty niches on the fronts of English cathedrals and churches where statues of saints and notable achievers have been stripped away. By comparison these Venetian churches are alive with figures.

A gondola hire point. There are some 400 gondolas on the canals of Venice and numerous places where you can get one.

They frequently come up against a small traffic jam! Think, then what it must have been like a few centuries ago when eight to ten thousand gondolas vied with lots of other boats for space on Venice's waters.

There are other sights to find when wandering the streets of Venice. It pays to look up as well as down, as you cross the bridges over the canals.

A carpet and soft furnishings shop with rugs and wall hangings as well as cushions and chair coverings. We bought some postcards in the shop in the background. A fortnight later, they haven't arrived yet...

Another bend in the canal and another queue for an unseen obstacle or bottleneck. The gondolas are rowed with the single oar. The canals are too deep for the gondoliers to use a punt. Although there is only one oar the nose of the gondola is kept on course by the use of a strong forward stroke followed by a short backstroke which swings the nose back round.

We come to an open space. Most of these are described as a campo or piazza. Venice only has one square and that is St Mark's Square. This is Campo Santo Stefano. The church was 13th century but Fran was more interested in the market stalls!

Shop windows are always interesting to look at. They make the most of the space available. You will find lots of Murano glass - Murano being one of the islands of Venice where the glass is made. It was the only island where glass furnaces were allowed in the days of mainly wooden buildings. This shop has a display of carnival masks.

As expected we came out onto the Grand Canal, a short distance from the Rialto Bridge. We found a cafe on the waterfront and they made our favourite latte macchiato. Forget Starbuck's mis-use of the name - in Italy a latte macchiato is what we would call a latte in the UK. "Latte" means "milk" in Italian. Ask for a "latte" and you ask for a glass of milk...

In the next article we will take a closer look at the bridge and then make our way back to St Mark's Square and the Doge's Palace.

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