Fancy London Town

Cast your mind back to May if you will and let's pretend that I wrote this blog post when I should have done, and not almost two months too late.

The Person and I had travelled down to London to the London Pet Show and had spent a lovely morning and beginning of the afternoon stroking cats and dogs and bemoaning the lack of gerbils at Earl's Court. However it turns out that even if you are a crazy pet person like I am, there is only so much London Pet Show action that you can take before you start to feel a little fatigued.

With a good few hours until we had to catch our train home there was only one thing for it...

Go exploring.

I am not normally a fan of exploring and aimless wandering around. I like a plan and I like to know where I'm going. The Person is much more of an explorer than I am.

But we were both a little stuck as we don't really know London well. I know London well enough for if someone was to ask me whereabouts I was in London I would reply;

"In London."

So we headed for the nearest map to see what we could see. I spied greenery and with no other plans we decide to head for Holland Park to enjoy the rare bit of sunshine we were experiencing.

The walk there was fab.u.lous. Streets upon streets with rows upon rows of gorgeous terraced houses like those in the picture above. I feel bad that they're all basically flats though - when I become a massive mega millionaire and decide I want to buy one of these houses it's going to be a right pain as I'll have to buy all the flat separately and turn them back in to a house again. Major pain.

I couldn't get enough of it as we wound our way through the streets and I secretly hoped to bump into a cast member of Made in Chelsea.

Eventually we made it to Holland Park which was full of all the people enjoying the sunshine. This also means it was the perfect opportunity to get a drink from the cafe, find some grass to sit down on and people watch until our eyeballs hurt.

There was no end of entertainment available. The Person wailed that the park was full of children who had no catching skills because their parents clearly didn't take them out enough whilst I spent a good thirty minutes laughing at groups of little kids playing football aka swarming around the football like a herd of angry bees.

Reluctantly we began to make our way back to the train station. So often I travel to London and end up mad and frustrated and tetchy because it is busy and heaving, but this weekend we seemed to find the one part of London that was just calm and peaceful.

Even the park was big enough to hold everybody without it feeling rammed and I was able to wander about the streets like an aimless soul, taking pictures willy nilly, rather than feeling shepherded to get to the next place as fast as humanly possible, carried along in a tidal wave of people.

Lucky old me, we passed a Daunt Books shop on the way to the Tube and the rule is, if I clock a book shop I have to go in. Even if it's just to breathe in the smell of paper.

And then it was back to the Midlands with us, with memories of pets, meeting Chris Packham and finding a beautiful quiet spot in London whirling around our heads.

Well played London. Well played.