Planning in progress (two weeks to departure!)

Only two weeks until we fly out of Sydney to London!

So far, we have inked in:

• new members' tour of Hampton Court Palace
• a walk around The Borough with London Trails, using old maps (love maps, especially old ones, love history, love seeing the changes, so I'm really looking forward to this one)
• a meeting with a friend who has been living in England for the past year
• day trip to Carlisle, up near the Scottish border, to coincide with the Festival of British Archaeology
• new members' tour of the Tower of London, after hours
• Garden History tour of Kensington Palace
• a day trip to the Gunnislake Festival in Cornwall
• a tour of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms (only open in summer).

And in pencil (flexible dates):

• Birdoswald Roman Fort, part of Hadrian's Wall (while we're in Carlisle, if there's time)
• the Banqueting House, in London
• an Unseen tour (in London, guided by homeless people)
• Kew Palace & Gardens
• day trip to Dover and Canterbury
• day trip to Bath
• BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall (standing room 'promming' ticket on the day)
• Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House
• British Museum
• V&A
• Tate & Tate Modern
• National Gallery
• Royal Hospital Chelsea (home to the Chelsea Pensioners, who conduct tours) and the nearby Physic Garden
• the Jubilee Walk, in sections, stopping frequently to visit places along the way - will take a week or so if we do it all, but looks like a very flexible way to see lots of London on foot
• and of course we need to explore our 'local' area - South Kensington, with all the institutions on offer close by.

Somehow I don't think three weeks will be enough!

Historic Royal Palaces

As I mentioned in my previous post, we've become members of the Historic Royal Palaces, the organisation that looks after the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, the Banqueting House, Kew Palace and Hampton Court Palace. I also mentioned that we'd been able to book places on the Tower of London new members' tour.

Tower of London [source]

But that's not all - turns out that our timing is perfect to also take advantage of the Hampton Court Palace new members' tour ...

Main gate, Hampton Court Palace [source]

AND the Kensington Palace Garden History Tour (which gets us into the normally closed to the public Sunken Garden.

Kensington Palace Sunken garden [source]

We've also decided on the destination for the second of four day trips on our BritRail passes - Carlisle. It's going to be a looooonnnnngggg day - 3.25 hours min. on the train each way - it's very close to the Scottish border.

Carlisle Castle [source]

There is evidence of people living in this area since at least the Iron Age, and the Romans established a fort here in AD72 (it was on the 'civilised' side of Hadrian's Wall). Of course, once the Roman Army was in residence, a whole town grew up around it, and Carlisle has been occupied ever since.

I'm looking forward to the train trip - I haven't been to Cumbria and the Lake District (or most of the other places on the route), so it will be lovely to see it, even if it is just from a moving train on the way through!

Time for another trip!

This time I'm heading back to London, without children, but with my parents. It's all come together very fast - the trip was only suggested early last week, and now the plane tickets are booked, accommodation is sorted out, and we're talking about what we want to see, both in London and on a few day trips further out.

We head off in mid-July, and have 22 nights on the ground in London, staying in a flat in South Kensington.

More details to follow!