Ok this post took a few more weeks to write them I was actually expecting, but here’s a long delayed look back at our most recent trip to the UK. This time we stuck to the south of England, originally focused around Oxford to watch a Russell Howard gig but was extended to take in a London show.
Unusually for recent times we hired a car for our travels, having flown over to Gatwick and then negotiated reasonably poor service at the car hire desk, but we got going before too long.
Our first nights stop was in Camberley, a place we didn’t really know a lot about but we picked out because there were a few meal options and most significantly it was close to Frimley Lodge parkrun. Arriving in Camberley soon showed us an unexpected problem. The High Street with most of the shops was separated from the street with most of the pubs and restaurants on, but the Atrium Shopping Centre.
Which was just closing as we arrived. So Google wanted to send us through the closed building rather than the right thing to do which rather counter-intuitively was go around the building.
We got the hang before very long – although it was still irritating – and made our way to the Troy Grill for some excellent Greek food. We really loved it there, and would almost go out of our way to visit again.
In the morning I drove to parkrun which was nice and easy, had a really enjoyable run and a slow drive back as road works just outside the park made leaving it take about half an hour, but no real problem in the end.
Our next stop was the Premier Inn in Hangar Lane in West London, and that was about 2 hours driving away but we stopped off first at the very pretty Black Park, then Asda in Hayes for some provisions for the night.
After a quick lunch and a bit of a rest, we got the tube into central London to watch We Will Rock You. That was one of the best shows we had ever seen. Let’s be quite clear – the plot of it is absolutely batshit crazy – but the music is absolutely excellent and really well presented.
The next day had us back in the car again for another 90 minute drive up to Oxford. Because the gig was a matinee showing we didn’t have ages of time but we had time to try and dodge the rain and do a bit of wandering for photo opportunities.
As for Russell himself, it perhaps wasn’t quite up to expectations – maybe it was just more like watching him on the TV, with fairly minimal audience interaction but there was something just missing about the whole thing compared to other comedians we’ve seen.
For the final morning we’d arranged a visit to Christ Church college which was really interesting and gave us a new view of some of the locations in the early Harry Potter films.
Our final stop on the way back to the airport was one we’d made up on the day. We looked at where was on the way down and spotted Runnymede Pleasure Grounds. We’d last been there during day 13 of our Thames Path walk and visiting again was an unexpectedly somewhat emotional moment.
It was a lovely day and walking slowly through the park with nothing further to be doing made such a contrast to walking through quickly last May but it allowed us time to just think back to what we did do last year and brought back great memories.
This was a trip where not everything went totally to plan but did have us seeing a really excellent show, plus also highlighted that we can stay just outside central London, travel into the busy bit and get back at a reasonable time, which I dare say we’ll do more of in the future.
Dave's Running Plans 