To the Barrier

On Sunday morning a nostalgic South African, a jet-lagged Australian, a pregnant woman and a four-year-old decided to go to the Thames Barrier. Despite forgetting to bring any of the three maps we made it there and afterwards took a short stroll along the Green Chain Walk.

My husband visited the Barrier at the age of 10 with his dad, so he got a bit nostalgic and during our coffee break at the visitors’ information center he reminiscenced about the good old times.

The four-year-old just wanted to go down the long slide over and over again, but after some diplomatic negotiations we were able to move to something I really wanted to do – walk the walk.

The sky was blue, the sun was out for the first time in many days and it was lovely to walk along the path surrounded by tall trees. Since Katya started attending Steiner/Waldorf kindergarten 4 days a week at the beginning of this year we don't go to the parks as often as we used to and looking at the houses, cars and asphalt roads all the time makes one yearn for the views full of trees, grasses and flowers.

I would’ve loved to stop in many places to allow us to enjoy the beautiful details of our surroundings, but since the sunset was quickly approaching we had to hurry up a bit (as much as one can hurry with a 4 year old and a pregnant woman). As the name suggests, the Green Chain Walk goes through the green areas (parks, woodlands, meadows, etc) in the South-East of London and from the short stretch we managed to do it looks like one can learn a lot about local history, geography and nature, so I really want to do the rest of it this year.

There are few more photos on Flckr.

Autumn Holiday

The summer went by really quickly and we haven’t traveled anywhere or did anything worth mentioning. And as the days started growing colder and shorter we decided to have a break and to explore English countryside. The initial plan to visit the New Forest fell through, as we couldn’t find accommodation due to some event taken place in the area. A brief discussion established that I mostly wanted to see open fields (after years of living in London, surrounded by houses in all directions, I was starting to develop a mild case of claustrophobia), my husband wouldn’t mind visiting a castle, Katya wanted to go on the old train or visit a farm and none of us wanted to go very far. There are not that many castles in the South East England and soon we had our new destination - Bodiam Castle.


Katya was so impressed by the castle (I think it may be the first real one she saw) that she produced this drawing of it and castles are now added to her list of the most fascinating things, which includes trains, birds (specially penguins, ducks & chickens) and dinosaurs.


The great advantage of Bodiam was that to get there we could travel part of the way by Kent & East Sussex railway and so another requirement was satisfied. I was joking for the last few months that we should set ourselves a mission to visit all the old railways in England and at Tenterden station we found a tourist brochure, which list them, so our railway mission could become more than a joke.


The next day we visited two other National Trust properties: Sissinghurst Castle and Bateman’s, home of Rudyard Kipling. If you know about my addiction to the printed word you’ll probably also know that I’m unable to resist visiting the places where writes & poets lived, worked and created.

It was cold, grey and drizzly day; Katya was getting tired of looking at the old houses and somehow we agreed to drive towards the sea and ended up in Hastings. I discovered that my child loves the sea, her face lights up when she sees it, she wants to run around and play and laugh.

The sight of the grey clouds and the waves, the feel of the wind and the rain on my skin brought back memories of my family ending up on the beach in all sorts of weather in the first few years after we arrived to Australia. And in some way I like being at the beach more and feel more connected to the sea on the grey days full of movement and empty of people.


In the best tradition of my family we bought some fish & chips to eat sitting on the ground scanning the horizons for the clouds threatening stronger rain.

On the last day we drove to Rye just because there is another one close to Melbourne, in which I holidayed few times with my parents, and I love visiting English towns that gave their names to the Australian ones. The highlights of the day there were seeing another castle and eating at the Mermaid Inn, which proudly boasts about being rebuild in 1420.


As usual there are more photos are on Flickr.

Oxford and bookbinding

A bit more than a week ago I accompanied my mum to Oxford. Like any dutiful tourist I attempted to take photos of the beautiful buildings, only to realise yet again that I much more prefer to photograph small things – like leaves, cobble stones, flowers. And there were plenty of beautiful multi-coloured leaves around. What? Autumn? In my own little la-la universe it is still middle of July.

Yet the other day I wrote a list of… well, I can’t describe them in any other way, but New Year resolutions. Is one more likely to accomplish the desired goals if they are set at the beginning of October instead of January?

I’ve been to Oxford twice before so for me the highlight of our visit was “An Artful Craft: Fine and Historic Bookbindings from the Broxbourne Library and other collections” exhibition at Bodleian Library. The mastery and the variety of skills that went into creating the books on display were astonishing. I’m sure I was forgetting to breath and had a slightly mad glint in my eyes. I only wish another crafter, who just started learning about bookbinding and already created some gorgeous notebooks, could also see the exhibition. And she just started her own blog, so if you have few seconds head over to Lemony Leaves and welcome her to blogosphere.

Short weekend

We were supposed to be preparing the downstairs walls for painting; but the sun was shining outside, the skies were blue and since rainless weekend summer days are rare in England we decided to spend the day outside. (there seems to be plenty of sunny spring & autumn workdays) After looking through my big bag of travel brochures and changing my mind few times I settled on going to the Hall Place & Gardens.

It was lovely to look around the House and to walk in the Gardens. Of course as always I took too many photos of the flowers.

In the evening we did prep the walls and will probably attempt to paint them over the next few evenings as my poor husband has to work tomorrow. And painting the walls with no one else around to distract a toddler is just asking for trouble.