We had a great weekend in London with Scraggies last weekend, 11 of us altogether. We caught the 8.30am train on Saturday – £15.90 return, a bargain!
We arrived at Euston to find a huge queue for Underground tickets, but we had noticed a smaller queue at a ticket office back “upstairs” on the station concourse, and so three of us went there to bulk buy day tickets for all of us. We stayed in apartments in Camden, having been moved there because of a maintenance problem at the originally booked apartments neat Tower Bridge. We had two 2-bed apartments, each with a sofa bed and so each sleeping six.
We managed to lose each other during the second tube journey of the trip, after picking up the apartment keys, eventually arriving at Mornington Crescent tube station (very significant to those of us who are radio 4 fans – Wikipedia it) in three separate parties
with one group initially ending up back at Euston. First destination – a London pub, naturally, for a couple of pints of London Pride,
before we explored Camden Market, which Chantal and I have visited before accompanied by Steven and Sherry. Then it was back on the tube to travel to the main destination of the weekend, Tower Bridge. Once again the journey was problematic, thanks to the closure of an unavoidable part of the District line, we had to catch a bus, which got snarled up in traffic, and we were a bit late for our 4.00pm appointment at the Bridge. We had a guided tour of the Bridge Exhibition, which in itself was quite interesting, but the main event was a “behind the scenes” tour. We visited one of the control rooms, by the South tower, where we met one of the engineers, who took us down the various levels in and below the Tower. The tour concentrated on the Victorian engineering originally used to “drive” the bridge. Each half of the Bridge is raised by allowing a 400 ton weight to fall which causes the road on the other end of a “see-saw” to rise. The engineering is needed to push the weight back up so that the road to fall back into place. Essentially a steam engine
forced water into an “accumulator”, a sort of giant tank, or piston, with a weight on top:
When the 400 ton bridge weight needs to be raised, the accumulator weight is released, forcing water through another engine that pushes up the bridge weight. Originally all steam and water, the engineering is nowadays all electric motors and hydraulic oil. We went down into the massive chamber into which the 400 ton weight descends when the roadway is raised.
The 2 hour tour was fascinating. Afterwards we emerged back onto the floodlit Bridge
and found a convenient pub, which, even more conveniently had a large table free, for more beer and food.
On Sunday we all split up again, intentionally this time. Many in the group wanted to visit another steam engine, this time one in full steam, near to Kew, and others went to Kew Gardens, but Chantal had had quite enough engineering for one weekend, and so we both spent a happy day, despite a bitter wind, pottering photographically around Camden Market,
before heading to St Pancras to enjoy (and photograph) the wonderful architecture of the station.
We all met up again at Euston for our journey back to Rugby station, and eventually home. More photos to follow eventually
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
