Messing about in boats at London's Canal Cavalcade

One of the sure signs that spring has arrived in London is the annual Canal Cavalcade in Little Venice. On the first weekend in May brightly decorated canal boats from all over the UK gather in the Grand Union Canal basin as they have been doing this since 1983.  I live just round the corner so always make sure I drop in to see what's going on.

150 boats lined up with flag flying for visitors to enjoy during the 3 day festival but there are prizes at stake too, awarded for 'best decorated' boat,  best ' boat handling' and 'best Boater's Sunday best costume'! It's also a time when boaters (as they are called) get together and have a good laugh and catch up with each other. 

It's a wonderful sight, full of colour and packed with families having a great day out as there are loads of stalls selling all kinds of crafts, toys, plants, food and drink as well as the boats to enjoy.

Boats lined up in Little Venice basin

 

Some boaters love to arrive in style!

Most of the narrow boats are lived in and you get a chance to peek inside to see how they manage to pack all mod cons into the narrowest of spaces:

Overlooking the canal is the Horse Bridge which gave a gives visitors a great vantage point from which to view the boats and canal.  Little Venice is a beautiful area of London with fine houses built around the Grand Union Canal and its branches. It is most famous for the house boats which line the canal making it a very sought after watery address! 

The canals were used in the past as a major route for transporting goods as the canal network snakes across the country for over 3,000 miles. Horses pulled the boats behind them as they walked along the towpaths (hence their name), carrying up to 30 tons per horse of cargo such as coal. Diesel power took over from horses so walkers and cyclists took over the towpaths and it's a great place to do some inner city walks.  Names remind us of older times and the Horse Bridge is one of these.

The Horse Bridge

Someone who used the bridge to good effect was Councillor Angela Harvey, the Lord Mayor of Westminster who stood on the Horse Bridge to welcome visitors and thank the organisers and volunteers who made the festival happen. She was easily recognised by her gold chain and white gloves!

The Mayor of Westminster

The view down the canal from the other side of the Horse Bridge is really pretty and you can see the narrow boats lining the towpaths into the distance. There is a rather nice restaurant just past the trees on the right side called the Summerhouse. You can have a table right over the canal to watch the boats and the birds glide past - a great treat even when the Canal Cavalcade is over.
 

Bye for now,
Sue
@itsyourlondon.co.uk
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk

Spring is a beautiful time to be in London

In 2013 the winter seemed to go on forever and it was chilly through much of March but April saw the blossom come out at last. The Brits are famous for being obsessed by the weather and this blog seems to be confirming that! 

Spring is a fabulous time in London and I'd like to share some photos taken during April so you can enjoy it too. 

Brits are always out, sitting or laying in a park at the slightest hint of sunshine:

Outdoor yoga - seems a bit public to me but they look like they are completely in to it:
 

My neighbour's front garden is always a delight:
 

And this is just around the corner from me, pink magnolia trees in Notting Hill and a small garden, squeezing some daffs into a corner:
 

Camden Market and Camden Lock are great places to hang out and shop on a sunny day:

You can't beat the Thames on a fine spring day, looking towards the east, on a boat or near the London Eye:

Even an April shower brings its own reward - a rainbow right over London:
 

Another famous sight that shines in the sun is Westminster Abbey. The red buses were on hire for a wedding  so we wondered if someone was getting married inside this great building - it's not just for Wills and Kate!

Piccadilly Circus is a famous meeting and hanging out spot - never more than on a sunny day:

Primrose Hill offers fabulous views over London (how many landmark buildings can you name?) and you can hang out on the grass all day relaxing. The nearby streets have beautiful blossom:

  



Regent's Park is home to an open air theatre that starts in mid May but before then you have the gracious gardens, good for strolling or playing in the fountains:
 

 It's another lovely day today, so I must head out to enjoy it!

Bye for now.
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon

It's a bumper season for exhibitions in London

There are always great exhibitions worth visiting in London, often at smaller, less well known museums.  However, sometimes blockbuster shows hit town at the same time and this is one of those times. Londoners and visitors are frantically trying to get their hands on much sought after tickets for this spring's top shows.  I've been away from London for 2 months on my volunteering trip to Africa (read more here) so I was really keen to catch up.

In London right now we have  'David Bowie is' at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 'Manet: Portraying Life' at  the Royal Academy and  'Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum' at the British Museum. Then there is 'Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901' at the Courtauld, 'Light Show' at the Hayward Gallery, 'Lichtenstein: A Retrospective' at the Tate Modern, 'Michael Caine: 80th Anniversary Exhibition' at the Museum of London, 'Treasures of the Royal Courts' at the V&A and many more......

I've been busy working my way through this impressive list so here's my quick tour for you to enjoy.

 
My favourite was the Bowie show which I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did, not being sure it would live up to the hype around it. It was huge fun with brilliant staging, lots of good information and range of items to appeal to different visitors from videos to costumes to information about the context he was working in and was influencing. You are given high quality earphones that pick up the really interesting commentary and great music (of course!) as you move between rooms. The final room has a huge video wall where you can watch him singing 'Heroes'  at Live Aid in 1985 alongside a much more recent version. The song lifts the room and is a wonderful musical experience.  The title of the show is right - David Bowie is .... He is so many things and the exhibition follows his many ch-changes and showcases his immense creativity.








 

The British Museum hits back with its own blockbuster looking at the lost worlds of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The exhibition takes you through the everyday lives and the extraordinary events that overtook the citizens of these two towns in AD 79.  Rooms are laid out in the plan of a house with many artifacts -even a baby's cot - mosaics and paintings. We explore the towns, the reasons for the eruptions and the final crushing impact.  You do get an insight into the last hours of these towns and the finality of the end through the contorted figures of the dying. 

 

Manet's paintings are beautifully shown at the Royal Academy. The show focuses on his portraiture, ranging from figures of the day including his wife, to scenes of everyday life. We learn through a detailed timeline, what happened in his life. There were some truly beautiful paintings here including the one on the poster, although it was strange that one of his most famous A Bar at the Folies-Bergere is hanging just a mile or so away at the Courtauld Gallery.

 Picasso's early works are on show at the Courtauld Gallery. They hold regular special exhibitions which they house in just 2 room which gives these exhibitions real focus and they are really manageable!  Tho'   small, there are plenty of great works to see and it is amazing to know that these paintings where shown when he was just 19 years old. You can see hints of where his work will head to but the paintings at this early stage of his career are  masterpieces in their own right. I really enjoyed one of his brash self portraits full of energy and confidence.  He reinvents styles of major names such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. The second room is more sombre, following the death of a close friend and this work is from the beginning of the Blue Period. Sadly one of the paintings here will leave the UK at the end of the show, his Child with a Dove could not be kept in the UK. 

The Light Show at the Hayward Gallery is a completely different experience as you have to get right into the exhibits - either by entering pitch black rooms or wearing foot covers to walk into another room or by taking your shoes off completely for a different room. In one room you see light as a solid beam you can break into with your hand, in others you see a bright single light as you enter but you eye adjusts and absorbs the  colour so  it becomes paler until you leave and re-enter and it is bright again. Other pieces show the beauty of light through constantly moving LEDs or reflecting light on mirrors to give as sense of infinity. Each room shows the work of a different artist so it's an endlessly engaging show which I really enjoyed.








Just one more to tell you about as I was less keen on the Treasures of the Royal Court and have not yet got to see the Lichtenstein as it's been quite a job to see this lot! The Michael Caine exhibition at the Museum of London was a small, fun exploration of his long career through film, quotes and photos.  As you can see from this quote there is a sense of fun in the show and the photos are mostly iconic shots of London born Michael. The films are clips from his famous movies such as Alfie and The Italian Job alongside TV interviews from when his was a new star to more recent reflective interviews on his long career.  It was fascinating to hear how he felt being the first east London actor with a proper London accent who broke into the big league of movies - at the time posh actors were imitating London voices if the parts required!

There are plenty more shows to in London, just never enough time to see them all!

Bye for now.
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon 

Goodbye to BBC Television Centre London

BBC Television Centre has a special special place in British hearts and many of our best loved television shows were made there. But last week it closed its doors for good and will be handed over to the developers. Sometime in the future 3 of the studios will reopen so TV programmes will be shot there again, however it will not be a beating heart of TV production again.

TVC (as it's called in the BBC) was opened for business (show business of course!) in 1960 as a Television Factory, the UK's first. It's famous shape was supposedly based on a question mark drawn on an envelope by the architect Graham Dawbarn when he was trying to think of how the building should look.

I worked for the BBC for 18 years and many of those were spent in TVC which was by far my favourite BBC building.  I was lucky enough to go to 2 events in its last month of operation: Red Nose day, the last big studio event; and, the BBC Club party, just 2 nights before the doors closed.   Red Nose day was a great evening full of celebrities, massive amounts of work to raise £75million for Comic Relief, a huge studio show and several parties. The Club event was current and former staff catching up with each other and saying goodbye to TVC and we seized the moment to sneak our own tour round the empty building. 

I was sad to walk out for the last time, so many good times in this building famous throughout the UK. End of an era for so many of us but, enough nostalgia!  Instead let's enjoy some photos from those nights:

The iconic entrance - going in for the last time.....

 

The  famous 'donut' - central courtyard

Looking down on the entrance from the News block

A sneaky peak in the Match of the Day studio

This sort of thing can happen at TVC - me and David Tennant

Famous BBC corridors

Says it all....

Bye for now.
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon

St Patrick's Day 2013 in London

St Patrick's Day is big all over the world and I have yet to be anywhere on my travels that does not have an Irish pub to celebrate in!

London really goes for it with Trafalgar Square dressing up to be at the centre of all things green and gold. This year brought us a chilly day with quite a bit of rain but spirits were not dampened for one moment. The square and surrounding streets were full of Irish and non-Irish but everyone was Irish for one day and covered themselves in Irish themed clothes, scarves, hats and wigs - yes, lots of red hair sprouting from strange hats!

There was Irish dancing and Irish bands such as Yngve and The Innocent, Irish DJ sets and a big sing-along to finish off the day. 

No St Patrick's Day is incomplete without a parade so London gave us a suitably quirky version which incorporated the Hare Krishna folk in Irish colours!  Not sure what the dragon was about but perhaps someone can help me with that?

Enjoy some photos from the day - only iphone quality I'm afraid but hopefully you'll still get into the swing of London's Irish day!

Always good to be sure you are at the right event

Having fun in the parade

Hare Krishna getting their Irish groove on...

Dragon, pink wig - anything goes in the parade

Great hair and beards

Plenty of dancing on the stage

Hair, hats, scarves, pints of Guinness - got it all!

Dressed for the job

Of course - the pointy hats

Top branding from the black stuff

No need to say any more

Spot the green...

It's either cold or wet in London at the moment but we are ready for spring to arrive very soon. In the meantime there are tons of indoor activities to visit so you are never stuck for something to do in London whatever the weather.

Bye for now
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon

It's great to be back in London!

I've been on a big adventure in Tanzania for the last 2 months doing a couple of volunteering projects followed by some travelling. I love to travel but it's great to be back in London again.

There are 2,200 photos documenting this latest trip but you'll be relieved to know that I've chosen just a handful to give you and idea of what I've been doing and where I've visited. Tanzania is a wonderful country with extraordinary wildlife, history dating back to early man and wonderful people but it has great poverty too and needs our support. 

My first voluntary project was based just north of Dar es Salaam where we were building a new hut for a small school for young kids set up by a man who wanted to make sure his daughter had a school to go to. We dug holes, nailed posts, tied lateral wood pieces, wove coconut palm leaves, secured them with string and worked with one saw, one hammer and a few school benches for a ladder! The new hut will act as an extra classroom, somewhere for the kids to eat their meals and to play under, away from the burning sun.  It was 3/4 finished by the time I left but I know the volunteer team completed the roof the following week so it will be in use by now.

Here's how the hut was built:

Getting dug in!

Working on the roof

This is who I was doing it all for

Weaving coconut palm leaves - not easy!

Constructing the roof

My second project was on the wonderfully named Mafia Island - would you believe the capital is shortened to Kili but no Sicilians with machine guns in sight!  Mafia is a most beautiful tropical island with coconut palms, white sand beaches, blue/green warm sea and villages with sand roads. I was on a conservation project surveying bird populations, charting mangroves and cleaning up beaches to clear a path for newly hatched turtles. 

Drift away with these photos:

Whale shark approaching!

Wonderful Maasai dancing

The living conditions on Mafia were very basic so I treated myself to a fabulous safari afterwards to the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti. We were lucky enough to see hundreds of fabulous animals close up, enjoyed the wonderful geography of the Crater and were amazed by tales at the Oldupai Gorge, often called the 'cradle of mankind'.

Enjoy and wish you were there:

Zebra crossing...

No zoom used

Ngorongoro crater

Hands off my food

The final leg of this big adventure took me to Zanzibar where I stayed a couple of days in Stone Town. I loved this exotic town with its Arabic style architecture, hundreds of fabulous doors for which it is famous, great markets and good bars and restaurants. Of course I took a spice tour but mostly just wandered around getting lost and finding new alleyways. It was a centre for the slave trade so has a sad and horrific history from the time for which there is little visible evidence except for the preserved slave pens.  Shuddering, you emerge back into the vibrant world of modern day Zanzibar. 
  

Busy market street

One of the famous decorated doors

A slave pen for 75 people...

The beauty of the beaches and the dhows

Tanzanian men are mad about football and keep up to date via television but also very handy street scoreboards:

Football mad

My next blogs will be all about London again but I wanted to share my Tanzanian adventure before normal service resumes.

Bye for now
Sue
www.itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon