London's Open House Weekend

Today was the first day of the weekend-long London Open House Weekend. It's a weekend long celebration of all sorts of buildings in London, where you can enter many of the city's usually closed-off buildings for free and look around. I underestimated the queues in many of these places, so only got to see two buildings today.

But not before I stopped in Trafalgar Square to enjoy a rousing game of giant's chess!
It was created by a Spanish designer and it is the centre figure of the London Design Festival. The pieces are about 2m tall and are made of ceramic, so be careful!
My second stop was the Royal Courts of Justice, and I must say, I'm really glad I stopped by here. While the building is mildly interesting from the outside (looks like a lot of other old buildings here), the inside is remarkable.

The grand hall was just that, quite grand, and the rest of the building is full of narrow passageways, hidden court rooms, winding staircases and old fireplaces. I was only allowed to take pictures of the grand hall. I totally forgot that us regular folk are allowed to sit in on court proceedings, so I'm going to make a plan to do that. It'll probably be something boring like a parking ticket, but I'd like another opportunity to wander through the halls.

After that, I got the opportunity to climb to the top of the OXO Tower in London, which, from the outside, looks like this:

I'm glad I got there this morning an hour before the tower opened to get my name on the list, since they only did 6 tours of 16 people the whole day, and by the time I got there, they were already 3 tours booked. I think they underestimated the attention they got, but it was well worth it.

Here, thanks to Wikipedia, is a brief history of the OXO Tower:

The building was originally constructed as a power station for the Post Office, built towards the end of the 19th century. It was subsequently acquired by the Liebig Extract of Meat Company, manufacturers of Oxo beef stock cubes, for conversion into a cold store.

The building was largely rebuilt to an Art Deco design by company architect Albert Moore between 1928 and 1929. Much of the original power station was demolished, but the river facing facade was retained and extended. Liebig wanted to include a tower featuring illuminated signs advertising the name of their product. When permission for the advertisements was refused, the tower was built with four sets of three vertically-aligned windows, each of which "coincidentally" happened to be in the shapes of a circle, a cross and a circle. Liebig and the building were eventually purchased by the Vestey Group.

In the late 1970s and into the 1980s there were several proposals to demolish the building and develop it and the adjacent Coin Street site, but these were met with strong local opposition and two planning inquiries were held. Although permission for redevelopment was granted, the support of the Greater London Council (GLC) finally resulted in the tower and adjoining land being sold to the GLC in 1984 for £2.7m — who sold the entire 13-acre (5.3 ha) site to the non-profit Coin Street Community Builders for just £750,000.

In the 1990s the tower was refurbished to a design by Liftschutz Davidson to include housing, a restaurant, shops and exhibition space."

The tower itself is not normally open to people - in fact, the woman who took us on the tour said that they've only opened it once before this event for some sort of ceremony.

The tower itself isn't really equipped for visitors - you enter the tower via the staff entrance of the restaurant on the 8th floor, then you climb 120 metal, wiggly, see-through steps up to the letters:
After which you can climb all the way to the top to get a view:
Now, I have to admit, I wasn't blown away from the view. It's London, I've seen a lot of London, we weren't actually that high up, and it's no different than the view from say, St. Paul's, or Tower Bridge, or the London Eye. I found the inside of the building much more interesting.
These were the stairs. Narrow, wiggly, and yes, see-through. All 120 of them. Quite possibly the most nerve-racking climb I've had, since you could see all the way back down.


And the inside was very industrial - we had to wear hard-hats (Health and Safety reasons, so we didn't bump our head and sue), and the building was filled with randomly strewn pipes and holes in the floor. Creepy and awesome.

It was well worth the visit, and I'm really glad I showed up early to get a spot - they were only open today and people were still showing up all day to see if there were spots. I have no idea if they will open this to the public one day for tours - that would probably require a fair amount of construction.

More to come tomorrow, and we'll see what buildings I can get into!

Calleva Atrebatum Walk

Why hello again. This time I'm going to share with your some pictures that I took on a second hike that I did yesterday, this time through a lovely area of the Thames Valley. I got off the train at a town called Mortimer.

This is the view from Mortimer train station, looking back along the tracks.
This is St. Mary's Church in Mortimer. Unfortunately it was locked, so I didn't get the chance to go inside, and I can't find any information on the internet, so I can't tell you anything about it.
But it had some interesting gargoyles.
And some vines. But that's about it, so I carried on.
The hike was a 13 km trek from Mortimer to a town called Bramley, which passed through the remains of a Roman town named Calleva Atrebatum.
Compared to last time, I only got lost once, so I managed to keep very good time. I stopped over this bridge to adjust my socks and noticed the church we just passed in the distance.
I'm standing in the middle of the remains of a Roman amphitheatre that was located just outside the city walls of Calleva. It was built between AD55-75 and they suspect that it was used mainly for equestrian events because they have found a lot of horse bones there. The stone walls you see are the remains of the retaining walls that would've supported the wooden seats where the spectators would've been.
I'm standing in one of two mini-recessed areas that were most likely used as a refuge for combatants. It's also full of slugs, now!
While the original wall would've been 8 to 10 feet high, what's left is rather short. Although some of it might now be underground... who knows.
This is the beginning of the Roman wall that surrounds the 40 hectares that was Calleva Atrebatum. The site of the Roman town was built on an earlier Iron Age town-ish area called Calleva. It was part of the Kingdom of the Atrebates tribe around the first century BC.
As a side, sometimes the paths are hard to follow. When the book says "follow the arrow", what to do?! Good thing I have a compass...
While you can still walk along the top of the Roman wall, as most of it is still intact, parts of it are starting to crumble.

According to my book, the walls are made of flint and stone and stand as high as 4.5m in some place. Apparently those were expensive materials to use for wall and as such, show Calleva's importance.
This is the remnants of the North Gate, one of two entrances/exits to the city. Scattered all over the area here were bits and pieces of pottery - most of which was Roman, I imagine. I collected a couple of nice pieces.

As a nice side note, a pair of human skulls were found outside the north gate, and it is thought that severed heads on poles guarded the gate. This gate faced Dorchester-on-Thames which, while it doesn't sound threatening, was the seat of quite the political rise in the post Roman period (hence the need for defences, I guess).
It was a huge amount of wall - about 2.8 km all the way around.

Here's an excerpt from my book which contains everything you might want to know about the Roman town of Calleva:

"No one knows why Calleva was abandoned when the Romans withdrew from Britain at the beginning of the fifth century, unlike similar towns such as Winchester and Canterbury. Whatever the reasons, the fact that the site was never developed means that its layout remains spectacularly intact. The walls describe an irregular hexagon and were built in the third century when, like many Western European towns, Calleva must have felt the threat of barbarian invasion. Traces of Roman roads radiate out from the main gates; those would have cut through thick forest to link the town with Winchester, London and other lesser settlements.

At the heart of the town lay the forum, a great open square lined with two-storey colonnaded public buildings and shops; it was here that the town's principal roads converged. Along the forum's west side was the basilica, as aisled hall, thought to have been 25m high and constructed using marble from Italy - it was here that taxes were collected and justice was meted out. Just southeast of the forum sat a small fourth-century church, built after 313 AD, when Christianity was no longer a proscribed religion. The town's other major buildings included an elaborate bathhouse with an exercise court, three temples and an official guest house.

There were only around 80 houses of any significance at Calleva, their scant number and modest though graceful mosaics and frescoes suggesting that the town was not populous or extravagantly wealthy. Calleva served as the market town for the surrounding area, and there was some commerical activity: metal-working, pottery-marking, glass- and lead-production, carpentry, milling and brewing.

There is some evidence, such as the apparently deliberate filling up of the town's wells with rubble, to suggest that Calleva was systematically evacuated and then destroyed, perhaps because of the political rise of the Dorchester-on-Thames in the post-Roman period."

I only walked about halfway around the whole circle before I got to this church:
This is St. Mary the Virgin Church in the town of Silchester (modern name). It has remnants in the basement (I didn't get to see) of the original 4th century Christian Church.

The Roman town was abandoned by the early 6th century, and it wasn't until about 600 years later that this church was built. It is on high ground, which was a sacred site where two Roman Temples had stood. There are a lot of reused Roman bricks and stones in the walls of the church.

The earliest parts of the church date from the 12th century.
This would be one of those parts. This arch dates from the 12th century. It's called the "dog tooth" ornament and it dates to yes, 1200.

These wall paintings are still in reasonably good condition and they too, date from the 13th century.
This screen is apparently "one of the finest in Hampshire", and is dated to the time of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
There were a couple little faces dotted around the church.
This is the effigy of Eleanor Baynard, who died in the early 14th century.
The outside of the church is a bit plain, but still quite pretty.
This is what's left of one of the columns from the original Roman temple.
I stumbled upon a huge flock (well, a non-flying flock) of these birds while walking through a field, but I don't know what they are. They ran crazy fast, and I'm thinking that they were some kind of pheasant, but I'm not sure.
I had a lovely walk through a corn field right after having to kick and stomp my way through a set of prickly bushes. I ended up with one very tiny spider bite (that bastard!) and about 50 burrs in my sweater.. but, it's the way the book told me to go, so I went.
The last 4 km walk back to Bramley wasn't very exciting unfortunately, except for this little barn here. It's propped up on concrete toadstools... apparently to keep the rats and whatnot out. Although I'm not sure it's entirely effective, since rats can climb... you know.

And after that, I hopped the train and came back to London! It was a lovely walk, although not quite as scenic as my last one. Hopefully next week I will have the opportunity to do several more, before the weather starts getting too chilly.

Food

Lately I've bit a bit obsessed with cooking, or, at least, trying new recipes. Turns out it hasn't been as hard as I thought, and other than a slightly undercooked episode of banana bread, I've been reasonably sucessful!

My first attempt at a new recipe was this. I read it on the website and my mouth drooled just reading through it. So I grilled up a steak (above), which, if I might say, I'm getting pretty good at.
And then topped it with caramalized onions in a cream and blue cheese sauce. The end result was so good I ate it before I took a picture, But you can imagine. It was freaking awesome.
And, the next day I got to use the creamy leftovers to make a fetucinni alfredo! That's right, innovation. Hahahaha.
And then last night I made a pie! To be fair, I didn't make the pastry, that came out of a roll, but I did mix the pork with the mashed potatoes and pinched all the corners to make it pretty. Excuse the tiny hold in the bottom, I wanted to make sure the bottom was cooked before it got too cool.
And I made cookies! This is before I put icing on them, and before they were devoured by some of the people I live with. And yes, that's my apron. I know, it rocks.

I'm running out of food recipes to try, so if you have any favorites, let me know! I want more recipes. :)

Eddie Izzard

Some of you know who Eddie Izzard is, some of you don't. If you don't, please go here and here and here and learn all about him. He's probably most famous for his YouTube video on the Star Wars Canteen.

He is a British comedian and he is currently (or has finished, now), run a huge amount around all of the United Kingdom in support of sport relief (the same people who did Comic Relief). Trafalgar Square was his last stop on his 51 day tour of the UK, and to day he has run over 1100 miles.
And here he is! He was trying for a personal best today, and unfortunately got lost just as he was getting into Trafalgar Square, so he missed out by 30 seconds or so. Still pretty amazing, though.
He was joking with the reporters after a moment to catch his breath. At one point he said: "Everyone says my legs look very good but I thought they looked quite good beforehand. I'm going to have a party somewhere that's dry and then I'm going to sleep for a week."

Poor guy. Didn't help that it poured rain all day, cleared up about a half an hour before he was due to finish then started pouring down rain (again!) as he arrived. Because it had cleared up and I was warm, I had (stupidly) taken off my raincoat... and then it started to just pour as Eddie Izzard was arriving, and I can't take pictures and put my coat on at the same time, so I ended up soaked. There are very few people who I would stand around and take pictures of while simultaneously getting soaking wet and cold, and apparently Eddie Izzard is one of them.

As a side, you can see ME! on the BBC website here. Wait until about halfway through the video and you see me in the background in the middle - I'm wearing a brown shirt. Ad you can see me flip up my bright orange camera rainjacket in the middle to take pictures. I feel like a dork. And famous! I might need a more professional rain cover to avoid drawing attention. Hahaha.

Here's a screen capture:

Edit: Oh man, I'm in more videos! Hahahahaha. Here. (As a side, I wish I had had my previously picked up negatives in my pocket... they make my pocket look funny...)

Here's another screen capture:

I hope these videos work for you. No point in standing around in the rain if I don't get to be famous, too! :P

I was fortunate to be standing where I was - when I showed up, I just found a place to stand, unknowingly being with all the reporters! No one asked me to move, and I'm assuming it's because I had a rather large camera. They were moving other folk away who were obviously just members of the public and making them stand at the bottom. The one time a large camera has paid off!
This guy was also here. His name is Richard Curtis. He is one of the founders of the Comic Relief and Sport Relief Charities. He is also a screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, The Boat That Rocked and Love Actually, as well as the hit sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Vicar of Dibley.

So a pretty important guy. But I didn't know it until people started to interview him. You can see him being interviewed here on the BBC (I'm not in this video because I'm standing just to the right of the reported. Rubbing shoulders (elbow?) with the famous people!).

So, yeah. Well worth the soaking wet pants that I had to walk home in. I guess nothing compared to running dozens of marathons and losing toenails (apparently), so I can't whine. Well done Mr. Izzard!