Day 1 – Borough Market and ‘Dear England‘

We love a trip to London and try to get there once a year. It’s just a fantastic place to visit and, although we’re regular visitors to the capitol, we can always find something new to do or see. The planning for this trip started when we were offered free tickets for the Cake and Bake show at Earls Court which was in late November.  

We quite fancied visiting the show so we initially planned to travel up by train on a Friday morning, visit the show in the afternoon, and then spend a long weekend in London, returning home on Monday. We’re quite happy with a budget hotel so we booked a room at a Premier Inn in The City of London district, not far from Tower Bridge. It’s a good location for walking the South Bank and a really quiet area at the weekend. 

We’d had time to plan for our stay so by the time our train left Weston-s-Mare on Friday morning we had everything sorted. I still wanted to try and get to the Cake and Bake show but we’d also bought tickets for a West End play, Dear England, that Friday night. My in-laws, David and Donna, fancied a London trip and were driving up, on the Saturday, to join us. We left Sunday for walking, with no definite plans where. We had tickets for the Abba Voyage show on Sunday evening. Monday was going home day. 

Once we arrived into Paddington it took us a little bit longer than we thought to get across London to the hotel. We had hoped to get into our hotel room early but that didn’t happen so, with time getting tight, we decided to abandon our plans for the Cake Show.  

Instead, we went for a walk over to Borough Market, which is always great, and then a short stroll along the South Bank. We then made our way over to Shaftsbury Avenue for the play. On the official website ‘Dear England’ is described as ‘A fictionalised account of the struggles and successes of England’s football teams’.  

I didn’t know what to expect but we both really enjoyed it. Joseph Fiennes is superb as Gareth Southgate and you don’t need to be a soccer fan to enjoy the play. Day one over we returned to the hotel looking forward to meeting up with David and Donna the following morning.  

Day 2 – Greenwich Tunnel, Queens House and The Dickins Inn

We were out early on Saturday morning for a quick walk up to look around Leadenhall Market which wasn’t too far from the hotel and features in the Harry Potter films. We then walked back to The Monument to meet up with David and Donna. We’d planned our day with them around things we all wanted to do. The rough outline for our morning/afternoon was a visit to Greenwich, as none of us had ever been there before. I wanted to visit Queens House to photograph the Tulip Staircase and perhaps go to the top of Greenwich Park to photograph the view back towards Canary Wharf.  

David had done his research and wanted us to walk across to Greenwich, from the Isle of Dogs, using the Greenwich foot tunnel which runs under the River Thames. Donna is a fan of the Secret London Instagram site and had a few locations, she’d found on there, that she wanted to visit.  

After a quick catch up over a coffee we set off to The Bank Tube Station to pick up the Docklands Light Railway. That was an experience in itself as I’ve never ridden on a driverless train before. We were at the front of the train, sitting where the driver should be, which was pretty cool.  

Having left the train at the Isle of Dogs, we found the entrance to the foot tunnel and then walked under the River to Greenwich, emerging by the Cutty Sark. That’s a nice area and we found ourselves wandering into Greenwich Market, a food/craft market for a look around and bite to eat. We were spoilt for choice with the assorted food stalls but settled for Scotch Eggs. Not any old Scotch Eggs though. These were great big fat Scotch Eggs with a choice of wrappings around the egg. I think mine was sausage mixed with black pudding but whatever it was, it tasted delicious.  

We moved on, from the market, to Greenwich Park for a walk around. We decided to give seeing the Greenwich Prime Meridian a miss as it was £20 a ticket and rammed with other tourists. Instead we strolled on to the top of the park for the view back across the Royal Naval College to Canary Wharf. It was nice seeing it for myself, after seeing the same view so often on TV.  

Canary Wharf view photo sorted, we made our way down to the bottom of the park for my next photo mission, The Tulip Staircase in Queens House. Here in the UK the staircase is an iconic shot for photographers and I’m always stumbling across images of it, as I surf through photography sites and blogs, on the internet.  

Entry to the house is free and it’s well worth a visit. The staircase didn’t disappoint either. Luckily it wasn’t too busy. The others left me to it so I went to the staircase footwell, got my exposure sorted, set the camera self-timer, put the camera on its back, placed it on the floor and pointed it at the ceiling. It took a few attempts before I got what I wanted but I was pleased with the result.

Photography wise, elsewhere in Queens House, there were some nice shots out across to Canary Wharf, the Royal Naval College and a Christmas ice skating rink set up in the grounds of the house. 

Having finished at Queens House, we decided to head back into central London as Donna had a pub she wanted to visit. The Dickins Inn is located in St Katherines Dock, and was formerly an 18th-century timber-framed warehouse. St Katherines Dock, let alone the pub were new to me. It was a really nice area to walk around and it all felt very Christmassy.

We stopped for a drink in the pub but, as with most places in London, it was expensive to eat there so we headed off to find a cheaper alternative. Yes, you guessed it, a Wetherspoons! Having eaten it was time to say goodbye to David and Donna and we made our way back to the hotel.

Day 3 – Brick Lane and Abba Voyage

We decided that we would spend Sunday morning visiting Spitalfields Market which was a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. It’s full of expensive market stalls these days and I was a bit disappointed with it. However, just outside was Brick Lane. That was much better and a lot more interesting. It’s a buzzy area with a lot of diverse places to find something to eat.

From there we caught the Tube over to the Stratford Centre, a large shopping mall out near the venue for our evening with Abba. The mall was great, but busy as it was the ‘Black Friday’ weekend. We had a look around before setting off from there, through the Olympic Park, to the Abba Arena

The Abba Voyage concert was meant to be the highlight of our weekend break, but unfortunately it wasn’t. I’d bought standing tickets on the dance floor, rather than being seated, thinking we would be able to move around and pick our best view. With most rock concerts I’ve been to, in arena’s, they allow quite a bit of room for standing fans. That wasn’t the case here and we were packed in like sardines. Anyone dancing was knocking into the people around them.

There’s no doubting the technology is fantastic but I had a bit of a problem applauding or cheering Avatars. By now you’ve probably guessed I wasn’t that impressed. That went for Linda as well. We made it through most of the hits but left before the end and made our way back to a Wetherspoons near our hotel. Here we got talking to three ladies, on the table next to us, visiting London from the USA. That was far more interesting and we spent a good hour or so with them.

Our break over, Monday went to plan and we got back with no delays. Another great London break. We do have tentative plans to go back in January 2025 but that’s still at the planning stage.

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.