Volume 14: Pete back in Europe Part 3
Day 5 - London
I kicked off the day by heading to Kings Cross station so that I knew my plan of attack to get the train to Edinburgh tomorrow and add another Monopoly related place to the list I’d visited.
From there I did a quick check of Google Maps, noticed Lords cricket ground was near enough to walk so headed there (near is a subjective word. A cricket ball misses a fielder by 1 metre and that’s a near miss. An asteroid misses earth by 5 million miles and scientists call that a near miss).
I arrived at Lords at 11am, just missing the 11am tour, but fortunate to get the last remaining ticket for the noon tour. The tour was run by a short portly fellow with a dry English sense of humour, who begun the tour by asking where everyone was from. There were visitors from traditional cricket locations like Chennai, Melbourne and San Francisco.
The tour then proceeded through the museum showing the rich history of beards in test cricket and then onto the Long Room. To get a seat in the Long Room you only have to be over 75 and a member for 30 years. Each batsmen has to walk past these gentlemen to go out to bat and it’s for this reason it’s affectionately known as the walk of death. I imagine Weekend at Bernie’s 3 will be shot onsite in the Long Room.
The tour continued on passing many paintings done depicting the game of cricket being played down through the centuries, with many depicting the game in the 18th and 19th centuries. One Indian bloke asked the tour guide “are these photos or paintings?”. It was a bizarre question, asking if a non invented technology had been used and even more odd given anyone without cataracts would be able to tell these were paintings. It would be like asking if a Bugs Bunny cartoon is a real life rabbit.
The tour carries on to the dressing rooms of both the home and visiting teams. In each room are the honour boards, listing anyone who has taken 5 wickets or scored a 100 at Lords. In the home dressing rooms you can see that English players like Tony Greig (born in South Africa), Allan Lamb (born in South Africa), Kevin Pietersen (born in South Africa) and Gary Ballance (born in Zimbabwe) have all scored 100s for England, with of course the only criteria to play for England being able to find it on a map.
The tour then works it’s way through the grandstands and with the 2nd last stop being the media centre. The tour guide mentioned the glass was tilted in the media centre to avoid glare in the batsman’s face, but also quipped they were looking for a technological solution that could see it tilted when England was batting and vertical when the away team was batting.
The tour purely by coincidence concluded at the front of the gift shop, which I promptly scampered through and on to Lords Tavern for a couple of refreshing pints. The 5th day of the Trent Bridge test was on TV and was enhanced with live commentary by a half mental bloke shouting “good shot” after every delivery, while his dog with a half ear sat obediently until new guests arrived and jumped on their lap. When I left the pub the game was delicately balanced with England 4 for 90 odd, still around 200 runs from victory.
I caught a train down to Piccadilly Circus, walked aimlessly for an hour or so, but for some reason knew I should watch the rest of the Trent Bridge test, hoping England would fall apart, so yet again found myself at the Princess of Wales at Embankment, but for the first time not using it purely for its toilet facilities. An Aussie lesbian from Perth sat next to me (implied lesbian. She played cricket and had a Lords hat as she’d done the tour yesterday. There are so many lesbians in cricket I remember a heterosexual aussie test player officially filed a complaint for discrimination because she wasn’t a lesbian, so implied lesbian is legitimate until proven otherwise). The barmen acknowledged I was Australian and I acknowledged to him I didn’t know who I hated more out of England or New Zealand, so was hard to cheer for either team. As it out turned out, my gut feel to watch the game was correct. Jonny Bairstow somehow turned into Adam Gilchrist (but shorter, more pudgy garden gnome like and with less friends on account of being a ginger) smashing 132 off 92 balls to lead England to a comfortable 5 wicket victory.
Post game I headed back to the Black Horse for a couple more pints. I noticed on their menu they advertised 100% British origin beef in their burgers. They did not advertise if they were mad cow free.
Thinking about mad cow disease, I decided instead to head to KFC. In there they were only used to seeing delivery drivers so stared at me like something wasn’t right. How could a man enter without a motorcycle helmet and without a deliveroo backpack? This foreign concept meant everyone was too scared to serve me, so I lost patience and went next door and chanced my luck against mad cow disease at Burger King, before retiring to the hotel for the night.
Day 6 - London to Edinburgh
This was a fairly uneventful day, spent traveling from London to Edinburgh on the LNER, departing at 11am and arriving at couple minutes early at 3:20pm.
I was staying in the old town. The problem with these old towns is they tend to be put on a large hill as a way of making them easier to defend centuries of attack, with no thought given to how inconvenient that is to 21st century tourists towing luggage. The part of my brain responsible for remembering directions is quite useless now that Google Maps exists and these damn old town hills were just adding a 3rd dimension of confusion you don’t get in a flat city. Anyways, the part of the brain that suggests turning on directions for Google Maps was at least functional and I was at my hotel in Grassmarket in about 15 minutes.
After checking in I went for a walk to get my bearings. There were multiple bag pipe players up on Lawmarket, but I was a little disappointed it took until at least the 3rd song to hear Auld Lang Syne.
I didn’t venture too far down any hills, knowing that going down a hill would eventually mean going back up a hill. By accident I discovered the Greyfriars Bobby dog statue, noticed it’s nose was all shiny, so assumed it was my obligation as a tourist to touch the nose. I had no idea why until I read later, just knew the nose was extra shiny. Turns out it’s good luck, so good for me (and let’s hope that luck extends to avoiding catching COVID by touching something thousands of people have touched).
I was mentally spent after a day of travel, so was back In the hotel by 8pm, somehow still managing over 14,000 steps/8 km walking in a day where I felt like I did next to nothing.
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