The Family Travel Show is almost on us and it’s time to reveal the winner of the giveaway. It’s…
Charlotte Story!!
Congratulations Charlotte – tickets are winging their way to you now.
We’ll be reporting back too, hopefully with some lovely travel inspiration for next summer. Watch this space…
The quest to understand West London continues. Yesterday morning found us wandering around Earl’s Court, trying to find a way out from the Piccadilly Line. What seemed like an exit landed us on the District Line platform, at which point Roo declared himself confused. “I’m a-fused all the time” concurred Eva. 
Soon, we were out in the open and power walking through what I call “Noel Streatfeild country” and we were indeed close to the Cromwell Road that Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil lived on. In fact, that was our next challenge – finding a way to cross the A4. We’ve driven along it many times and I’ve never noticed a handy way to get across the six lanes of traffic…but for future reference, there is a crossing here, between Nevern Road and Cromwell Crescent: 
It even has trees in the middle. Don’t say I never tell you anything useful. Our destination at the end of all this was Maggie and Rose in West Kensington, a private members’ club designed especially for children. The kids loved it as soon as they saw the abacus on the gate and they were equally enchanted by the little shop just inside: 
But we were not there to purchase a ride-on triceratops, however tempting it might be. We were there to learn more about the Easi-Yo yoghurt maker. I was just in time for the demonstration by Jenny Falconer and Sales Manager Paul: 
Now, I don’t think I’ve ever considered how to make yoghurt before but if you’d asked me a few days back I would have guessed it was something to do with straining something through something else. Maybe a muslin? But the EasiYo doesn’t require any kind of hard work – you mix the sachet contents with tepid water, give it a shake, place it inside the big red pod with some boiling water and then just leave on the worktop for about 12 hours. I don’t know what magic happens within the big red pod, but it creates a very tasty yoghurt – once it’s formed, you chill it for a bit and then it’s ready to eat. And did I mention how very tasty it was? We tried a few different flavours – strawberry, coconut, lemon and ginger – and it was super creamy. I don’t often have a lot of dairy so it was a bit of a treat to gorge on proper yoghurt for once. There were a whole host of toppings to try with it:
and some delicious recipes, including a peanut butter that tasted just caramelly, just like a Snickers bar: 
Then there were the yoghurt-related recipes – dips, houmous, frittata, muffins…I could go on. And I could have gone on eating all day.. 
But I probably needed to go and see what those darn kids were up to. While we’d been sampling yoghurt in the kitchen, there had been all kinds of noises from the room with the cushions in. There was a balloon modeller and face painter in there with them – and Nathan – so what could be hyping the children up so?
Aha! Balloon weapons! Reuben and some other small boys had been equipped with functioning bow and arrows and were rampaging around shooting each other with them. Kudos to balloon modeller Suzi Banister for managing to fashion a working bow out of balloons though. All the balloon models were impressive, actually – Eva was very pleased with her butterfly:
It was “flying” in the picture so a bit blurry. Here’s a better one:
Suzi also produced a balloon Hulk which momentarily halted Roo’s balloon-battles. Only momentarily, though. Eva, on the other hand, was sitting mesmerised:
And then she and I had some more yoghurt:
I liked the quirky décor of Maggie and Rose – there was detail everywhere, including the stools:
I was concerned about this particular piece though. As Reuben said, why would you keep a kitten in a cage?:
It was nearly time to go but first, Eva had some literacy practice to do:
Almost, Eva! Maybe Daddy can help:
Nailed it!
As we left, we were given our own EasiYo yoghurt maker, which was a nice surprise. I’d like to see how it works when a novice is trying it rather than an expert but I will report back….
Thanks to Maggie and Rose for having us and to EasiYo for hosting the brunch. All opinions remain honest and my own.
Put your hands in the air! It’s the BFLF Halloween special, at the dark and cavernous Shapes in Hackney Wick. Of course, this being BFLF it was the middle of the afternoon when we went in and not remotely dark or spooky. Which made it all the more hilarious to see a trail of people dressed as ghosts and Frankensteins pushing buggies down the road all the way from the station. Some people had gone full committment to the spooky theme, which was impressive. I’m sad to sad we didn’t…but Reuben had his skeleton t-shirt on:
While we’re outside, let’s have a brief bit of love for this dinosaur:
“ROO”! Or possibly “Rooooar” but who’s being pedantic?
Anyway, let’s hurry on inside and get down to some dancin’. Unless Roo gets distracted by the playdough table:
This was a rare moment of stillness for one of our kids – they spent most of the time dashing about, fitting through gaps that their parents couldn’t. Bob, Not-Bob and Boby were in attendance but I didn’t see too much of them, thanks to the aforementioned crazy kids. I didn’t see much of Nathan either, if it comes to that.
Next stop after playdough was the craft table, where Roo and Eva made Halloweeny hats out of paper plates. Both would later lose their hats but amazingly, we found them and both plates made it home. Here’s Eva modelling hers:
She was enjoying herself, honest. She just didn’t like the camera flash. Are owls spooky, by the way? I figured some people would find them spooky…
A new feature of this rave was the Korg synthesizer workshop, tucked away at the back of the room. We had timed tickets so only a few children were in there at once, which was nice. They put on headphones and played on mini pianos, note bender and drum machines. I would have been happy playing in there myself, but Eva was hogging the headphones:
I think these ^^ were some kind of finger-drum-machine. I’m not sure but I think that was the gist. They were pretty cool. I also liked the notebender. I imagine that the BFLF are hoping to inspire the next generation of DJs, who will one day take over the whole business. Anyone up for Eva’s set in Hackney 2035? We’ll definitely have hoverboards by then, right?
Next up, Eva wanted to check out the play area with the traditional BFLF tunnels and tents. I sat down for a moment but as soon as I did she was off again. There were giant balloons on the dance floor and she wanted some of that action. She soon got distracted by slightly smaller balloons though, carrying a massive three of them about her tiny person (one in each hand, one between her knees). I managed to have a little dance while she was busy doing that but soon got co-opted into helping her protect her balloons from all the toddlers that wanted to share them.
Guard those balloons Eva! Later on, Reuben had a similar issue and solved it by writing his name on a balloon. Because toddlers can read, obviously.
At some point, Nathan and I swapped children. I think he was finding Reuben exhausting. So, I took him for a while and he showed me his brand new dance routine. Check it out here. You can learn it too! Meanwhile, Nathan had taken Eva out for a breath of fresh air in the buggy park and they were, along with some other parents and kids, practising a bit of stage diving.
Roo and I joined them for a game of keepy-uppy with Roo’s personalised balloon. Then we all went back in and something was different. The atmosphere had gone from “Bonnie Tyler video” to “1880s Whitechapel”. The smoke that had been gently swirling about was now not so gentle. This is the actual view from the dancefloor:
#nofilter. Just lots of smoke. I recreated it quite effectively while frying sausages for tea this evening. It certainly gave things a spooky feel but Roo and I both thought it might be overkill. It was only when I saw HannahBFLF frantically fanning the room with a fire door that I realised something wasn’t quite right. I later found out that an errant child had set the smoke machine to “permanent” and no-one quite knew how to turn it off again. Hilarious.
Eventually the fog began to clear, and the groovy lighting-up glasses of the DJs could be seen once more. I’m not sure who was DJing when but I was thrilled to hear that one of the DJs was Jude Rogers, former editor of (appropriately enough) “Smoke”. Now, I’m going to sound like a total stalker but I was big fan of “Smoke”, which was an infrequent London periodical in the mid 2000s. It even inspired LWAT’s 300th birthday trip out. I swear I even have a couple of issues in my bathroom right now. The stalky bit is this – when we moved to Kennington, we realised that MattSmoke lived on the same estate as us. Then we moved to East London and I spotted Jude on a parenting group. Now she turns up at BFLF? I’m sad not to have met her, but it’s probably a good thing, given how very creepy this whole paragraph is sounding.
Let’s move on. Parachute dance – hooray! And a rare shot of all four of us together, courtesy of Bob. Mmm, flattering:
The kids always love the parachute dance and it was helping to waft away the smoke too:
It was almost time to go but first, a trip to the hipster toilets:
Chipboard and marbles. I don’t get it but I think I’m probably too old to understand hipster interior toilet design. I’m OK with that.
The kids were melting down all over the place but Reuben enjoyed a quick go on the picture wall while we were gathering our stuff:
..and then they were pacified with a well-timed Happy Monkey smoothie on the way out. Hooray! Another successful afternoon’s raving, even if I didn’t get much dancing done. That’s what partying with kids is like…
I’m a special kind of tired today. The kind of tired that you get when you go out for a rowdy curry night with the local mothers and then get up for the school run and then wait ages for coffee and then go to a playgroup in Liverpool Street and then do some blogging and then do another school run and then walk a mile or two with tired kids in tow to go and play in the brand new playground at the Highams Park. That’s how tired I am. And that’s the extent of my devotion to you, that instead of lying on the sofa, eating Pringles and watching “You’re Fired”, I’m reporting back to you on this self-same brand new playground so that you can ooh and aah and plan your fun weekend hanging out there. Also, I don’t have any Pringles.
Let’s get something yikky out of the way first – if you’ve been paying attention to local affairs, you’ll have heard about a worrying smell that’s emanating from the Highams Park lake at the moment. I regret to inform you that the rumours are true but there are two bits of good news – firstly, that it’s being dealt with tomorrow by some people with a machine and secondly, that you can’t smell it from the playground. At least, I couldn’t today. So, please don’t let that put you off.
Because, in many other ways , the park is looking quite lovely and autumnal right now:
And Eva in her new mac quite nicely blended in with her surroundings:
But onto the main event – the newly opened playground, which has had a total renovation in the last few weeks. Disappointingly, I don’t have a “before” picture (please get in touch if you do!) but it was a pretty tired looking affair, with a giant metal climbing frame, a rusting roundabout and not much else. And now? Well, it has a train:
A rocking horse that goes really fast (hence the blurriness of these pictures):
A new slide:
A new, accessible roundabout:
Two sets of swings and a toddler-sized climbing frame:
Enough to keep the kids busy, as you might imagine. The sky was getting ever darker and the threat of rain wasn’t far off, so I encouraged them to try out as many things as possible before we actually had to run for it. Which leads me neatly on to what this park is missing at the moment – somewhere to shelter from the rain. Specifically a cafe, which sells brightly coloured cakes and strong coffee and probably icy fruit drinks in the summer. Luckily, this is already under consideration and a proposal has been put forward, which you can have your say on right here. With a caffeine source on site, along with a set of toilets, we’d have lingered much longer. As it was, we stayed for an hour which is good going on a chilly October after-school outing…but I know I wasn’t the only one craving a cup of tea and a sit down by 5PM.
So, back to the stuff that’s actually in the park already. Roo was delighted to see that there’s now a zipwire and I failed to get any photos of him on it because it’s outside the playground and, slack mother that I am, I didn’t follow him when he ran off to use it. He also enjoyed the obstacle course, which is outside the playground as well. The bits within the fenced off area are more geared towards smaller ones – the climbing frame is a bit too easy even for Eva – but both of them are happy with any space to play in, and Reuben amused himself by going down the slide in a variety of awkward poses and trying to catch the wind in his umbrella to make the roundabout take off and fly us home (sadly, it didn’t work. We had to walk). A favourite of them both were these rainbow bongos:
I’m guessing you’re meant to hit them, rather than stand on them but they took Eva’s weight just fine. And Reuben’s umbrella again came in useful, as an improvised drum stick:
It also got a sound out of these giant chimes, which seemed to be curiously lacking a beater:
But mainly, the umbrella was for jumping off stuff and trying to fly, a la John from Peter Pan:
I’m glad I packed that umbrella, even if it didn’t actually rain.
Eva’s favourite things were the brightly coloured mushrooms, and she insisted on me taking a picture of her on each one. I probably shouldn’t indulge this kind of vanity, but I’m a soft touch when it comes to cute pictures of my kids:
So, I’d say that the new playground is a hit with the kids and the trip was pretty much a success. (Ohgoodgriefletsnottalkaboutthedinnertimebathtimeandbedtimethatfollowed). I’d encourage all local HPers to go along and take a look and support the park and don’t forget to fill in the forms for the cafe consultation either. Mama needs caffeine….
Does anyone else struggle to find a holiday that’ll work for your family? I always leave it late, book somewhere in a hurry and we have an average-to-good time, sometimes in accommodation that’s average-to-bad. But you don’t have to be like me – the Family Travel Show is here to give you wonderful holiday inspiration and some exclusive deals. There will be lots of holiday companies exhibiting, interactive activities and talks from the likes of travel journalist Simon Calder and survival expert Benedict Allen.
It’s on at Olympia on 31st Oct and 1st Nov. Tickets cost £8 in advance or £12 on the door, under 16s are free. For full details and to book tickets please visit www.familytravelshow.com or call 0844 209 7360. (Calls cost 10p per minute plus network extras). But we have a pair of tickets to GIVE AWAY! (don’t forget that kids go free, so 2 tickets will cover a whole family). Just fill in the form below, with a comment saying why you’d like to win, before Friday 23rd Oct and I’ll be announcing the winner in time for half term. Good luck! [contact-form]
I don’t know about you but I’ve been getting some mixed messages from the Tory Party Conference. First there’s Jeremy Hunt telling a meeting that cutting tax credits was all in the interests of creating an Asian-style working culture. Then Theresa May piped up with a charming little speech about how immigration makes it difficult to have a “cohesive society“. So, what is it, Tories? Do we want to integrate with other cultures or not?
I know where I stand. I’m all for a multi-cultural Britain – people of different nationalities, races and religions living and working together. All good. Immigration facilitates that. Still all fine. And drawing ideas and influences form other countries that might work well over here? Yup, that’s fine too. But what I do have a problem with is this wholesale lifting from other cultures and trying to somehow pin it onto Britain. An Asian-style working culture? Oh yes, that’s what we’ve been missing all this time. And where exactly do we get one of these cultures? Can we order it online? Maybe grow it in a petri dish? Or just make people work harder for less money until we feel that box is ticked?
There are so many issues tied up with this but mostly I just find it sad. Britain is constantly acting like that girl at school who doesn’t have her own sense of style so just copies other people’s all the time. You know the kind of thing – the most popular girl in the class gets a new bag, the next day this other girl has the exact same one. It’s the constant trying to be someone else that I find pathetic. I mean, I’ve spent my whole life trying to be Julie Andrews but I’m no closer to marrying Christopher Plummer so at least I know how pathetic I am. Yet, when it comes to Britain we are receiving these constant messages that we need to be a different country entirely. So much of it revolves around our children and education – they’re meant to be free-range like the Finns but yet hothoused like the Chinese and at the same time eating like the French. I’m confused and I’m sure they are too.
The hothousing of children is really the key to all this – if we want an “Asian-style working culture”, there are so many things that go with it. The pressurized education system, the oppression of the masses, the censorship of the media. To use an aptly multi-cultural metaphor, it’s like ordering the crispy duck but asking for no pancakes. Or hoi sin sauce. Or those really thin bits of cucumber. You’ll get the duck but you won’t be able to roll it up and pop it in your mouth and quite frankly, it might taste a bit rubbish. Without the hoi sin sauce, you’re going to notice all that deep-fried fattiness a lot more.
Duck, ducks…I had a point somewhere. YES! It was that saying “we’d like your working culture but without the human rights violations please” is like that metaphor. Flabby and a bit rubbish. That’s why borrowing huge lumps of culture from other people just doesn’t work. Let’s not even mention the Dutch (and believe me when I say, I actually typed “duck” there before I corrected it). It’s square pegs in round holes, jazz rhythms in worship songs, Latin grammar rules on the English language…oh wait. Scrub the last one. If you want your country to display the kind of “culture” experience by the repressed masses of China, then you’re going to have to remove all kinds of human rights as well. And I don’t for a second believe that our government would want to infringe on their citizens’ human…oh wait again. That bit needs scrubbing too. The Latin, the human rights and the duck. Why doesn’t this keyboard have a delete key?
The ever-present argument for doing this kind of cultural copyright theft is that it’ll make Britain better. Great once more. A world leader etc etc and that too is something I take issue with. We’re not the kind of country that’s best at things. We’re about as mediocre as it gets – our weather is mediocre, our food is mediocre, our general demeanour is one of restraint, our national drink is bland and our national anthem even blander. We’re a mid league-r. We’ve produced some excellent music, but it’s balanced out by how very shocking our sports teams often are. If Britain was a schoolchild, its report would show some strengths, some weaknesses but overall, kinda average across the board. And unlike Michael Gove, I know how averages work.
We’re just not cut out to be Great. I know we had that empire once but even then it didn’t really suit us. We lacked the natural authority to keep it under control and kinda panicked and had to kill whole races of indigenous people just so we could stick our flag in their hostile soil. As conquerors we did a patchy job at best. As agreeable, appeasing, happy-to-help-but-with-no-real-power world leaders we do OK. Being the beta male of the EU suits us and the sooner we admit that, the better.
So no, I don’t want an Asian-style working culture. Or an American one unless it comes with the kind of money that’ll fund an American-style therapy habit. I just want Britain to look at itself and go “yeah, you’re OK how you are”. Not “we need to kick all these immigrants out and go back to being the White Britain that we never really were in the first place”. I’m not saying “Britain should be British” in a UKIP kind of way. Hell no. And neither am I saying that the country doesn’t have problems – we have many, starting with that government of ours. But I am saying that stealing other people’s cultures is not the way to improve our own. We should just be happy with this C Plus country. With an extra star for effort.
Today I had the pleasure of hanging out with Bob and Boby. Now, Bob and I have done a lot of foolish things together – one of which was chronicled on this blog and most of which are not suitable for mentioning on the blog or in fact, anytime, anywhere. But tackling Primark in Hackney with two small children? That was probably madness, even by our standards.
Still, we overcame and came out with two bulging bags of stuff that included trousers for three quarters of my family and pants for the other quarter (in the interests of intrigue, I’m not going to reveal who got what). Then we went to a rather charming little park in St John’s Churchyard, which I’d heard tell of but never been to. I didn’t even notice it when we walked straight through the churchyard a few weeks back, but then we were child-free and probably a bit playground-blind. If you also have trouble finding it, aim first for the little coffee hut and then the gate to the walled playground is just behind there. Do as we did and enjoy a coffee at the same time.
The playground isn’t huge but it is a good size for toddlers like Boby and just-past-toddlers like Eva. The climbing frame was just right for her to do it all by herself, even if she had to stretch a bit at the top of the spiral bit. There’s a slide, swings, bouncy things and Bob informs me that there’s a water feature during the summer. In the busyness of Hackney Central, it’s a lovely green space and the coffee on hand doesn’t hurt.
All of which reminds me that I never blogged about another trip to Hackney last month. Our destination that time was Victoria Park and the hub cafe for brunch. Brunch was delicious – a full English and coffee for Nathan, fresh juice and sausage sandwiches for me and the kids – and we got the chance to play in the Pools Playground, a playground I hadn’t visited since Reuben was tiny. Then it was a bit of a building site and I was daunted by the sheer size of these slides:
Now, it’s fully finished and has a massive sandpit at the bottom of those same slides. The slides are for 7+ children, but 6-year-old Reuben was fine on them, and Eva managed the smallest one. Even so, it seemed like a long way down from the top:
She also terrified me by climbing all over these giant rocks:
There were a few quirky touches – the kids liked running on something that resembled a giant conveyor belt and the huge climbing frame in the shape of a suspension bridge:
There was loads of space for sand play, with the same kind of huts as they have in the V&A playground, and there was some kind of sand digger too:
It also had the same kind of unfenced feel that gets parents so riled over at the other playground. The play area kinda rambles organically on, (and of course it’s organic – this is Hackney), right back to the cafe where there’s a bouncy thing and wooden stepping stones:
There’s also some kind of spinny that that you can wind up like a maypole. Perfect for children who’ve just stuffed themselves full of brunch:
I may have mentioned this back when I originally meant to write this post, but the look Eva was going for that day was a kind of demented Snow White pineapple:
Anything goes in Hackney, right? This morning Reuben was quizzing me on what a hipster meant. You can see right here ^^ that he’s been to Hackney but clearly not enough. Next time I’ll make sure I concentrate more on his hipster education. In the meantime, we’ll go and try to find some new playgrounds no-one’s ever been to yet…so we can like them before they’re cool.
I love it when we stumble upon tiny parks that turn out to be quirky gems. That’s what happened today – on a sunny Sunday, wandering through Canonbury on the way to church (new church awooga!), we earmarked a small bit of green for a post-church picnic. I had no idea what it was called but I was confident I could find it again as it was pretty much just opposite the start of the New River Walk (new church awooga #2!).
Turns out it was called Asteys Row and I’d often seen the start of it from the 38 as it crawled down Essex Road. A long thin park, based on the curves of a river it runs behind Essex Rd station and has a lot of different parts – rock garden, playground, sandpit, green area, random bits of paving and brickwork area. Like I said, quirky.
We’d arrived with a picnic from that most local of suppliers, Tesco, and sat down on one of the Teletubby-like mounds to eat. Obviously, the kids couldn’t sit still when they could be climbing and Eva was keen to be “Ting of the Tastle” (she’s still struggling with /k/, bless her). Roo downed his sandwich quickly and ran off to try out the helter skelter:
It was a pretty cool slide, even if I felt nervous watching Eva climb it in not one but two dresses. Nathan had carefully dressed her in co-ordinated red, white and navy which she then accessorised with an Elsa dress and a tropical necklace. Happily, the necklace matched her juice, if not anything else she was wearing. I’ve heard her style described as “Crazy Homeless Princess” and I sometimes find it hard to argue with that. Still, the dress-excess didn’t impede her climbing ability:
Nathan and I said exactly the same thing when we saw this slide – that it was the same as the one in the River Park Leisure Centre in Winchester when we were kids. Can any Wintonians tell me whether it’s still there?
As well as crazy slides and retro slides, there were some bouncy things and a kind of climbing frame-roundabout:
Eva got stuck on the roundabout with a kid who a) didn’t want to go fast and b) wanted to play “Mr Tumble” with her. She didn’t like that. Both my kids have been preconditioned to dislike Mr Tumble, so her face when he opened his spotty bag and got out his Tumble Tap was one of horror. That’s my girl. Time to move to the swings:
Shortly afterwards, Roo issued a warning that saw us scarpering to Costa to use the toilets there. We rushed through the rock garden on the way but ambling back, coffee in hand, we took some time to explore the play possibilities. Roo liked climbing on the rocks:
(I assume he’s meant to? But never assume…)
And then he did some limbo on a weeping willow branch:
I was idly taking photos of the Narnia-like lamposts and posted this one on Facebook:
Which was taken entirely at random, to showcase the pretty tree and the blue sky, but turned out to be the old flat of some friends of ours. Small world, hey?
As a sidenote, Islington is lovely, isn’t it? In my mind, it’s often associated with that torturous, breakdown-inducing first job in London but there are some very pretty bits of it once you leave a darkened office in the N1 Centre. Some of the roads we wandered down looked straight out of a Richard Curtis film and probably were. Of course, this leads to sandpits full of posh kids in flat caps with their private tutors on hand but that’s Islington for you. Talking of sandpits, this was another very pretty feature:
It was almost time to go, but first the kids wanted to play on the random-brickwork bit at the end. Again, I’m not sure if it’s designed to be played with but they found things to climb on:
So, a park that’s small in size but full of character. I’m very glad we picked it. More information here.
I’ve got a bit behind on blogging this last week or so, distracted by heckling school children and getting new uniform for cabinet ministers. Did I get that the wrong way round? I don’t even know anymore. But anyway, I still haven’t told you what we did a week ago…and this is important stuff.
We went to Havering!
Yes, that’s right – 29 boroughs down, 3 to go. I’d chosen a country park for our Havering trip but, being a Bank Holiday, it was naturally tipping it down so that plan seemed like a non-starter. We passed the morning with a little housebreaking at the neighbour’s but when the rain was still not easing up by lunchtime, it was clear that soft play was the way to go.
So, which soft play in Havering? I found three candidates – Rocky’s, which was closed, KidSpace, which looked fun but was expensive (and we’d been splashing the cash merrily all weekend) and Timbuk2 in Upminster. With two candidates eliminated, we set the SatNav for Timbuk2. It got us as far as the petrol station, so then we set Google Maps for Timbuk2.
I’m normally a big advoKate of public transport in London, but this one may be tricky without a car. It’s quite far out of London. In fact, it may have a legitimate claim for being the furthest-out soft play in London that’s still inside the M25. It really is very close to the M25. Look, here it is at the end of the car park:
A quick fact, for all you fact-fans – Havering is the only London borough that crosses the M25! It’s a pity that LWAT is not also prepared to cross the M25.
You can discern then that it’s a bit out of the way. I just tried to plan a public transport map on Google and even the normally-infallible Maps had nothing. The best they could suggest was a 5 mile walk from Upminster station – elongated because there are very few places to cross the A127. But don’t despair if you don’t have a car. You’re not missing much. It’s just a pretty standard soft play. It’s not bad in any way, but nothing worth walking through a field for 2 hours for. You’d be better off at the transport-friendly Owls in Fairlop, which we spent a similarly rainy Bank Holiday at.
But enough about the technicalities of getting there – what is there? Well, there’s an Under 2s bit, an Under 3s bit, a large frame and a football pitch. The kids enjoyed climbing on the big frame and Eva managed it perfectly well without any help, but her favourite thing was this Peppa Pig car:
We didn’t put any money in it cause…we never do, but she spent about an hour sitting in it or on it or playing around it. Occasionally other children would want to get on, so she would obligingly shift to the parcel shelf but she wasn’t keen to leave it. I was terrified when we stopped at a service station on a different bit of the M25 a few days later and saw the same car…I thought we’d never leave.
Roo, obviously, was more interested in the giant slides and things he could climb on although he played a bit of football as well. There was a secure gate and no other exit, so Nathan and I just sat and drank coffee (they take card! Hooray!) at our table and watched them. There’s a bit of a bizarre system with the tables, where you can’t enter the soft play until a table becomes free for the adults. I mean, it’s nice because it guaranteed us somewhere to sit, but we had to wait about 15 minutes for a table to come up and it’s just not a system I’ve seen anywhere outside Nandos those really posh restaurants we frequent.
The coffee wasn’t bad -the cakes were all pre-packed and didn’t look overly awesome but I think I’m getting spoilt. One day i’ll find that soft play with fresh coffee and freshly baked red velvet cake, but this wasn’t it. Neither was it necessarily a good representation of the whole of Havering – I’d like to explore the borough a bit more when it’s less of a numbers game. But not a bad afternoon out, just a pretty standard wet-Bank-Holiday-at-soft-play one. It knackered the kids out anyway, and that’s what’s important…!
Today was a day of discovery. Like the discovery that we could make a half mile walk last half a day and other, more useful, things, Let’s start with the discovery of the Tardis of North London – Canonbury station.
Where is it? Oh so tiny and hidden behind those leafy things..there it is! This is us doubling back from up the road having walked past it on the first attempt – you can barely see that there’s a station there. So, you squeeze through the doorway and through the miniscule ticket hall and then down the steps and oh…oh…it’s….
Bigger on the inside! Four generously sized platforms, all behind a secret entrance. Magic!
We were, as you might have guessed, travelling to Wapping. Our end destination was St Katherine’s Dock but we had time to kill so we decided not to take a bus, to walk instead, and possibly find a park along the way.
Mentioning a park to Reuben was the first major mistake of the day (there will be more). He has certain ideas about what a park should contain, and he instantly rejected the first one we came to:
I think it was called Wapping Rose Gardens and was dismissed as not having “the right equipment”. Or any equipment. That’s fine. We were just out of the station and there were more to try on the way, according to Google Maps. In fact,t he next park was just across the road. It was called Waterside Gardens and scored slightly higher in Roo’s estimation, for its river views and pagoda:
We spent a few minutes sitting there discussing the marine police station that you could see out in the river. That interested him, though he raised some concerns about what would happen in Galactus was on the beach, throwing stones at the police boats. He has many concerns about Galactus and I can’t answer them all. I also couldn’t answer his questions about playgrounds because, as I explained to him, I’d never been to Wapping before and so I had no idea if there were any playgrounds with the “right equipment” there at all. A quick google had left me feeling unoptimistic but I didn’t tell him that. Still, Wapping is pretty:
All cobbles and clean streets. That’s the 100 stop you see there – I briefly considered getting that bus to the docks until I saw that it seemed to head to Shadwell on both sides of the same road. I may have got that wrong, but the confusion threw me enough to abandon the bus plan altogether.
The other motivation for walking was to find some food. I’d packed sandwiches for the kids, which Roo ate on the tube and Eva steadfastly refused on the tube. I’d hoped there would be a little Pret or even an Itsu somewhere on the route but all I could see were expensive-looking brasseries and even more expensive-looking blocks of flats. Lots and lots of them. Even if we’d gone to the Pret that Google suggested, it would have been closed on a Sunday anyway. So, pioneer-style living it was then. With no firm plans for food or play, we ploughed on, getting increasingly agitated by the prospect of finding neither.
(Like any good pioneer, I’d bought some Branston Pickle flavoured Mini Cheddars at Canonbury, but their effects were short-lived).
Roo was getting whiney. He tried explaining a few more times exactly what he was after – a playground with slides and swings and things. I don’t call myself an expert on many things but I pride myself on knowing what a playground is, thanks Roo. He just sometimes doesn’t explain that we make these long and arduous journeys so that other children don’t have to. If we could establish definitively that there were no slides in Wapping, then someone else could just Google it, find this post and go to KidZania instead.
I didn’t even try to explain that, to be honest. We would have come unstuck around the SEO part. But I’m building to something, because I said this was a day of discovery and we did indeed discover a playground. Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for…
The Hellings Street Open Space! We spotted it by chance from Wapping High Street and approached carefully, just in case it was some kind of residents’ only deal. As we did, Roo explained that this was what he was looking for and, furthermore, he knew that it was open because he could see someone swinging on a swing. Thankfully, he was right and the kids spent a blissful half hour or so playing on the climbing frame:
Slide:
And climbable rocks on the side:
I say the children played…well, that’s true….but it wasn’t just the kids:
There was lots of nice landscaping around the park, which Eva couldn’t quite get up by herself. She too felt the need to explain things to me that I pretty much understood already. “I keep syiding down”. Yes, I see that:
Roo was a little more able, but still needed a bit of a bunk-up on these hills:
You’ll be glad to know that my usually-ungrateful children actually appreciated this playground and didn’t even kick up a fuss when it was time to leave. It was 3PM by now, I still hadn’t had lunch and I had a destination in mind:
Make no mistake, this is a middle-class part of town. But it provided not just lunchables for Nathan, Eva and I but also a birthday present for Bob. We perched on a wall outside, ate our food and wrote Bob’s card. I hope she realises what a momentous piece of family history she’s holding – the first time we’ve all signed our own names in a card:
You can also see from this card why I don’t handwrite my blog posts.
Yes, it was Bob’s birthday and that’s the reason we were Wapping about all afternoon. So, it was probably time to actually go and meet her at the Dickens Inn. There was just one small problem:
Hmm, that’s a lot of water between where we were and where we wanted to be. Roo, as ever, had a blue-sky solution that involved finding someone to sail us across in a boat. I suggested walking around the edge of the quay instead. And that came with a few unexpected bonuses. Like finding the Queen’s barge:
And a suit of armour:
And this wobbly bridge, with particularly hazardous sides (or lack of):
You’d think that would be the kind of bridge that only a man would tackle. But you’d be wrong. In fact, it appears to be for women and children only:
Anyway, women and children and illicit man made it across safely and by now, I had definitely earned this well-garnished Pimms:
When it was time to leave, I made another very poor decision. Perhaps it was joining the crowds milling around Tower Bridge that did it, but I decided we would use the tourist way of getting to Liverpool Street – go on the tube. Now, we should have caught the bus and we possibly could even have walked it, but the signs for Tower Hill kept promising it was but a matter of minutes away. So we followed them.
At one point, we definitely seemed to be going round in a circle. I had the roughest idea of where the tube was, so walked around a dock, down a road, up another road, under a tunnel…
This was not going well. This was not the easy solution I was hoping for. We popped out by the Tower of London, so that was something interesting to look at at least:
But we still weren’t at Tower Hill tube and a tunnel that looked like it might be a tube just led to a gift shop and a massive flight of stairs. I caught sight of some TfL blue at the top, so we ascended and sure enough – the station was there. But we got to the platform and there was no sign of the Circle Line. Even when the sign finally appeared, it was still 6 minutes away. I have no idea what caused me to pull such a tourist move, but I regret it. Should have jumped on the 78 when we had the chance.
And that’s the final discovery for today. I hoped you’ve all learnt from our mistakes…but also, I hope you’ve learnt that there IS a climbing frame in the vicinity of Wapping High Street. Hooray!
