Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Things to see and events to do across London.
The Tweed Run Returns for 2011
After a couple of weeks of hints and rumours, the date for the 3rd Tweed Run has been confirmed. The what? The Tweed Run, where some 400(ish) cyclists in rather more sensible attire than the excessively revealing Lycra sported by…
Dates announced for the 13th Open Gardens Squares Weekend
Sent to me as a press release, but acceptable as a) it is written sensibly and b) it’s something I would have written about anyway. Anyway – the Annual Open Garden Squares Weekend has announced its initial itinerary for the…
Watch a Steam Train on Valentines Night
Your perpetually single correspondent doesn’t particularly enjoy Valentines Day, or the way everything vaguely red in colour or heart shaped suddenly doubles in price for a few weeks, and tends to snarl at anything to do with it. He does…
Get tickets to the Ig Nobel Awards
The Ig Nobels are coming! The Ig Nobels are coming! The Ig Nobels are coming! What is one of the key highlights of the annual science entertainment calendar is making a return to Imperial College next month, with an evening…
100 Phantoms to glide through London on Sunday
Specifically, 100 Rolls Royce motor cars will smoothly glide around the posher bits of London on Sunday morning to mark the 100th anniversary of the design of that famous Spirit of Ecstasy mascot that sits on the top of every…
£10 to stand on the Greenwich Meridian Line?
As noticed by the Greenwich Phantom, whose spectral representative stands next to the Greenwich Observatory, the Observatory will start charging a fee to go inside the museum complex from the beginning of March. A full £10 no less. While many…
Cannon fire at the Tower of London
The list of planned formal Gun Salutes at the Tower of London has been published – should you fancy booking a bit of time off to have your ears deafened by the firing of cannons to celebrate an event or…
Mayor’s Consultation Meeting – Let’s Talk Transport
This just arrived in the email, and I copy/paste it here for your information as it is the sort of thing I would put in the events guide, but you also need to pre-book tickets first. Incidentally, I am delighted…
If slow to arrive is the Holly Man, slow shall spring be too* *a fake made up saying Circling around Bankside in a powered boat, the Holly Man – a chap decorated in the traditional garb of the Green Man’s…
Request tickets to watch the Garter Service
Held inside Windsor Castle later this year, the Monarch and most of the senior Royals will progress through the Castle to St George’s Chapel for the annual Garter Service. The Order of the Garter is the senior and oldest British…
Visiting the Charles Dickens Museum on Christmas Day
As I noticed the other day, the Charles Dickens Museum in Bloomsbury was having a special opening on Christmas Day, and as I was in central London taking photos, I decided to take a detour to visit the place. The…
There isnt some public transport on Christmas Day!
Hideous error – despite checking loads of times, I still managed to read the Xmas Eve page instead of Christmas day. As noted in the comments, there is NO river bus service on xmas day. I blame the slight confusion…
The underground crypt in the City of London
Lurking in a tiny side alley on a small side street near Fleet Street in the City of London lies one of the city’s less well known bits of heritage – the remains of the Whitefriar’s Crypt. To find the…
Yesterday had an unexpected chance to go and watch HIGNFY being recorded live (again) as an email arrived in the morning offering two tickets to first replies who “definitely” would turn up in the evening. It seemed that they had…
A quick look at St George in the East
Next to the busy Highway linking The Tower of London to Docklands sits an impressive Church, the Hawksmoor designed St George in the East. Despite its slightly forbidding exterior, it conceals a very real surprise. Built between 1714 to 1729,…
Crossrail exhibition at the Building Centre
A couple of weeks ago, a small exhibition opened at the Building Centre with images of how the Crossrail stations are expected to look in 2017 when the railway eventually opens to the public.
Open Day at the East London Mosque
This year happens to mark the 100th anniversary of the London Mosque Fund, set up to create a place of worship for Muslim sailors and workers increasingly visiting the London Docks – and coincidentally, the East London Mosque is having…
An alternative history of space exploration
Last week I had a ticket (at short notice) to a lecture by Jerry Stone of the Spaceflight UK organisation – officially titled “The Day They Launched A Woodpecker”, but was basically an alternative history of space flight. It was…
Steampunk at a Particle Accelerator
Readers may be familiar with the Steampunk genre, a fusion of history and science as people re-imagine how a modern world could look if Victorian engineering - specifically steam power - was still in use today.
Visiting the UK’s Largest Particle Accelerator
Just outside Didcot lies a very distinctive huge silver ring doughnut that houses, what is basically, a gigantic microscope – and this weekend there was a fairly rare public open day to let the great unwashed inside its structure to…
How to commute to work in style – on a Steam Train
Fancy travelling to work in style one morning – why not swap that modern metal tube for an old fashioned steam train? Regular readers will know that I like to watch out for steam trains that occasionally visit London for…
Guided tours of the Locks on the Grand Union Canal
During the winter months, several of the canal locks around the country are refurbished, and this year some of them will also have some open-days to let people have a look around while the water is (presumably) drained away. In…
