This is the day that sweet L has been waiting for since she found out we were headed to England...
I've actually been looking forward to this little adventure, too!
Today, while my mother had one more "at sea" day (on land), we ventured to the quaint little town of
Great Missenden, about 45 minutes northwest of London, and home to children's author
Roald Dahl in his final years...
to hang with the lions for a bit...
Did you know that the area around Trafalgar Square used to house the
king's mews? It was redesigned by architect
John Nash after the mews was moved to its current location at Buckingham Palace...
Also, in the center of a traffic circle right across from Trafalgar Square is a small plaque, marking what's been known for many years as the
center of London, or the point from which all distances to and from the city are measured...
After our little pit stop, we were finally on our way...
or so we thought...
Well, we WERE on our way, but getting to Great Missenden became a tad bit complicated along the way...
So, we left by train (
much like how we traveled to Wimbledon) from London's Marylebone station, BUT soon learned (like while we were already on the train) that our oyster cards, that we'd been using for all public transportation - the tube, the bus, the train - would only take us as far as the train station in
Amersham…
To be clear, the train that we were riding on WOULD take us all the way to Great Missenden (the next stop after Amersham), but London's public transportation system ended there in Amersham, and since we had used our oyster cards, we had only paid to ride to Amersham…
The way the oyster card works is that you tap it to start your journey and tap it as you exit at your stop, so it has to have both a start and an end registered or it will rightfully get all confused.
So, in order to be official, we had to hop off the train, tap our oyster cards at that station, and purchase a paper ticket to take us to the next stop (and then back to Amersham where our oyster cards would again take over to get us back to London). More on this later…
Basically, we could've played dumb tourist and risked being fined or jailed or whatever and just stayed on the train (because NO ONE even checked for any paper tickets anyway), but as I've stated before, I'm a rule follower, and don't really want to get in trouble in any country, especially a foreign one... I prefer to do things legally, always, but especially when I have my children in tow...just saying...
So, 30 minutes later, and feeling super official with our paper tickets in hand (that NO ONE even checked for), we hopped back on the train and rode about 10 minutes to the next stop...
FINALLY in Great Missenden!
I could live here... It is a precious little town...
Our first stop was at
The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre...
where, because of all of my research done before we left, I was fully prepared to take a few pictures, grab a quick lunch, and move on...
Sadly, as stated on the website, the museum suffered damage during flooding back in the spring and while the café and shop are still open, the museum is currently closed for repair at least until the fall.
Well, much to our surprise, when we got there, we learned that a couple of the exhibits are open, and the museum is operating on a donation basis while the other exhibits are being repaired...yay!!!
So, we grabbed an
adorably themed lunch - check out
B's "fizzlecrumper"...
and the girls' "swishwifflers"...
and set off walking on the
village trail...
taking us first to the church where Roald Dahl is buried, the
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul...
After all the dead presidents (and vice presidents and SC governors) that we've been chasing down for B over the years, this was really a moment for L...
From there, we walked on a little further to the outskirts of town to Whitefield Lane...
where he lived, and where his home,
Gipsy House, still stands. Years ago, his widow, Liccy Dahl, used to open up the garden for periodic tours.
This post includes some great photos from the past. Looks like we're about 5 years too late.
According to
this article, his granddaughter,
Sophie Dahl, now lives there with her husband, so the grounds are sadly (but understandably) no longer open for tours. Though we couldn't see the house from the road, we did enjoy picking blackberries nearby, which for my crew, was almost just as good!
From there, we headed back into town, passing a
couple of spots that inspired Roald Dahl's writing including the Crown House, his inspiration for Sophie's "norphanage" in The BFG...
and the petrol pumps that inspired the description of the garage in
Danny the Champion of the World...
before heading into the museum...
{"Mom, will you please make me black and white so I blend into the picture with Roald Dahl?"}
I was thrilled to see that one of the open exhibits was the recreation of his writing hut.
The hut, originally located on the Gipsy House property, was where he visited daily and did much of his writing the last 30+ years of his life.
The wacky assortment of contents (including shavings from his spine and part of his actual bone from his hip replacement surgery) were carefully conserved, moved in their entirety, and reassembled in the exhibit exactly as they had been in the original hut...
After touring the museum, we began our journey back after passing by the old Great Missenden Post Office, that in its heyday received hundreds of sacks of mail every year from Roald Dahl fans all around the world, sometimes up to 4,000 letters a week...
and popping in the local grocery for waters and this sweet treat!
Now, to make it back to London...
Remember that we have paper tickets to get us to the next stop, Amersham, and the start of the public transportation, and therefore, the start of our oyster cards working again...
So, when we got off on the way in and bought our paper tickets, the lady explained that we could either purchase paper tickets to get us all the way back from Great Missenden to London OR purchase the paper ticket to get us back to Amersham and then upon arrival, jump off, tap our oyster cards on the kiosk (to effectively "start" our journey on the oyster card) and jump back on...
Seriously? I was starting to think we needed to hire stunt doubles to help us pull this off...
There has to be an easier way.
Of course, the easiest way is just to buy the paper tickets for the whole way back, but that is a lot more expensive and we are cheap, and obviously love a challenge...
So, we decided to go for the jumping off, tapping, and jumping back on real fast plan... I mean, that's what you were expecting, right???
So, we decided that we'd all jump off (to keep from getting separated if our plan didn't go as we envisioned), and while I waited right by the train door with the kids, Hubby would take both his and my oyster cards, run really fast to the kiosk to tap both cards, and we'd all hop back on together... You see, with the oyster cards all 3 of the kids travel free... With the paper tickets, only 1 does...
Got all that? It cost about $4 for the 5 of us to get from London to Amersham on the oyster cards. It cost about $18 for the 5 of us to ride 1 stop and back with paper tickets, and another $4 or so to get us all back to London from there (on the oyster cards)...
It makes a difference, I tell you!
So, in the end, my super hero husband did it, and we all jumped back on the train (no stunt doubles needed), traveling by oyster card, and made it back to London, after a great adventure in Great Missenden...
not to mention, a bit of a great adventure in Amersham, too!
For the record, had Hubby not been fast enough (or had not enough people been getting on and off the train at Amersham, in order to make its stop a tad bit longer), we would've just waited on the next train...not as big of a deal going back to London, as we could've hopped on any public transportation train, and they come every few minutes... On the way in, we had to wait for THE train going to that next stop in Great Missenden, and those only come every half hour, hence why we got stopped in Amersham for awhile on the way in.
Thoroughly confused now???
Well, all we really need to know is that we figured it out!
When we made it back to the Marylebone station in London, Hubby and I decided to separate with the girls and me heading off to
St. Paul's Cathedral…
for the Choral Evensong service...
where no photos were allowed inside, but gosh, the music was just beautiful!
I sat in awe imagining the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles...
Hubby and B headed in a different direction to
The Art of Banksy, a truly one of a kind exhibit featuring a collection of work by the mysterious and anonymous graffiti artist known only as
Banksy...
We met back up at the hotel and made it over to the
London Eye for our scheduled ride. I think that the rain that came through earlier worked to our advantage, as the lines were just right, and we cruised right in, only having to wait about 15 minutes, a very welcome surprise considering the long lines we saw on
our first day in town...
It also cooled things down considerably and made the weather just right (sadly, just in time for us to leave). We seem to bring the heatwaves with us wherever we go - Maine in 2013, Alaska in 2017, and now London in 2018...
I'm starting to get a bit of a complex!
We all loved it, and it ended up being the perfect exclamation point at the end of our last full day in London...
{Goodbye, palace...}
One more little adventure on tap for tomorrow morning first thing...
More {EUROPE} 2018 Fun
