Four days of vacation left in December shows poor planning because just about all travel packages last a week and you need 5 days of vacation. Actually, really good planning means that you have no vacation left by the time December comes around. Travel in December is twice as expensive than at any other time of the year, most places are cold and miserable and the warm places are all far and very expensive. Luckily in winter, London is (after Lisbon) the warmest European capital and there are lots of things to do. So I decided to split my four days into two packages and take Mondays and Tuesdays off, which when combined with the bank holidays on 25 and 27 translated into three day working weeks for the rest of the year. Dry run for semi-retirement?

Having finished the Thames Path, I needed to look for another road to follow. I wanted something easily accessible so that I would not have to spend half a day on trains and busses getting to the trail head. The London Loop seemed to satisfy the bill: consisting of 15 segments, each 15-20 km long, it goes in a big circle around London and all of its segments can be reached by the tube or commuter train.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.)

I started by picking the western part of the loop, starting close to the Heathrow airport and ending in Uxbridge, both the beginning and end short walk from the stations on the Piccadilly line. It was quite a different experience than the Thames Path, which was easy to follow. This was more like urban orienteering, walking with the guide book in hand and trying not to miss any turning points. The area was noticeably colder than the center of London with frost on the ground. The idyllic appearance of the train is deceiving, because most of it lies very close to the airport. I went to school close the Dorval airport in Montreal and so I thought I could imagine what it is like to live near one. I was wrong: Heathrow is pure hell. It is not that you have a plane coming overhead every few minutes, you can constantly hear the noise of jet engines. I do not know if they were just testing them, warming them up or repairing them but the noise was loud and constant. Would make a great place for a school for the deaf. It was touching to see posters where the residents were against airport expansion, which would add a third runway. How could things possibly be worse?

I thought that I have enough adventure for a while and so I decided to spend the next day off in the center of London. It is nice to see the city a few hours later than I usually do when I go to work. It is light but it is also quieter, because most people are at work by mid morning. I had a list of places I had not seen yet, but there are interesting things everywhere. The “no urban planning” approach to urban planning sometimes results in an architectural surprise on every corner. St. Paul’s Cathedral was one place I had not seen yet in spite of our nearly 2.5 years in London. It was time to correct that oversight. I found the cathedral itself more interesting from the outside than from the inside. However, the real reward of paying the 8 quid entrance fee is that one can climb the 520 steps to the top of the dome. There is one circular gallery from which you can see the inside of the dome, then few more steps and an outside gallery and then another, very narrow galley at the top of the dome. Excellent view of London, but for someone who does not handle heights very well like me, not a totally comfortable experience.

Central London has more modern architectural nuggets as well. The Lloyds building looks like something from the movie set of Alien and the gherkin building (actually inspired by the shape of a sponge) speaks for itself. One of the best bargains in London is the daily bus pass. For 3 quid you can ride all the busses you want and the bus network is huge, it reaches way beyond the terminal stations of the tube. I have been thinking about doing this for quite a while and this was a good time to give it a try. First I took a bus from Kensington across the river to Clapham Junction. We often see it from the train and I wanted to see it from the outside. It is supposedly the larger train station (in terms of the number of passengers passing through every day) in London. Then I took another bus to the center of London and from there I headed east. First stop: Whitechapel. Historically the destination of immigrants, Jews during the reign of Jack the Ripper, today it is Moslem. Nice street market with exotic vegetables, clothing, kitchen paraphernalia etc. And from there further east, Stratford (not the Shakespearean one but the other end of the Piccadilly line) and then on to Ilford. This is far east. Sitting on the bus I realized all of a sudden that I did not understand what people were saying. I could catch a word or a short phrase in English, which confirmed that they were still speaking English, but I was not able to understand what the conversation was about. When I asked about this at work I was told that it was probably due to a mixture of cockney and immigrant dialects. It made the trip seem all that more interesting. The only drawback is that this is not a rapid means of transportation. The trip to Ilford and back took most of the day. The initial idea of buying a ticket and seeing all of the outlining parts of London was clearly impractical. But it was fun and if I have another day and nothing better to do I may do it again.