No rain
today, in fact we woke up to rather a nice day, if a bit cool. So as it was a
weekend The Man put lunch together for us while I finished off the morning
chores and soon we were on our way down the hill to the station to catch the
Southern to Victoria Station. We decided it was high time to take advantage of
our membership to English Heritage and see what there was to be seen in London.
Apsley
House, just up from Hyde Park Station, that’s what there is to be seen. OK so
you probably haven’t heard of Apsley House, but I bet you have heard of the
Duke of Wellington. Yes, him that discovered the Wellington boot. The house was built
between 1771 -1778 for the Apsley family, hence the name. By 1807 it had come
into the hands of the first Duke of Wellington and there it firmly stayed until 1947 when
the cost of running the place became too much for the family coffers. It
was then that the current Duke decided the best thing to do was gift it to the
government, provided the family could keep a few private rooms which they still
hold today. Death duties and increasing costs meant that National Trust and English Heritage were gifted many fine old buildings and their contents.
We spent
a couple of hours wandering through the rooms, some with the most incredibly
ornate ceilings, their walls just covered in magnificent paintings. Then it was
defiantly time for lunch so we walked across the road to Hyde Park and found
ourselves a nice seat in the sun.
While we
ate we were visited by a very cheeky squirrel and a bold Blue Tit that perched
on the fence just behind us.
Hunger satisfied
it was still a bit early to head home, so we did a bit of exploring away from Hyde
Park and found ourselves in Berkley Square, unfortunately there was not a nightingale
in sight. What we did see was a group of carved heads, and very nice they were
too.
Made from some sort of conglomerate marble, probably volcanic in origin
On a walk around the square we wondered what the little crowd was outside one
of the shops so being nosy we investigated. It was the Bentley dealership.And sitting
in pride of place was a beautiful white Bugatti, only £1000000 and would you believe
it, it was already 2 years old. Not a bad
price for a used car.
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