The London Underground has made more creative use of poster art than any other commercial organisation in the world. It all goes back to the early 1900’s. Frank Pick was Head of Publicity for the London Underground in 1908 and commissioned hundreds of posters by both popular artists and relatively unknown ones too. Man Ray, David Hockney, Edward McKnight Kauffer and Paul Nash are amongst the many artists who have produced artwork for the tube.

Therefore much of early and even current London Underground posters show how far you can travel on the tube and show the wonderful places you can travel to, particularly when you are not doing your normal 9 to 5 daily commute.

It’s beautiful posters which are so awesome in their ways and art. I miss the old days…

Click here for all the posters in order from 1908-1933. Enjoy!

It’s always difficult to keep pace with all the new titles appearing, so I’m trying to pick out a few that jump out and say “read me”. The first this week is the new Sandi Toksvig book called Chain of Curiosity [ Sphere £9.99 978-1847443458 ] which is a selection of her writings from her Sunday Telegraph column. I have to admit that I don’t often read the Sunday papers, so this would be new to me. I’ve always been a fan of Sandi Toksvig, especially when she chairs the “News Quiz” on BBC Radio 4. According to reports this new collection is bound to amuse: from the joys of World Pencil Day to the oddest way to meet a sticky end via school report vocabulary and applause etiquette. Sounds like a good one. Click here for a brief biography of Sandi on the BBC website

When Alan Titchmarsh was fifteen years old, all he wanted to do was work in a garden. It was a way of getting away from school where he didn’t seem to fit in. This is the point in his life where the new volume of his autobiography starts, called Knave of Spades [Hodder £20 978-0340953044]. But Alan decided he wasn’t just going to work in the local garden centre and be content with that – no, he wanted a challenge and this led eventually to the first steps in radio and TV via college and Kew Gardens. If you want to read about Alan’s earliest memories, then you will need Nobbut a Lad , which is still available [Hodder Paperbacks £7.99 978-0340831182]. Meanwhile Trowel and Error (awful title!)[Hodder and Stoughton £9.99 978-0340765432], seems to be a selection of memorable moments and episodes from his life so far.

Now to fiction and the WHSmith book of the week last week was the brand new thriller from Simon Kernick; Target [Corgi £6.99 978-0552156615]. If you enjoy a book set in a world of drugs barons, prostitutes, hit men and bent coppers, then this is for you. Kernick’s books are centred around the ganglands of North London where wrongs are “put right” by the barrel of the gun or a severe beating. Whilst you will find a sense of humour in the books, the main features are the dramatic elements – shoot outs, torture and the like – these characterise Kernick’s books. In this, his eighth book, Rob Fallon joins  his best-friend’s girlfriend, Jenny, in her apartment in London’s West End after a drinking spree. Then two men break into the apartment, try to kill Rob and carry Jenny off. The police don’t seem to want to know and Jenny’s father claims she has gone abroad. Meaty stuff.

If your stomach isn’t strong enough for that, then perhaps the latest from Marian Keyes might be more suitable: The Brightest Star in the Sky [ Michael Joseph £18.99 9780718149864]. The book opens with someone or something (the narrator) flying over the streets of Dublin and entering a block of flats, describing the domestic situations he/she/it finds. There’s an awkward family gathering in one flat and an argument between flatmates over the cleaning (or lack of it) in another. What this someone or something is you’ll have to read the book to find out – reviews have been a bit mixed, but mostly favourable.

Finally the Diagram Group’s 2009 prize for the oddest title of the year goes to The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais . It beat off several slightly racier titles for top place with a 32% share of the total vote. It is a nevertheless controversial title as the book was produced not by a living person, but by Professor Philip M Parker’s automated authoring invention, which produces a title on the basis of complex internet and database searches. Would that be cheating?

Next time – some new and recent local books

© Aric Wilt

© Aric Wilt

Frank,

This is on Austin Street in Forest Hills…half a block east of Yellowstone Blvd. Looks like “Kew” is Kew Gardens and the “Forest” is Forest Hills.

Aric

Well, this is a first. Thanks to the unending genius of iPhone apps, I’m blogging today from the train on the way home from Kew Gardens, where I have just paid a 13 quid entrance fee to kick leaves about.

I’m not particularly in tune with nature. Any friend will attest to this. At the sight of a doe-eyed fawn, I am less likely to melt in wonder than to wonder aloud if there are any good venison restaurants in the vicinity.

So I was slightly surprising to find myself philosophising over ducks this week (especially since there are few birds you can take less seriously than a duck). I spotted these ones gliding down a canal in formation; two males up front, two females tucked in behind them, and another male bringing up the rear (a sort of sweeper role, if you think in those terms).

Now, like I say, I’m no David Attenborough, but it was clear these females were being escorted by the men, who were forming a protective cordon around them. I don’t know what from – this being a rather trendy part of the city, perhaps they were nervous about paparazzi. Either way, they were clearly prized by their guys. And it made me feel a bit, well… Look, I haven’t got to the stage where I envy ducks, ok? But I’ll admit that the thought of being that looked after – that worthy of protection – is something I miss as a single girl.

Then a Bible verse came to mind, one from the psalms: ‘you hem me in, before and behind’. It’s one that I’ve often heard, although without much real understanding (doesn’t it sound a bit like God’s just rubbish at parking?) But it’s amazing how those web-footed quack-merchants can press home a point. However much I might want an entourage – or just a single male protector, preferably one who knows all sorts of martial arts – I don’t need one. God’s got me covered from all angles.

Autumn does not seem to have diminished the beauty of these gardens. St James Park and Kew Gardens are great places for a small bear to visit.

Domenica 25 ottobre 2009 Studio Aperto e Mistero presentano in prima serata (ore 20:25) su Italia 1 lo speciale “Gli alieni fra noi – I dossier segreti” condotto da Enrico Ruggeri.

CLICCA QUI PER I VIDEO

Per anni gli ufologi di tutto il mondo si sono interrogati sull’esistenza di dossier tenuti nascosti dai servizi segreti internazionali sugli avvistamenti di oggetti volanti non identificati.

Il Governo britannico è stato il primo ad iniziare a rendere pubblico il suo ricco archivio, mettendo on line alcuni dei documenti raccolti e analizzati in quasi 100 anni di studio.
I giornalisti di Studio Aperto sono riusciti ad entrare nel famoso Kew Gardens, l’archivio del governo britannico con sede a Londra e visionare gli X-files del Ministero della Difesa e hanno scoperto alcuni documenti eccezionali, non ancora consultabili in rete, che verranno mostrati, in esclusiva, domenica 25 ottobre, in prima serata su Italia 1.
Dagli archivi, rimasti segreti per decenni emergono migliaia di casi di avvistamenti di dischi volanti, incontri ravvicinati del primo e terzo tipo e un ricco catalogo di tipologie aliene….

….Nello speciale: video inediti, testimonianze mai ascoltate prima di persone che sostengono di essere state rapite dagli alieni e, per la prima volta, la documentazione che dimostrerebbe la presenza di extraterrestri sulla Luna, certificata da voci e foto della Nasa.
Gli X-files, tutti top secret, e alcuni addirittura scritti in codice, documentano casi che il Ministero della Difesa ha ritenuto in qualche modo attendibili e degni di essere analizzati e tenuti in considerazione.

Tra i documenti che verranno mostrati, tutti originali e compresi dagli Anni 40 agli Anni 70, le segnalazioni di due esperti aviatori della Royal Air Force, che raccontano di un avvistamento di un oggetto volante non identificato per due lunghe ore; decine di report di cittadini che hanno avuto incontri ravvicinati del primo tipo e che sostengono di essere stati rapiti dagli alieni; disegni e ricostruzioni di astronavi che il ministero ha catalogato e conservato perché non confondibili con velivoli o mezzi per esercitazioni militari.

E ancora, per la prima volta verranno mostrate in tv le immagini di un oggetto dalla forma squadrata che alcuni esperti ritengono si tratti di una navicella spaziale arenata sul suolo lunare.

Copyright © 2001-2009 AGM-LoSpettacolo
15 ottobre 2009
Link all’articolo originale

Altri articoli:

Gli alieni fra noi - Mistero (Italia1) -I VIDEO-

Un altro segreto degli Incas

Starchild: il teschio alieno di Lloyd Pye

Ufo nelle monete di Publio Elio Pertinace

L’era dell’incertezza

Rivelazioni non autorizzate e controllo delle masse

permalink: http://wp.me/plKDA-ny

Enclosed is a longish discussion of what I did this time around. I’ll get into most of this stuff in more detail later but for now, here is the gist…

As an aside, this was *not* my first trip to London. I went here this past April/May for 10 days and while I thought it was amazing I was a little overwhelmed and didn’t experience everything I wanted to. Speaking of which, you’ll probably find that I kept a rather frenetic pace, faster than what most people may want to take. In some cases, it really wasn’t *that* fast – walking down a London street sometimes becomes a tourist experience even if all you were doing was aimlessly wandering – but overall, yes, I am a mid-30s male travelling alone and as such was not tied down with “commitment” or “anything resembling a social life I needed to keep up”.

So, bottom line: if this inspires you to go to old Blighty and you find you can’t keep up, don’t feel bad. You probably weren’t able to keep up because you are cooler than I am.

Friday

Got in at about noon and boy, was I tiiiired. I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the couple weeks previously and was kind of hoping that this would have the effect of allowing me to sleep on the plane but no, that’s not how the world works. Took the Pecadilly tube all the way from Heathrow Terminal 5 to the Pembury Hotel, which frankly is a dump but that isn’t a totally bad thing – after all, I wasn’t in London to hang out in my lodgings.

Made two very, very big mistakes the first day. First was trying a doner kebab. I was later told by English friends that they are, in fact, awful, and this particular one was probably bad even for a doner kebab (I say “probably” because I did not try one again on the trip). The heat lamp for the spit hadn’t been turned on until I came in, which right there told me I probably should have chose something else. It was dry, the chili sauce barely made a dent into the cardboardy taste, and in the end there was just too much of it. I’m lucky I didn’t give myself food poisoning!

The other big mistake, the one that cut the day short, was that I decided to take a little nap at around 4. I figured I’d get up at 6 or so and go on out to Leicester Square or somewhere similarly nighty to experience that aspect of London culture. Yeah. I woke up at 11:30, tried in vain for a few hours to use the hotel’s wi-fi, and took a pill to get back to bed at 2.

Saturday

My first real day in! I decided to take the DLR down to Greenwich, only to find that the DLR was closed all weekend. A lesser person would have decided that the entire city was conspiring against them and hole up in their awful, awful hotel, but not me! I took the alternate bus service instead – complete with Greenwich-area traffic jam at 9 in the morning – and managed to take in the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory. Since I got there before those places opened I stopped in at a local pub to get some breakfast, which was interesting in its own right if you’re interested in the “little things”.

First up, English breakfast. What is your peoples’ fascination with beans? Eggs I get, sausages I completely understand, the mushroom I can figure out, even chips I can justify because they’re not too far off from hash browns, but… beans? I don’t wish to cast aspersions but perhaps this is why you folk are so regaled for your “ironic” sense of humor: just as you can never really tell whether an Englishman is taking the piss, you can also never tell whether he is about to let out a breakfast fart.

Second, it was again 9 in the morning and I counted more than one person in said pub relaxing with a fine ale. I don’t know what you call that in old Blighty but in the States that is known as “alcoholism”.

Anyway, the Maritime Museum and the Observatory were both very fine. The MM features a very large propellor from a (obviously) much larger boat that slowly turns and turns as though it were about to fall off and kill you. It also houses a 1930s era speedboat which is apparently famous for losing to a faster American boat (AHAHAHA WE WIN AGAIN LIMEYTOWN) and a good bit of memorabilia surrounding the Thames and, of course, England’s history of naval warfare. Oh, also the outfit that Horatio Nelson wore when he was shot at the Battle of Trafalgar. You can even see the hole in the jacket where the bullet punctured, although the dried blood on his socks is, I am told, from his secretary.

The Royal Observatory was, for me, even cooler, probably because I am a first-class nerd. Seeing all the clocks that were used to try and solve the question of how to figure out longitude was a very educational experience. Longitude is one of many things that we take for granted now but when you think about it, it’s not so easy to figure out when you don’t have a GPS or onboard digital clock (which you can cross-reference with at noon to figure out where, exactly, you are). Because I like to buy stupid touristy things, I got a couple of maps of London at the Observatory – one from the Tudor era, the other from 1902.

It was only around 1 even after I spent about an hour at a local Internet cafe so I took a bus down to the south end of the city to experience the Imperial War Museum. The IWR is a fantastic place, maybe the best museum in all of London (I have to give the British Museum negative marks for stealing so much of their stuff from other, poorer countries). There’s a good deal of very intricate coverage of the two World Wars, so if you’re a fan of that period you’ll likely go gaga over seeing so many relics in person.

If you’re not, it may behoove you to do a teeny bit of research for your own personal enjoyment. It’s not that the exhibits are not well-documented – if there is one thing the English know how to do, it’s make a museum – but I have found that you tend to reach a point of saturation when reading museum murals, after which point you start looking at a 1940s era Serbian Army uniform and saying to yourself, “yep, that’s a uniform all right. Just like that English one I just saw. Where is the exit?” Museums can be great places to learn but IMO they aren’t really there for first-level learning. It’s because humans generally find true understanding after experiencing a subject in a number of ways. Just as book-learning will give you an incomplete sense of a subject, so will learning only by looking at artifacts. If you remember only what you learned in high school, I’d go so far as to recommend you read a good, gripping non-fiction book about the conflicts before entering the War Museum. Stephen Ambrose’s “Citizen Soldier”, for example, has been reviled for its plagiarism and sometimes loose association with the facts, but it would not receive that sort of publicity if it were not also very, very good in its own right.

That’s about the extent of what I did on Saturday and I’ve already prattled on enough about this day too much. Next!

Sunday

On the bus ride on Saturday I’d spoken to an old friend from high school who had recently moved out to the City That Is Named London and we decided to get together this afternoon. I had the morning, then, all to myself. I strolled down Picadilly Street from the Circus towards Green Park. There are a good many places that are primarily shopping places for the rich that have become famous in their own right. The biggest example of this is The Ritz hotel, the place where the old song says that angels dine as well as the inspiration for the 1980s Taco hit “Puttin’ On The Ritz” (yes, I’m aware that it was a cover and perhaps the worst cover of “Puttin’ On The Ritz” ever). There’s also Fortnum and Mason, who sell impossibly expensive lunches and have a store facade that looks like they’re selling mermaids and dreams, and the arcades, covered avenues where you can purchase $600 sweaters.

I met up with Kaytie and her husband at Covent Garden, which we used primarily as a meeting-point but which is a sight to see in its own right. It’s a bit like Pike Place Market in Seattle, only older and a lot more dignified. It doesn’t have quite as much of the hippie anything-goes aura around it; it’s more of a place to antiques and clothing than organic food and left-wing news. Still, it does have its fair share of street performers and buskers and the facade is in and of itself reason to pick this place out.

They were torn between Spitalfields Market and Kew Gardens, so I elected to break the deadlock with Kew. Nothing against Spitalfields (which I never did get to see) but I know what an open-air market looks like and can see that sort of thing all I want at home. Kew Gardens, though… how does one best describe it? It’s like a zoo, only for plants. I was here in autumn so the leaves were beginning to change, which is a stunning effect with a park the size of Kew. There were greenhouses and little walking sections devoted to just about every climate that holds plant life in the world, from the American Southwest and its cacti (a location where children seem to enjoy running around at full speed – do they not have Road Runner cartoons in England?) to the Middle East to the South Pacific to Siberia. Some of the proceeds earned from the Gardens go towards a project that is dedicated to collecting the seeds of every plant on the planet. This is so that they can be replanted if they ever go extinct in the wild. Apparently this action has already saved at least one species that was destroyed in the Australia dust storms and fires this summer.

One minor bummerino: there is a very awesome area in Kew Gardens known as the Forest Walk where you get to walk around at the level of the treetops and experience the forest canopy. This, well, should have been a wondrous experience but I was in for a bit of a rude shock. When I was younger I was deathly afraid of heights. Anything over oh, around 20 feet in the air made my heart beat about twice as fast as normal and made me want to sit down right where I was. This fear seemed to have gone away with childhood but up at the top of the Walk I felt it all coming back. It didn’t help that the Walk swayed with the wind, or that they made it with corrugated steel where you could look down and see the ground far, far below.

That evening I got together with a couple of English friends I know from the series of tubes. We engaged in that most English of pastimes: kicking back a few pints and conversating. This was at a place near Turnpike Road; when I asked the station agent at Finsbury Park how much it was going to cost to get out there, we had this exchange:

Agent: (baffled) Why are you going out *there*?
Me: To meet a couple of friends.
Agent: Well, don’t be out there too long.

What was funny about this (and apparently hilarious to my drinking mates) was that Finsbury Park is not particularly well known as a posh, low-crime area.

A quick round of applause to Edmond Terakopian, a friend of Daniel’s, for putting together post on his blog about the Kew Gardens PRP exhibit opening. There’s a few pictures of the space, the big, gorgeous prints, some kind words about Daniel’s career, and even a neat little video interview of Daniel about some of the photos in it.

Thanks Edmond!

-JN

From now thru December 6th, Daniel has an exhibit at The Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, of photographs that he was commissioned to shoot for the Prince’s Rainforest Project award he received from the Sony World Photography Awards. The exhibit, in the Nash Conservatory, gives viewers an introduction to the sights, sounds and even smells of tropical rainforests and their destruction in the Amazon, the Congo and Indonesia.

Here is a list of directions and transit options to visit the show and Gardens at.

The opening of the exhibit garnered quite a bit of press coverage , some of it linked below:

The Guardian

CNN

The Independent

The Sun (with a fantastically-awful, cringe-worthy pun-headline)

-JN

This year is 250th Kew’s Gerdens anniversary. Kew was established by princess of Wales Augusta, and it is a remarkable place. It has the richest living collection of plants in the World but also the largest seed bank in the world.

The Seed Bank Project is an ambitious idea. It is trying to secure the 10 percent of the world plant species.

Flower of a Musa itinerans Credit:natureproducts.net

The 24,200th out of 217,800 species to be conserved for Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank is the Yunnan banana, Musa itinerans (pink banana) from China, marks a milestone today, as Kew Gardens celebrates collecting the seeds of 10 per cent of the world’s wild plants.

Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership is the largest ex situ plant conservation project in the world. The focus is on global plant life faced with the threat of extinction and plants of most use for the future. Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank partnership, consisted of 50 countries, aims to secure the safe storage of 25% of the world’s plants by 2020.

It took nine years the Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank to collect the 10 percent of the world’s seed but once the partnership starts functioning properly, the Kew’s Bank people believe that the rate of collection will increase and that would be able to collect faster another 45000 species around the world which would give us the 25 percent of the world plants.

Most of the collected are species that we have never heard of and some need special conditions and attention in order to be preserved and reproduced.

Kew scientists also develop techniques to help plants to be reproduced. One of these techniques is called plant tissue culture and can be defined as – growing plants from seeds or small pieces of tissue in a sterile environment (that means a laboratory) and on an artificial medium such as a petri dish or a lab tube. Under the right conditions and with the right hormones, these plants or seeds can be stimulated to produce new plants. Once they have produced shoots and routes they can then be taken out and planted in the soil.

Plant breeding

After office work this morning, we took off for the Thames River.

We had hoped to go to Bath, to visit the Roman ruins and hot springs there, but the train fare was 271 British pounds, or about $400, so we abandoned that idea.

So, to the Thames to see what boat rides may be available. We decided to go upriver to Kew Gardens and back again.

We boarded near the Houses of Parliament. One of the crew gave an entertaining running commentary on the sights. He pointed out that all around the Parliament, above the first story, the Lord’s Prayer in Latin is chiseled in stone “to ward off evil spirits,” in the narrator’s words.

The ride upriver was an hour and a half long. The afternoon was mostly sunny but cool and breezy, so we sat on the top deck in the open air until that no longer felt comfortable – then down inside the cabin, where we bought hot drinks and a snack.

Here is one view of the boat, river and the Albert Bridge.

We made the acquaintance of a fine young husband and wife from Montana.

At Kew Gardens, which is expansive, we walked a lot and still did not see everything. Here are a few scenes. The first is the Palm House.

The Gardens has a feature I have never seen before – Xstrata Treetop Walkway. The name says it all – except the detail that it is 118 stair steps into the sky!

At each observation point plaques gave tidbits of information such as:
There are 89 million trees in England.
Tree buds here are bursting open earlier because of global warmer.
A jay can bury 5,000 acorns in autumn.

We also kept seeing large birds in the sky.

At regular intervals of about 60 seconds. Noisier than a jay. Very strange.

On our transportation rides I am absorbed in reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I reading for the first time in my life. How Stevenson draws you in with the first long sentence! This continues for page after page.

Back home, I worked on office work and blogs until midnight.

It’s Boy Lacer’s last day as a free boy today, as next Monday he starts nursery, so to ‘celebrate’ we went to Kew Gardens. I like going to Kew Gardens with just Boy Lacer; Kew is a big place but we tend to always pretty much always follow the same route when we go as a family, as Girl Lacer likes to visit the glass houses first and following that there’s a whole list of things to tick off, whereas when it’s just me and Boy Lacer, he’s just happy to explore. So today we got off the bus a couple of stops early, to go through Lion Gate (instead of the main Victoria Gate), I was about to just type I’ve never been through Lion Gate before, but I’ve just realised the memory I’ve got of going to Kew Gardens when I was 11 (there’s a whole family story I’m not mentioning here), I’d always assumed that we’d gone through Victoria Gate and that the entrance had just changed dramatically in the proceeding 20 years but I’ve just realised (from recognising it) that it was Lion Gate we went through when I was a kid. Anyway, going through the smaller Lion Gate offers a whole new perspective on Kew Gardens; the entrance nearest the famous Pagoda, the area immediately behind the gate is a lot more wooded and less formal than the flower beds behind Victoria Gate. If you walk further west, towards the river and Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, the area becomes even more like natural woodland, so it was lovely seeing Kew from a different angle. Of course we still had to go up on the treetop walkway (lift still not working) as well. Boy Lacer was in his pushchair (except for the climbing up the steps to the walkway) and was acting as navigator, clasping the map and telling me random directions to go in!

I remember sitting on the 7 train and seeing an MTA ad which stated, “Take the international train” and on it was a picture of the 7 train. I thought to myself, how is that possible? Then I recall hearing a lame joke, which I would repeat at times:

“If your girlfriend is complaining that you never take her out, drive down Roosevelt Avenue for about 30 blocks, you’ll take her to Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines. Then tell her, look I just took you to so many countries, now you can’t say I never took you anywhere.”

As corny as it may, sound it still puts a smile to my face.

If you take one train car in any Queens line think about how many different Nationalities you would have in that car? Of course you can say the same thing for trains in the other 4 boroughs, duh we live in New York, but I don’t think you will find as many neighborhoods in these boroughs with targeted nationalities as you would in Queens.

Let’s take a small tour shall we. We’ll start off at Jamaica which is home to African Americans and Caribbean population. Maspeth & Ridgewood, Polish and other Slovak populations. Move into Kew Gardens, Forest Hills & Fresh Meadows, predominately Jewish areas. Let’s move west to Jackson Heights & Corona with it’s huge Latin American population there. Go South a bit to Elmhurst and you’ll enter to a  Middle Eastern / Asian neighborhood . Moving West again into Woodside you’ll have your Irish sections and of course going to Astoria, predominately Greek.

I did not want to go into every single town we have here in Queens but I think this just explains it enough.

Before going on holiday I wanted to check out the new London Overground trains, but did not get round to it, as I was busy with preparations. So finally, after returning to Southall on the 24th of August, I went out on a picture hunt on the 1st of September. First I thought to go to Willesden Junction where three of the four Overground lines meet, but I changed my mind and took the 120 bus to Hounslow, got off at Hounslow Central, walked to the new Hounslow shopping centre and took the H37 from there to Richmond. I had no pictures of any of the stations between Richmond and Acton Central, and if I did not meet with a new Overground train on this stretch it would be easy enough to go on to Willesden. As it happened I made enough pictures for two postings. This shows the trip I made, a second posting will especially highlight the new trains.       

Going through the ticket gates, with behind it a District Line train on the left and a new Overground train on the right.

 
The Overground train that I took to Kew Gardens

Nortbound platform at KewGardens, served both by District Line (Upminster) and Overground (Stratford) trains

Gunnersbury Station, looking north to the junction where the District Line trains turn right and the Overground trains turn left 

Gunnersbury with both a District Line and a new Overground train

South Acton with a new Overground train

 South Action Station

There is no bus connection at South Acton. I walked to Bollo Bridge Road where you can catch a 440 bus to either Turnham Green or to the Uxbridge Road and on to Stonebridge Park station. Had I gone to the other side of the station I could have walked to Chiswick Park (District Line). So when I came to Bollo Bridge Road I turned left and walked to Bollo Lane which took me to Acton Town. There I caught an E3 to West Ealing to do a bit of shopping, and from then a 607 back to Southall. 

For more pictures of the London Overground click on the link below :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12445197@N05/sets/72157614139538921/

I’ve just discovered that my picture (above) taken from a recent visit to Kew Gardens is now featuring in the Schmap London Guide! Click above to find out more.

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Consulta el índice Lugares del mundo para ver más zonas de Londres u otras ciudades
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Enclavado en el barrio londinense de Kew en Richmond upon Thames (municipio al suroeste de Londres), nos encontramos ante un inmenso jardín botánico salpicado de múltiples invernaderos de unas 120 héctareas de extensión. Dentro de este recinto también se encuentra uno de los más importantes centros de investigación y banco de semillas del mundo.

Mapa de Kew Gardens (Click para ver a tamaño completo)

Cómo llegar:

Desde el mismo epicentro de Londres, partiendo de Piccadilly Circus, tomaríamos en el metro la linea “Piccadilly Circus” hasta la parada denominada Hammersmith y luego la linea verde “District” hasta la parada Kew Gardens. Hay que tener en cuenta que se encuentra en la zona 4 del metro de Londres y que del centro del mismo hasta Hammersmith hay dos cambios de zona y de Hammersmith a Kew Gardens otras dos. El trayecto dura unos 20 minutos. Consulta el mapa del metro de Londres AQUÍ
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Palm House Parterre
(Arriates del Invernadero de las Palmas)

Son unos arriates hermosamente elaborados con gran cantidad de hermosas flores ornamentales, formando un conjunto de excepcional belleza. Además muchos de ellos estan ordenados también por utilidades (medicina, textil … etc)

Haz click sobre las fotos para verlas a mayor tamaño
En el centro, Agave Americana	Papaver somniferum
	Calendula sp.

Vista de la Palm House y el Parterre (Click para agrandar)

Palm House
(Invernadero de las Palmas)

Este invernadero cuenta con una gran colección de tipos de palmas (intercaladas entre especies muy diferentes de otros tipos de plantas). El ambiente dentro de él es húmedo y caluroso, invita a pensar en una selva tropical. Las plantas (sean palmas o no) están separadas por continente de procedencia. Muy destacables de este invernadero son las Acantáceas, las Bromeliáceas, Commemiláceas, Zamiáceas, Aráceas y Arecáceas; entre otras. Hay unas escaleras de caracol a ambos lados del invernadero, mediante ellas se alcanza a una platorma que lo rodea y desde la cual se pueden ver todos los árboles desde arriba.

Haz click sobre las fotos para verlas a mayor tamaño
Aristolochia gigantea (Aristolochiacea)	Calathea zebrina (Marantaceae)	Crossandra guineensis (Acanthaceae)
Neoregelia Cyanea (Bromeliaceae)	Interior de Palm House	Licuala spinosa (Palmae)
Hibiscus clayi (Malvaceae)	Ixora sp. (Rubiaceae)	Oplismenus compositus (Poaceae)
Zamia furfuracea (Zamiaceae)	Aphelandra aurantica (Acanthaceae)	Ananas sp. (Bromeliaceae)

Waterlily House
(Invernadero de los Lirios acuáticos)

Se trata de un pequeño invernadero de plantas acuáticas, sobre todo lotos y nenúfares; aunque también hay plantas de otros tipos, tales como hibiscos o diversos tipos de plantas carnívoras. Aquí un vídeo grabado por mí, el pasado día 6 de agosto , con una vista panorámica de este pequeño y hermoso rincón de Kew:

Por supuesto también algunas fotos del invernadero de los lirios acuáticos:

Temperate House
(Invernadero templado)

Es el invernadero más grande de los que se encuentran en Kew.  Este invernadero de temperatura y humedad algo más bajas que las de la Palm House, se encuentra lleno de gran cantidad de plantas ornamentales, medicinales, y todo tipo de plantas de clima templado de las diferentes regiones del mundo. Las plantas, en Temperate House, se encuentran ordenadas por familias, especies o divisiones; así podemos encontrar arriates enteros dedicados solamente a las Fuchsias (Onagraceae), otros a Solanáceas y otros a Helechos . También es destacable la colección de Ericas con la que cuenta este invernadero, así como la gran variedad de Proteáceas. Mención aparte, merecen la hermosa colección de helechos arborescentes. Además podemos encontrar una Jubaea chilensis (Arecaceae), la palma más grande las colecciones de Kew, de 17 m de altura, y que se encuentra en el centro de la Temperate House.

Haz click en las fotos para veras a tamaño original
Fachada de Template House	Scadoxus membranaceus (Amaryllidaceae)	Scaevola aemula (Goodeniaceae)
Erica mammosa (Ericaceae)	Template House	Template House
Template House Asteraceae	Template House	Template House Fuchsia (Onagraceae)

Y aún quedan más sorpresas, o esa cara de sorpresa se me quedó a mí al contemplar en la casa templada dos especímenes de Amorphophallus titanum (Araceae), uno con la flor aún sin abrir y el otro con la flor ya marchita.

Evolution House
(Invernadero de la evolución)

Este invernadero está diseñado como una actividad para niños. Se trata de un pequeño recorrido con diferentes carteles y plantas explicando desde el nacimiento de la vida hasta la aparición de las angiospermas, todo de forma muy breve y didáctica.

Pagoda & Japanese Gateway

En la zona suroeste del Jardín Botánico de Kew, se encuentra un pequeño lugar de ambientación japonesa, que cuenta, entre otras cosas y como atracción, con una asombrosa pagoda.

Pagoda

Rhizotron & Xstrata Treetop Walkway

Se trata de un mirador, situado en el centro del parque, al que se accede subiendo cuatro tramos de escalera y que permite ver el Jardín y sus grandes árboles dende lo alto. Está hecho como una especie de pasarela por la que se va andando para contemplar diversas zonas de Kew y en la que encontramos algunos relieves con datos básicos de fisiología de plantas, adornados con figuras.

Princess of Wales Conservatory
(Conservatorio de la Princesa de Gales)

Serie de invernaderos separados en zonas , en los que destacan las colecciones de orquídeas, helechos y plantas carnívoras.

Davies Alpine House

Pequeño invernadero de apenas unos metros, abierto al aire libre, y que consta de una curiosa colección de planta alpinas.

Kew Gardens Gallery

Son un par de salas, en las que están expuestos grabados y dibujos de plantas, casi todos de orquídeas.

Plants + People exhibition

Sala donde se montan exhibiciones cada cierto tiempo. Por mala suerte cuando fuimos, no había ninguna en marcha. En la foto, el edificio del fondo, tras el lago, es el Plant + People exhibition:

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Consulta el índice Lugares del mundo para ver más zonas de Londres u otras ciudades
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EUROPA

Gran Bretaña

• LONDRES
  • Mi Odisea Londinense ( del 3/8/09 al 9/8/09)
  • Jardín Botánico de Kew (Kew Gardens)

España

• SEVILLA
  • .
    

1. Party in a phone box: STOP TAKING PHOTOS OF ME!!!
2. Clissold Park: Glorious sunshine, can of cream soda.
3. Inglourious Basterds: Witty, funny, clever. A Tarantino triumph.
4. Kew Gardens: Flora, fauna, photographing. Sweet.
5. Sin Nombre: City of God with multiple narratives woven together. Tres bon.
6. Holiday shoppery hell. Argh…
7. Nice coffee and a sit down in Soho.

First up, I know that me going to Kew isn’t exactly news any more, I go at a bare minimum about three times a year, often more, but it’s always nice to show some photos.

This was my first trip to Kew in a while though, as I first mislaid my season ticket and then it ran out and I wasn’t going to renew as I knew we’d get our carers card soon and that meant free entry to Kew (amongst other things) for carers. So we finally got the card (about a week too late for our days out on during our staycation), so off we went.

It was also my first visit with my beloved iPhone, now I always like taking a camera around with me, but not so much so as to take my rather expensive 8MP camera, I’m happier using the camera on whatever phone I have (plus I’ve lost the memory card for the 8MP camera), but I think after switching from a camera, which ok was on a network with appalling customer service and didn’t actually do much (other than, um, make phone calls), the camera on it was really good, the iPhone camera on the other hand, not so good, so although I did take quite a few pictures today, most of them are either too dark or overexposed, they’re still serviceable, as in you can recognise what’s in them, they’re a record etc. etc. but not for this blog. So like I say, much as I’m virtually married to my iPhone, think I’m going to have to find that memory card so I can use my proper camera again!

Still, as you can see we got to see the Waterlily House, which thankfully is back to being the Waterlily House (last time we were there it was boarded over as an exhibition of orchids, I can take or leave orchids, but I do like my waterlilies. We also saw the Glass Houses which are the kids favourites and we went up the Treetop Walkway, where once again the lift was broken, so Boy Lacer had to walk all the way up to the top and then all the way down again, but it’s always lovely when you do get to the top, the horse chestnuts (I think?) were out in force this time. Then after a picnic lunch it was a trip to the soft play area, never my most favourite place, interestingly this time (for those that know Kew) the outside play area is now just a collection of muddy holes in the ground, there were signs out saying they were seeking funding for a new play area (which from the diagram looked quite good) and they said they’d hoped to have it built by late summer /Autumn, ummm no sign of building work, so I guess they haven’t got the money, which is a shame because at least the outside play area wasn’t as hot and stuffy as the indoor play area. However the indoor play area did have a bee hive this time, in a rather clever display where you could see the bees at work, for someone who has vague beekeeping fantasises, I quite liked that bit!

Then on the way home I made the ‘mistake’ of walking through their tiny garden shop and ended up coming out with six small herb pots and a rather large chilli plant for the, I think, quite the bargain price of £16 (the herbs together were £10 and the chilli plant loaded with chillies an even bigger bargain of £5.99). Some of my current herbs haven’t survived the season, the majoram (the one herb I never used) completely overwhelmed my herb planter, swamping and killing my thyme and then promptly died itself and my basil is determined to do nothing but flower, despite me keeping on pinching off the flower heads, so I have some more thyme, more basil, some parsley (which I had attempted, pretty unsuccessfully to grow from seed), apple mint, pineapple mint (I’m looking forward to some mint teas made with those) and umm something else I can’t remember right now, hopefully not more majoram! I haven’t brought any plants in a good while, so I don’t feel too bad, specially as all the profits from the Kew shops go towards conservation projects.

Mr. Lacer has gone back to work today, so the end of our staycation, I can now get on with some more efficient housework (as the number of bodies in the flat increases the efficiency of housework decreases).

It was a good staycation though in that I think we managed it quite well to stick to tourist attractions we didn’t have to pay for (although the Transport Museum was £8 per kid, it was free for adults), travel costs really mounted up a bit. Plus I noticed a disturbing trend, pretty much every free place we went to had an extra exhibit you had to pay for (if you wanted to see it), the Science Museum had a Wallace and Gromit thing for £30 for a family ticket, the Natural History Museum had a butterfly thing, which I think would have cost us a total of £15 to get into, luckily knowing they were there and knowing how much they cost made it easier to steer the kids past them, but I can imagine for the unaware, suddenly a recession busting day out to the museums suddenly gets £45 dearer. Even the Transport Museum, which we’d already paid £16 to get into, had an additional exhibition which would have cost us £10 per child. On the flip side, yes I know these museums need to raise money but the amount of extras seem, well, extra this year.

So, anyway, a bit more back to normal now, which is not only good for the state of this flat but also good for Boy Lacer, he needs his routine, a pattern to his day and apart from still obviously having bedtime, we’ve been pretty routineless and that’s been beginning to tell on him these last few days with the quality of his behaviour.

So, apart from housework, I’m going to take the kids to the extremely exciting supermarket and maybe get a chance to continue on with the skirt I foolishly started just before the staycation (I should have known I wouldn’t have been able to continue). I’m in a baking mood to, that staycation has made us broke and I therefore need my chocolate fixes a little cheaper. Tomorrow we’re seeing friends too, which’ll be nice.

Will also try and fit in Kew, now that Boy Lacer has finally got his carer’s card it means I’ll get in free, we live so close to Kew it feels almost like our back garden and I normally have a season ticket, so it feels like I’m getting in free (normally by the end of the season it is ‘free’ as the price of what I would have paid in entrance is way more than the price of the season ticket). However when the season ticket expired in June, I knew we’d be getting the carers card at some point, so I didn’t renew and consequently no Kew, I’ve missed the place.

And then of course there’s getting ready for camping . . .

I’ve just finished this commission for a private client and I thought I’d share it with you. Photographs have been taken at Kew Garden and the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, these have then been lovingly cut out and reassembled to create my own hybrid plants. At some point this will be published as a poster, I will let you know just as soon as it’s available.

I love going to Kew Gardens because you can spend a whole day there. Go early in the mornings, have a picknick for lunch and get home in the eves.

Nearest Station: Kew Gardens (Overground, District Line)

Admission: £13 adult, child goes for free (there are seasonal tickets available)

Opening Times: March – August 9.30 – 5 and August – October 9.30 – 4

Visit their website.

See also my other posts in the category Being a Nanny maybe you find some more interesting ideas. Also feel free to comment on the article and leave your opinion.