UK - The Quirky Side of London Town

June 25-26

Hello everyone!

London. A global megacity with a list of hits long enough to fill a book. With every major city, it has its quirks and strange places. 

Quintessential London

Floris perfume shop, whose products are used by the royal family,
politicians and celebrities, has been in the same place for almost 300 years

I was in London the day after arriving back in the UK from El Salvador. Partly it was to surprise a group of my Salvadorean students who were on a trip; partly it was to enjoy the charms of a city that has grown on me over the years.

Space capsule from the Science Museum

As a group, we went to the West End to watch Hercules

I didn’t used to like London, particularly before living abroad. Too big, too busy, too expensive. Whilst I don’t think that has particularly changed in the intervening years, I’ve come to learn more about its charms beyond the obvious attractions.

Bayswater High Street

Food choices in London are fantastic:
this was my Vietnamese lunch

One company that helps me do this is Atlas Obscura, who have produced a book and app outlining some of the more unusual places on our planet. For some countries, like El Salvador and Malawi, these are actually quite renowned; it’s the location itself that is quite obscure to a Western-leaning society. 

Lake Coatepeque: on the list, but one of
El Salvador's biggest attractions

The Karonga Dinosaur Museum in Malawi

Within global cities, however, they eschew places such as Buckingham Palace for places and things that, whilst having interesting stories, are a bit more…random. Before and after meeting my former Grade 5 minions, I went on a bit of an Obscura binge. 

Sekhmet, above the entrance to Sotheby's, is thought to be the
oldest statue in London and valued at over $4 million

Michael Faraday's laboratory is found in the Royal Institution,
where he discovered electromagnetic induction

Atlas Obscura has 563 different ‘sites’ for London, so being selective was important. I was staying near Paddington Train Station, so my adventure started there, just north of Hyde Park. Most of what you’ll see below are found in areas near central London’s largest park, taking in Paddington, Mayfair, Piccadilly and South Kensington. The latter is purely because I wanted to find out how much a pupusa would cost in London…

Hyde Park is 142 hectares in size

$15.20. Two in El Salvador would cost about $2.

The station has a statue of its most famous temporary resident. It is apparently ‘life-size’, which suggests Paddington Bear was larger than I assumed. In addition to this permanent statue, unveiled in 2000, there is also a Paddington trail that you can do, finding different ursine figures around that area of London.

There is another Paddington in Lima, Peru - 6000 miles away

Number 3 on the Pawprint Trail

Outside the station there is a relatively unknown clock, created by a Dutch artist called Maarten Baas. Called the Real Time Clock, there is a shadow of a man erasing and drawing the hands of the clock to show the time. There is also a fun clock found a bit more centrally, above the Fortnum & Mason department store. Like famous clocks stereotypically from Central Europe, figures appear on either side of the clock face and bow to each other.

The F&M clock is above the main entrance -
I wasn't there on the hour for the bowing 

As there are an incredible number of them in the city, there were always going to be some strange buildings in London. Two within walking distance for me are below. One is claimed to be the smallest house in the city, which is said to contain just two rooms connected by a ladder. The other looks perfectly normal from the front. Going behind the house at Leinster Gardens, however, will show you that the house is actually a false facade, built to conceal a large gap needed for ventilation in this section of the London Underground.

3'6" wide - 1.06 metres. It's just that middle section.

The front of 23-24 Leinster Gardens...

...and the back of the house.

London’s parks are an oasis, particularly when the mercury rises, and contain a few intriguing places. One is the Elfin Oak tree, found in Kensington Gardens. The tree is almost 900 years old, having been moved from Richmond Park in 1928, and is decorated with a wide variety of fantasy figures. Part of the reason for its continued existence is due to campaigning from Spike Milligan, a famous British comedian and writer.

Peter Pan having a story set in Kensington
Gardens added to the fairy idea of the tree

Elfin Oak is a Grade II listed structure,
which is high protection in the UK

A place with ‘tree’ in the name, but with a far more negative history, is Tyburn Tree Marker. Now marked by a small placard inside a traffic island found at Hyde Park’s northeastern corner, it was the site of London’s public hangings for nearly 600 years. The condemned would be granted a few words before their death. This freedom to say whatever they wanted without further recourse evolved into Speakers’ Corner, an area of Hyde Park in which famous figures such as Lenin, Marx and Orwell have spoken their minds.

The 'tree' was actually a triangular scaffold
that could hang 24 people at the same time.

I didn't get a picture of Speakers' Corner during
my run in Kensington and Hyde Parks

Politics and London are intertwined, and many other obscure references can be found across the capital. From the random Skanderbeg Memorial to the lamppost used as a KGB drop site, the UK’s largest city has many quirky monuments.

I was in London for the heatwave, though it was maintenance
works that meant I couldn't get a picture of the random Albanian general

This dead letter box is at 2 Audley Square. 3 Audley Square
was an office used by Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman
in the 1960s, who were casting for...James Bond... 

Many famous people have of course lived in the city - blue plaques are dotted around London to showcase where they resided. Famous houses I walked by included one belonging to the English poet William Blake, and two adjacent houses where two very different personalities lived (at very different times) during their time in the capital. Philosopher George Handel and musician Jimi Hendrix as neighbours? One can only imagine the arguments.

Blake lived here between 1803 and 1821, in relative poverty

Both Handel and Hendrix lived on Brook Street -
the houses now combine as a museum

Other notable people are given statues, though I had never heard of Beau Brummell before. The Three Figures feature a famous scene of a photographer working with Twiggy, a 60s British cultural icon. Down in South Kensington, meanwhile, the statue of Nell Gwynn possibly depicts the only celebration of a mistress to a Royal Family member in the city.

Brummell is possibly responsible for men wearing cravats in the nineteenth century

The third 'figure', out of shot, is a curious passer-by

Gwynn was apparently the favoured mistress of King Charles II
between 1668 and the King's death in 1685

Though not an icon, Nell Gwynn could have easily been clumped together with other paragons of their field for the purposes of this blog. You’ll see many red telephone boxes in London, for example, though I’m not sure whether any are used for their true function anymore. The original prototype is hidden behind the gates of the Royal Academy of Arts. Apparently the ‘K2’ design (kiosk 2, to be different from the kiosk 1 design used in other cities) was originally proposed to be silver and blue! Nearby, you can find the Burlington Arcade, a high-end luxury goods strip of shops that has its own unique police force: the Beadles. Some say they are the world’s oldest and smallest private police force.

The first was installed in 1926 - most
you see now are the K6 model

Look closely and you can see the uniform

The Beadles were created before London's
own Metropolitan police force

They’ve probably had to slightly change their methods, and things do change in this ever-developing metropolis. Some change: Michelin House, originally built to house the tyre company’s main UK headquarters, is now an area of offices, stalls and a market. Some disappear: the only remnants of St James’ Theatre are four relief panels found down a side street near where the original theatre stood.

Bibendum is the actual name of what
most people call The Michelin Man

The theatre was open from 1835 until 1957

But even if they are gone, are they truly gone? Tales of ghosts and hauntings have tantalised Londoners for centuries. From the townhouse at 50 Berkeley Square, where it is said that a young woman haunts the attic, to Mount Street Gardens, which were built atop a burial ground which was popular with 18th and 19th century scientists who needed bodies for experiments, there are plenty of places here where you can get your spooky kicks.

Prime Minister George Canning also lived here -
that's not related to the ghost stories!

Grave robbers would loot and sell from this burial ground

Or any kick, for that matter. That’s less than 20 of the 563 ‘obscure’ locations from Atlas Obscura. There are probably many more that the company are yet to discover. The more renowned attractions are also decent themselves, of course, but it’s always interesting to pull back the curtain on a place’s stranger stories.

London architecture

This house is on Berkeley Square - not in
the Atlas, but probably has a story 

I did go see some more famous places as well!

Love you all,

Matt

El Salvador - Yodelling in Salvadorean Switzerland

June 20

Hello everyone!

The first weekend of the school summer holidays is here. For me, it’s also the final weekend of my time living in El Salvador. A time to tie up loose ends, get ready for the final departure…or go on an almost 20km long hike…

Suiza...in El Salvador

At the top of Santa Ana Volcano

I was invited by some friends to hike up Santa Ana Volcano. I’ve already done this a few times, and actually did it last month.

El Salvador's tallest volcano

It's normally a 4 hour total hike for Santa Ana Volcano

The difference this time was the route up the volcano. There is a common route up the southern side. At the top, you can see inside the crater, but only in a certain section. This time, however, the route would start in a different place and end on the northern side.

Elapsed time was probably in the region of 9 hours for this

That's where most people stand - I took this picture from the other side

A nice 18km walk is how it was sold to me. I therefore turned my alarm back on for a 4:50am wake up, to get to the village of Los Naranjos. I would call it sleepy, but most places in El Salvador aren’t really rocking and rolling at 7am on a Sunday.

With minimal traffic, the drive took a little over an hour

Apparently Los Naranjos is known for its flowers

Soon after, we couldn’t hear any urban sounds. Instead, we were surrounded by birdsong and the occasional swoosh of the wind through coffee plants.

Starting our nice walk

This is not the volcano. This is a different hill, or cerro.

Having accepted this invitation very much last minute, I hadn’t really looked at our route. I was this gobsmacked when we arrived at a landscape that screamed Sussex UK much more than El Salvador. Rolling green hills, little green hedges, and very much not green cows. Lots of cows.

It's what I'll possiby see next weekend!

Marching cows

Perhaps the cows are why this particular area is dubbed the ‘Switzerland of El Salvador’. Living up to the stereotype, I did a bit of yodelling as we traipsed back through this area later in the day. It may have confirmed once and for all that any singing voice I possess would be classed as ‘low’. Speaking of low, a low moment for some of our gang was walking through this muddy section…

So lush and green!

I was so glad that this fate didn't befall me

If you're able to look up whilst in Salvadorean Switzerland, you get some tremendous panoramas. Hills, volcanoes, lakes, pockets of civilisation - all from a viewpoint where silence reigns supreme.

The mounds in the distance belong to Guatemala 

It's as if the log was placed there for this very reason

At this point the walk begins to head uphill. It needed to, really - we were heading to the peak of a volcano, after all. It became steep, and slippery, quickly. 

For some reason, no one batted an eyelid at this

Towering trees

Three hours in and we were still trundling up, with no end - or sky - in sight. I was beginning to regret not really thinking about what this hike would entail. Only bringing 1 litre of water and a small hydration drink, for example. 

Trees: good for the planet, and for holding when hiking uphill

Millipede

When the crisp blue sky became visible (briefly, as there was a bit of cloud around), it was often in between phases of crouching and squat-walking through sections of wildly overgrown vines and branches. Our guide resorted to using his machete at times to get us through.

Thankfully, the 35% chance of rain happened on the
drive home, rather than the hike

Very much the road less travelled

Through we got, eventually coming to a flatter, open space. We knew we were close to the top; however, in a big difference to the ‘normal’ route up Santa Ana, there was still a lot of plant life. This is possibly due to the wind, though very much an unconfirmed theory. Either way, it gave us one final obstacle to pass before reaching the crater rim.

Doesn't seem like the top of a volcano!

A random ditch that we had to traverse

The rim itself appears quite quickly from this side. It gives a very different perspective of the turquoise pool that shimmers inside the crater. It’s hard to tell from the more popular side, for example, that there is quite a wide bank of sand about halfway up the crater.

2,381 metres above sea level

It last erupted in 2005

What is the same is that the peak of Santa Ana Volcano offers a stunning sight. Whether you prefer the pool inside the crater or staring at Guatemalan mountains in the distance, it is an overload of visual pleasure being at the top. 

Greenery on top of a volcano??

Our hiking squad

After recuperating with lunch (my lack of preparedness being highlighted by the fact that my ‘lunch’ was a protein bar and a bag of nuts), we made our way back the way we came. More wonderful views, more weary legs.

Views of northern El Salvador and Guatemala from the top

Towards the end, we had to walk through a field of cows.
One of them wasn't overly happy about that.

Hiking this route is not something that many get to do. Seeing from the ‘other’ side of the peak of Santa Ana Volcano is not something that many get to do. Though my legs are currently screaming at me as I write this, it was absolutely worth it. Packing can wait - I’m obviously not done with El Salvaor just yet.

Suiza!

The Dark Side of the Volcano

Zurich...with volcanoes...

Love you all,

Matt