Hampton Court Palace and Gardens (14 Apr 25)

I have been a member of Historic Royal Palaces for a few years mostly because Hampton Court is close by (half an hour by bus, under an hour to walk) and also because my two sons live close to Tower of London. As with Kew Gardens, I use my membership to make multiple short visits often as part of a longer walk.

The excuse this time was the annual tulip festival.

Arriving just on 11am meant it was coffee and cake time which gave a good structure to the visit with the cafe at the north end of the extensive gardens and the formal beds at the south end, A pleasant stroll through the busy side garden, the one that leads on to Home Park, led to the magnificent view of the frontage facing the river and the largest of the formal gardens.

Next to the large formal garden is another glorious garden kept delightfully pristine and peaceful by not allowing visitors inside.

 

Throughout the gardens there were stunning borders to savour. This one is also on the south side, towards the end of my short tour, and there were similar displays in several other places.

I was at Hampton Court for a couple of hours, all of which was spent in the gardens or the cafe. It was a couple of hours very well spent and I will be going back for more soon.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 at Richmond Theatre

Most plays at Richmond Theatre interest me and most performances of anything by Shakespeare do too so the combination of both was unmissable. 

As usual, there was an ATG opening night offer and so I was able to get seat Upper Circle A12 for just £31.5. However, on the night the Upper Circle was closed, presumably because of low sales (for some shows they make no attempt to open the upper level), and I got bumped up to Dress Circle B6. Luckily there was no one tall in row A.

I had not had the opportunity to see The Merchant of Venice for many years and most of what I remembered was from school days. Because of that I do not know how much of a shift they made in moving it to England in 1936 when Mosley's Blackshirts were rampant.

I suspect that quite a bit was cut, to give more prominence to Shylock but this is just a suspicion and most of the text of this play was most definitely Shakespeare.

I understand why they set the play when and where they did but to end with the populous standing up for the Jews jarred a little when Shylock had refused any amount of money to save Antonio who was portrayed as an honourable fascist.

The messing about aside, this was a good Shakespeare with a good cast in which Joseph Millson shone as Antonio. Everything about the performance was good enough to let me forget the updating and to simply enjoy one of Shakespeare's more notable plays.

Walking 15km from Sloane Square to Canada Water

My preference for walking is to go from A to B where A and B are easy to get to by public transport, B is some distance away, and the bit in the middle includes as much new territory as possible. 

My walking companion prefers parks and familiarity. This walk was an attempt to do both.

We started at Sloane Square because we can get there by tube for free from 9am and ended at Canada Water because that took us across south London which is not our usual territory and also through Burgess Park which is more familiar.

The direct route was not that long so I took us south first and after I made him walk down a previously unwalked road in Chelsea we crossed the river into Battersea Park, probably my favourite London Park.

From there it was largely a question of me trying to persuade my colleague to walk down unwalked roads without making it obvious that we were avoiding the obvious route.

I really enjoyed seeing new parts of London such as the grand houses in Stockwell Park not that far from an enormous new development of identikit flats.

One highpoint was coming across a large mural at a school which had a touch of Niki de Saint Phalle about it and even better was finding the artist there just finishing it off so I was able to pass on my admiration for it. 

Unfortunately I did not pause to take a photo of that mural but I did remember to do so later on and this mural is in St James's Road, Bermondsey which we passed towards the end of our jaunt.

My preference for walking is to go from A to B precisely because of walks like this one.