I have walked every street in London Borough of Richmond

I have always walked for fun as well as for transport and I like to explore new places. Using MapMyWalk allows me to record each walk and CityStrides then pulls all these together to produce a cumulative map and to produce statistics for each city/region.

What finally pushed me to walking every road in Richmond was paying for the CityStrides premium service which highlights all the unwalked places with red dots. I was then able to visit specific areas, e.g. Barnes, Fulwell and Hampton, and clear all the red dots there. It took several visits, e..g I went to Barnes four or five times, and a lot of time walking down dead-ends.

CityStrides tells me; There are 1,458 streets in London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, totalling 403 kilometres. My first activity to complete a street was on 6 June 2011 and It took a total of 404 activities to finish, totalling 4,707 kilometres.

My next most walked areas are Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and City of London and I am just over 50% on both. I do not expect to fully walk either area because I do not go to the southern part of Kingston very often and the GPS in the City is so wild it is hard to hit the red dots.

Player Kings at New Wimbledon Theatre

The opportunity to see Ian McKellen in a Shakespeare play close to home was too good to miss. It was expectedly pricey so I went for the Upper Circle where my ATG membership card got me seat A11 for a measly £25.

It was billed as a version of the two plays Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 but, other than the early start time of 6:30pm, there was no clue of the runtime and it was only when a friend got to the theatre just ahead of me and discovered that it was almost four hours! Luckily I am used to long plays and had been well stocked at the usual venue, Mai Thai, beforehand.

First the bad news. Henry IV 1 & 2 are not Shakespeare's best work with the two unrelated themes, the pure history of Henry IV and the tomfoolery of the Falstaff. There were some first-night issues too where the main problem was the safety curtain that was lowered at times for dramatic effect and when it did it hid half the stage, or more, for those of us in the cheap seats.

The good news was the smooth staging (too low curtains apart) which used curtains pulled from the sides to make the scenes changes seamless allowing the stories to move smoothly.

The best news was the performances. Of course Ian McKellen was good but he was in a supporting roll and praise must also go to Richard Coyle as Henry iV. The last time I saw him on stage was in To Kill a Mockingbird. It was also good to see a cameo role by Robin Soans.

The performances, and the staging, were more than enough to make the four hours fly past entertainingly. ot a great night, Henry IV was never going to be that, but it was certainly good.