2011 - Day Out 30: London - Lord's Mayor Parade

Date: Saturday 12 November 2011

Continuing our weekend in the Capital, we plan to visit the Lord's Mayor Parade which will be taking to the streets of London, and we also explore new places in the city.

After a sleepless night, I decide to get up just after 0715am and first on the agenda is a "fresh air" break, so I get myself to the front of the hotel. As I light up, I decide to have a little excursion whilst I smoke, and I decide to have a walk around to the back of the building which is opposite the hotel, after a couple of minutes I am at the back of the building and I am shocked at what I see before me, I see the East India DLR Station, I think that Mr UKBuses needs to learn to read a map after he took us the long way around to the hotel last night. After finishing my "fresh air" break, I go back to my hotel room to freshen up before breakfast. After my shower, I head down to reception where I meet up with Mr UKBuses so that we can have our breakfast before the day ahead. After a big helping of sausages and bacon, I decide to have a yoghurt, and another, and whilst Mr UKBuses is up I ask him to bring me another one, well it is an "all you can eat" breakfast. Breakfast finished, we head up to our rooms to freshen up before we start the day and meet back in reception ten minutes later. As there is no DLR in operation today, we have to make our way to Canning Town, we walk around the corner from the hotel so that we can catch our first bus of the weekend for the short journey to the Canning Town interchange. As we make our way past the hotel, we come to a crossroads, and Mr UKBuses is up to his old tricks again as he carries straight carries on. We turn back and turn right to where the bus stop really is, we only have to wait five minutes for First London Service 309 to turn up and take us to Canning Town.

As we arrive at Canning Town, we take a few photographs of the buses in the station before we make our way down to the tube to get us to our first destination of the day. We decide to visit Stratford, a place we have been trying to get to on previous visits but due to various reasons we have never got there. We make our way to the tube station where we get onto the Jubilee Line, and six minutes later we arrive at Stratford, I decide to get a photograph taken (above left) as a memento of our visit and to say that I have finally got there. We make our way out of the Stratford Interchange and it is one of the best interchanges I have ever visited, the bus, rail, tube and DLR services all meet in one place. The place is spotlessly clean, easy to navigate and all round passenger friendly. The bus station is currently being redeveloped, but from what I can see from the works that have already taken place, the bus station will be up to the same standard of the combined tube and railway station (see picture, right). At least one of the features of the new Stratford bus station will be exactly the same as the Stourbridge Interchange back home, and that is what I now call "The upside down umbrella", Stratford will have more when finished. We have a quick look around Stratford before we head back to the tube station. We arrive on our platform just as a tube train pulls in, we now make our way on the Central Line to Bank, or so we thought as the tube train is having problems with shutting it's doors, and after several attempts, the driver announces that the train will have to be taken out of service. As we wait a National Express train pulls in on the adjacent platform, but as we make our way to catch it, a tube train pulls up, so we get on board and we finally make our way to Bank.

We leave Bank Station and as we arrive outside of the entrance to the station, the crowds have already gathered along Poultry ready for The Lord Mayor's Parade. A man walks past selling flags and whistles, so I purchase a whistle as insurance for any "fracas" music that may be played over the rest of the weekend. We stay in Poultry to watch the parade take place. There are over 150 participants taking part in the parade, Mr UKBuses has taken video footage of mostly half of the floats that have passed. Whilst in the crowd, I am a sitting target for a couple of the floats. The first float that decides to throw something at me is a bean bag, it hits me right on the brow of my head. About ten minutes later another passing float decides to throw something at me, but this time I can forgive them as about half a dozen chocolate sweets decide to bounce of my noggin, Mr UKBuses is busy taking some video footage, so I grab the opportunity to pick up his share of the sweets and eat them while the rest of the parade goes by. During the parade, we see TV presenter Claire Balding go back and forth in front of us a few times as she interviewed people taking part in the parade. After an hour from the start of the parade, the final float goes past. We quickly make our way to the Bank tube station, before the rest of the crowds, and it is back onto the Central Line to Oxford Circus where we change onto the Victoria Line to take us to Victoria Station. We had planned to have lunch at Victoria but we were still a bit full from our big breakfast, so after taking a few photographs in the bus station, we decide to try out a new J D Wetherspoons in London (see picture, left) and it is situated in Victoria Station. It is a small Wetherspoons due to its location, but it is also a nice place to relax with a drink whilst waiting for a train. After we finish our drinks, we decide to deviate from the plan, as we are ahead of schedule.

We make our way to Victoria bus station, but on our way we decide to become proper Londoners, and we visit the London Transport Ticket Office at Victoria railway station and purchase an Oyster card for future trips to London, we pay £5 deposit for the cards and £5 for the first top up. This will save us the hassle of buying a one day travel card when we arrive in London each time, and we can top up our Oyster card online before we arrive in London. The card takes a standard fare off your card each time you scan it as you board a bus or tube, but as you reach the level of the one day travel card on the day of travel in London, no more fares will be taken off, unless you travel to the next zone and the same will happen. We get back to our day in London using our standard travel card and we deviate from the plan by having a ride on the buses of London as we are ahead of time. First off we catch the Go-Ahead London 436 from Victoria to Vauxhall. As we arrive in Vauxhall, we promptly catch the Go-Ahead London service 87 from Vauxhall to Trafalgar Square. At Trafalger Square we catch Go-Ahead London service 12 to Oxford Circus, and we get back onto the original plan. We have a walk down the busy Oxford Street through all of the shoppers doing their Christmas shopping. We get to our stop and wait for the next bus we are going to catch, as we are waiting I have to help a distraught French woman who is desperately trying to pay for her bus fare using the on-street ticket machines. The bus driver is getting irate too as he is starting to beep his horn, which makes her panic more. Whilst this is going on, our planned  First London service 25 arrives and as Mr UKBuses boards, I nearly miss the bus, but I do get on....just.

We plan to go to Mile End, and en route we are diverted due to the Lords Mayor Parade and after about half an hour Mr UKBuses is up to his old tricks and gets off the bus early, very early as we get off at Aldgate and decide to take our last photographs of the day in Aldgate bus station, a great place to take photographs as we found out on our last trip to London. After taking our photographs, we cross the road to Aldgate tube station and use the tube to get to our originally planned destination of Mile End. I also get the opportunity to video my favourite thing about the tube - that is when the train comes out of the tunnel into the station, this can be seen in the video below (the lady starting to take her clothes off was an added bonus). We leave the station for a couple of minutes to see what the area is like, I think we may have been before on one of our previous visits, but we go back on the plan and we get back on the tube and onto the District Line to Temple. We make our way out onto ground level and there are quite a lot of people there already waiting for the Lord Mayors Parade fireworks, which are due to take place at 1700pm. A trip to the toilet is needed desperately by me, but we can not find any in the area, we decide to have a walk around the corner, and hidden away is a pub, which we enter straight away to use the facilities. Mr UKBuses leaves the toilets before me and decides to use a different entrance, I spend a few minutes searching for him, and notice the other entrance, and as he spots from across the road, he frantically waves his arms to get my attention. Once I catch up with him he asks me where have I been, I cannot print my response publicly.

It is decided that we won't stay and watch the fireworks, so we have a walk past the tube station and eventually we end up at a bus stop outside the Royal Courts of Justice. We wait a few minutes when Metroline London service 4 turns up and takes us to Waterloo station. We decide to have a bite to eat and we use McDonald's and we both order large meals, which also means that we are entitled to a limited edition Coca Cola glass. We spend a few minutes at our table to let our food settle, and we stay in the station and we use the Jubilee Line which takes us straight to Canning Town. We walk from the tube station to the bus station and we get our DLR rail replacement bus back to East India DLR station, where we walk the correct route back to the hotel, we arrive at 1845pm, so we head to our rooms so that we can freshen up and arrange to meet back at reception in an hour so that we can visit a few pubs on the evening.

It is 1945, and I head down to reception as planned and find Mr UKBuses already sitting there waiting for me, he informs me that he has been there for some time, so we head straight out and back to the East India DLR station to catch our rail replacement bus back to Canning Town Interchange. From there we head back onto the Jubilee Line to West Ham, where we change onto the District Line where we alight at one of our favourite places in London, Whitechapel. We are on the lookout for a new pub in the area, The Kray's local, "The Grave Maurice". From previous research on its location, we turn right as we head out of Whitechapel tube station, instead of our normal left, and walk down towards Aldgate. On the way I stop to get some cigarettes from a newsagent whilst Mr UKBuses stands outside. We carry on down the road, and Mr UKBuses thinks its the other way, so we catch a First London service 25, back up to our London regular, The Blind Beggar. This is Mr UKBuses first time in this pub on a night time, and it is a different atmosphere to our normal daytime experience, but the company in the pub is still good. Whilst we have our drinks, I get the Blackberry out and try and do some research on The Grave Maurice, and later find out that the pub has closed and is now a "Paddy Power" betting shop. The crazy thing about this was that Mr UKBuses was standing outside of it as I visited the newsagents as it was next door, and we ended carrying on towards Aldgate without realising. Drinks finished in the Blind Beggar, we walk to the nearest bus stop to catch our bus to the next drinking location.

We wait about ten minutes and a First London service 25 bus turns up, which takes us on the short journey down Whitechapel to Aldgate East tube station, from here we try to retrace our steps from a couple of years ago down Commercial Street, after a ten minute walk, we arrive at The Ten Bells, a pub which is supposed to have been the regular haunt for Jack The Ripper. We arrive and there are a load of people outside and that is because this pub is popular, but the pub is too small to accommodate these people. Since our last visit a couple of years ago, they have moved the bar from its original location to the centre of the pub, which has also made less space available for customers, a crazy idea if you ask me as the pub had capacity problems before the change. For me, the movement of the bar has also ruined this pub for me, as it has ruined the atmosphere of the pub and also it means that the pub doesn't have the original "Jack The Ripper" days feel to it. As we are getting cold as we are with the crowds outside, we drink up and make our way to the bus stop, in which First London service 67 arrives to take us the short distance to the Aldgate East tube station. We jump onto the District Line, where we change onto the Central Line to Stratford.

We arrive in Stratford for the second time in one day (probably because we enjoyed the visit earlier and we simply had to come back) and as we walk through the shopping centre, opposite the interchange, it takes us to the main High Street area of the town and we decide to have a drink in "The Longthorne", previously a Yates pub. A trip to the toilet is needed first before purchasing any drinks as we are finding it difficult to walk as we are bursting to go. We choose a seat by the window, to rest our feet for a while. Drinks finished we make our way back to the interchange, and find out where we need to get our DLR rail replacement buses to get back to the hotel. We see a few pulled up at one stop and upon closer inspection these are the buses that we need to catch. We catch the bus to Canary Wharf, passing through many DLR stations, I do get excited when we pass Devon's Road, this was the DLR station I had to use when I had to visit the offices of my work when we had a presence in the London area.

We arrive at Canary Wharf where we have a little walk to get to the Canary Wharf tube station. From here we get onto the Jubilee Line, but before we catch our train, Mr UKBuses has to visit the toilet, which I tease him about as he was stating that I was the person who has the bladder trouble, revenge is sweet! We get on to the tube and shortly after we arrive at Canning Town, where we catch the DLR replacement bus to East India DLR station and finally arrive back at the hotel. Mr UKBuses goes to bed, whilst I have a drink in the hotel bar where I catch up with emails on my Blackberry, before finally climbing into bed myself.

An action packed day was had by both with new locations visited. Mr UKBuses finally had a night time experience in The Blind Beggar. We look forward to our last day in London, and hope it will be as enjoyable as today's activities.