Deer Spotting at Richmond Park

Continuing our theme of walks on Sunday's... we spent last Sunday wandering around Richmond Park. Richmond Park is huge, walking around it took at least 3 hours, and we still didn't see the whole thing.

The weather in London is very frustrating at the moment. It continually changes from thundery rain to bright sunshine constantly throughout the day. So we were wearing jeans for our walk, and spent the entire day overheating because it suddenly got super warm and sunny!

Richmond Park is famous for the 300 deer that live there. We wandered around the entire park before seeing a single one. Right next to the parking lot at the entrance!

There are so many trees and thick bush, that it is almost impossible to spot any, so we were extremely excited to spot some before we left.

Animals at the Farmers Market

We're trying to save money at the moment since Bradley has had to go back to temping, so we haven't been doing too much lately. We're also going to Greece in 3 weeks, so we're trying to save for that as well!

We've been doing LOTS of walking round our neighbourhood and the City, and for the past few Sunday's we've been visiting our local Chiswick Farmer's Market.

It's not that great to be honest. Auckland Farmer's Market's are much better. The one down the road from us only has about 10 stalls, but we really only go for the great coffee and yummy hamburgers they do.

Last weekend they had a visiting farmyard, so it made the day a lot more interesting, petting sheep, cows and pony's.

Afterwards we sat in the park with our coffee's and watched the planes flying overhead on the way to Heathrow. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.

Sunday Stroll from East to South

A few weeks ago when it used to be sunny in London, we went for a lovely walk through the City from Spitalfields Market in East London, down to the Southbank. We wandered around the markets for a while and had lunch at The Breakfast Club, which as the name suggests, serves breakfast all day. Food was not amazing, but it was a cool place anyway.

London is such a walkable city. But really only when it's sunny. It's no fun to walk around when it's bucketing down outside.

It's very hard to leave the house on those days...

Rioting in London

So there has been rioting and looting in the streets of London for the past 3 nights. It looks like it's going into a 4th night tonight, since there are reports of new fires being started around London and we can hear sirens constantly.

It started in Tottenham, in North London, on Saturday night after a peaceful protest regarding a man who was shot dead by police last Thursday.

It was supposedly his family and friends protesting the shooting and has escalated into insane senseless violence and destruction. People aren't rioting and looting because of this man, they are using it as an excuse to steal and create fear, and thinking they're getting back at the rich people.

People are trying to explain it, or justify it almost by saying that these people are from poor neighbourhoods with no job prospects so what do we expect? But there's always a choice and there's never an excuse for destroying someones home or business.

Two people have already died, and at least 40 officers and 5 police dogs have been seriously injured. The police seem to be too scared to use force after they were criticised after the last riots, but those weren't on this scale, and everyone's worried if they let it go on another night that they won't be able to stop it. Vigilantes have started patrolling the streets of Enfield in North London, but it seems they're going too far the other way and there have been reports of them attacking any ethnic people they encounter.

It's just insane. Not sure why Londoners are running in fear from a bunch of teenagers, but it's already spreading to Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester.

Source: Daily Mail

Source: Daily Mail

Sunday stroll along the river

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week or so. Both Bradley and I have been really sick with a tummy bug, more me than Bradley really. He gets over things quite fast while I take ages!

It'a been quite nice weather in London recently, it was 28 degrees today. Lovely in the weekend, but hideous at night-time when it's too hot to sleep.

We took advantage of the lovely weather on Sunday by going for a walk by the river from Chiswick, across Barnes Bridge and then back across Hammersmith Bridge and home. The whole walk was about 10 km all up, so we were pretty exhausted by the time we got home. We stopped and got some ice cream on the way home to cool down!

It's about a 20 minute walk from our house down to the Thames, and it's really nice to wander along on a sunny afternoon.

Barnes is one of the nicest suburbs in London, also one of the richest. The houses there put Chiswick to shame. You could probably compare Chiswick to Parnell or Ponsonby in Auckland, and Barnes would be more like Remuera. Huge mansion houses, and BMW's and Audi's outside each one.

We stopped to rest by the pond in Barnes Green, and the geese followed us around the pond thinking we had food. We felt so bad that we left!