London Calling

This is not the term to be heading backwards and forwards between London and Cambridge, but nonetheless, that's what I seem to be finding myself doing and I spent the weekend just gone in our illustrious capital city. And a busy weekend it was too.

I made the decision on Friday night to get up ridiculously early on the Saturday, to catch the 06:45 train down to London to go to a bakery in Islington for what the Guardian recently said was the 'best breakfast in Britain'. It was part-established by Dan Lepard (the baker whose internet forum led to the bread baking weekend I spent with a group of 15 or so other like-minded people in Bethesda in Wales last summer). So off I trotted through Islington, past estate agents advertising places at an average of around £750,000 to pay just a bit less than that for breakfast. The French cinnamon brioche toast with Greek yoghurt and berry compote was indeed very good, but at £10, I'm not sure whether it was the best value in Britain.

There's much more of that to be had in Borough Market, a place that really proves that the saying 'you can have too much of a good thing' is just plain wrong. I can't pontificate enough about how much I love this place, so I won't even try. But suffice to say, walking around so many tempting things, I was sorely regretting my Islington breakfast. If there's one thing to be said for living in London next year, Borough Market is probably it.

Afterwards I had to visit Westminster to deliver something to Cecily's parents before meeting Lisa for a much too long a delayed catch-up lunch in the coffee place opposite the Royal Courts of Justice. I then spent the next three hours at a talk on postgraduate study in the USA at King's College London before meeting Stef and Stuart for something I'd been looking forward to since my last visit.


Queen's Day! Last year on the same day in Holland the whole country turned Orange and came out for one big street party to celebrate the Dutch Queen Mother's birthday and to my amazement last time I was in London I noticed that the Dutch Tourism Board was putting on an event for the day on the South Bank in London! Cue the chance to get all nostalgic over stroopwafeln and olliebollen, and to have a photo taken wearing 'Dutch' hats. All very good fun, and I even got to speak some Dutch, but alas, despite my supreme effort of enunciation, the addressees of my Dutch words replied in English.

Day two in the city saw another delayed reunion with some friends from back home, who are no longer back home.


Jon had recovered from his epic cycle ride to Cambridge from Norwich last weekend. Jess had just returned from a six-month trip to the other side of the world, and Will now works in London. So we spent the day stomping around London and generally catching-up on our lives. It's always quite fortunate that wherever you seem to end up in London, something worth seeing generally presents itself, and Sunday was no exception. A sedate walk through St. James Park became slightly less so when a parade came by:



Sadly the weather wasn't quite as keen to play along as it was on Saturday, but it was a really fun day nonetheless and it was great to see everyone again over the course of the weekend and to get away from the Cambridge bubble, which, this term at least, seems to be building in internal pressure.

But perhaps more importantly than anything, it provided an opportunity to see presumably the next stage in green car technology.


I guess this one doesn't have to pay the Congestion Charge.

Edit: Dan Lepard has let me know that he wasn't actually involved with the establishment of Ottolenghi (the bakery I visited in Islington), but that instead he helped out with their bread baking after they were established. So I'm more than happy to clarify that.