Thinking allowed

Things I haven’t done in London

5 Comments

I have been a Londoner all my life, and as a cabbie, there aren’t many places in London that I haven’t been to or through. So I thought I’d look at those I’ve missed, either by design or I’ve just overlooked.

Cable Car

With the catchy new name IFS Cloud Cable Car, or Dangleway as diamondgeezer calls it, at £12 to go to the back of beyond and return to civilisation, while watching planes leave City Airport and fly towards you, seems to me a waste of 20 minutes of your life.

The Shard

From the toilet on the 68th floor, you can marvel at London’s landmarks as you gaze across the River Thames, but at £32 it seems a rather expensive way to spend a penny.

Sky Garden

At the top of the Walkie Talkie building, sorry the prosaically named 20 Fenchurch Street, is the Sky Garden and unlike much of London it’s free. If only I could organise my day better I could apply for free tickets, as it’s the only realistic way that you’d visit this gem in the City.

Churchill War Rooms

When the rear of Downing Street was bombed in an air raid which nearly killed Churchill’s cook, the Cabinet moved to this bunker in the basement of the nearby Treasury Building. After the war, this secret underground headquarters was left untouched, until Margaret Thatcher championed the initiative to get the war rooms opened to the public. After visiting Chartwell on numerous occasions, I really should visit.

Jack The Ripper Tours

Why should anyone want to discover more about a misogynistic person who preyed on vulnerable women? If there’s such an appetite for this I’m thinking of starting Dennis Nilsen tours, a necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men and boys in Muswell Hill.

Tour Bus

Designed to allow tourists to experience London’s weather, whilst wearing ponchos advertising the stagecoach’s operator seems, to me, something best left to gullible visitors.

Abbey Road Crossing

Do you really want to annoy London’s cabbies? This can’t be a more positive way to achieve that aim. I’m hardly going to join them.

Sights I’ve seen in London, and wish I hadn’t

Madame Tussauds
London Dungeon
London Eye
Tate Modern (the exhibits, not the building)
Oxford Street

Featured image: By Chiugoran – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

5 thoughts on “Things I haven’t done in London”

  2. The only one on your list I have done is the Churchill War Rooms. I was taken around there on a private showing with other staff when I worked for the Met Police.
    I did take my wife up the London Eye. She loved it, I was disappointed that it faces the ‘wrong way’, so the view is pretty crap. My step-children loved the London Dungeon when I took them there over 20 years ago, but it had no interest for me.
    I never saw the appeal of Tussauds, and when I was taken there as a child I didn’t think the waxworks looked like the people they were supposed to be.
    Best wishes, Pete.

    Like

    Reply

      1. The funny thing is, I can’t stand Churchill. He was a braggart, a racist, and a self-serving politician. The war saved him from obscurity, in my opinion. But we were given the word to go on an ‘away day’, so I went along.
        We also did the ‘escape tunnels’, very claustrophobic!
        The most interesting and unusual away day was to Windsor Castle, where two of us were made aware of all the Royal secrets behind the scenes. As a non-Royalist, it was a change of scene, and I even threw some balls for the Corgis to chase, as they were being walked by a lady-in-waiting.
        But my favourite was a three-person tour of the Yard’s ‘Black Museum’, which fascinated me. Dennis Nielsen’s kitchen, (including the large pot where they found a head simmering) the acid bath (oil drum) used by Haig, and lots of other gory stuff. 🙂

        Like

        Reply

What do you have to say for yourself?