From Abbey Road to Fleet Street

Today’s day trip to London satisfied a “bucket list” item for me. Visiting Abbey Road is a must for any Beatles fan and today was our day. The Abbey Road Studios, where the majority of the Beatles music was recorded, are still there. There is a live webcam at www.abbeyroad.com/Crossing

It’s fun to watch the tourists posing in the crosswalk as John, Paul, George and Ringo did back in 1969 for the album cover.

The Beatles Coffee Shop is right in the St. John’s Woods tube station.

Back on the tube, we traveled the Central Line to the Chancery Lane Station. Walking down Holborn Street we spotted the Staple Inn. From Wikipedia: Staple Inn dates from 1585. The building was once the wool staple, where wool was weighed and taxed. It survived the Great Fire of London, was extensively damaged by a Nazi GermanLuftwaffe aerial bomb in 1944, but was subsequently restored. It is the only surviving Elizabethan domestic building in London.

In 1834-7, Charles Dickens lived in Furnival's Inn while working as a 22-25 year old reporter on the Morning Chronicle.  His famous work, Pickwick Papers, was started at Furnival's Inn.

We had been told about a pub that dates from 1546 called Ye Olde Mitre Public House.

We went down the little dark alley and found it. It is easily missed by the casual traveler. I doubt sunight ever gets into this cramped place.

St. Ethelreda’s Catholic Church was close by and we went inside to view the stained glass windows which are the largest in London.

St Etheldreda's church was built around 1250 as a "double-decker" church ie one chapel on top of the other. It is a very interesting building which by some miracle ( . .?) has survived the Great fire of London, the Reformation (Henry VIII), the Blitz of the Second World War and every other threat to its existence. It is the oldest Roman Catholic church in the country.

Then on to St. Andrews Holborn which first appears in written records in AD 951 as a church on top of the hill above the river Fleet. The wooden church was replaced by a medieval stone one in the 15th Century, of which only the tower now remains.

In 1666 the great fire ravaged London, but the medieval church of St Andrew’s was only saved at the last minute by a change in the wind direction.The pulpit and the font were previously at the chapel of a foundling hospital in Bloomsbury, where the composer George Fredrick Handel would have played for his fundraising concerts.

Inside there were some lit candles and a woman sitting reading in one area. A sign indicated she was the designated “listener” for anyone who needs to talk. On the last pew was a man fast asleep.

Fleet Street is a street in the City of London named after the River Fleet. It was the origin and home of the British newspapers until the 1980s. Even though the last major British news office, Reuters, left in 2005, the term Fleet Street continues to be used as a metonym for the British national press. Many famous men are associated with Fleet Street, either by living there or in one of its many side streets, or by being regular frequenters of its taverns.

Our walk down Fleet Street was interesting with plaques and history everywhere. The Chesire Cheese Pub was where in 1859 Charles Dickens using a pen name wrote his journal “All the Year Long” It’s in the “Wine Office Court” which he mentions in “A Tale of Two Cities”

“Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “If you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this great City you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts.” Very true.

The Griffin statue sits atop the Temple Bar monument, which marks the boundary between the City and Westminster. The griffin was placed in 1880.

Charles Dickens mentioned Temple Bar in A Tale of Two Cities, noting its proximity to Tellson's Bank, also on Fleet Street. While critiquing the moral poverty of late-18th century London, Dickens wrote that in matters of crime and punishment, "putting to death was a recipe much in vogue," and illustrated the horror caused by severed heads, "exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity..."

Royal Courts of Justice
The Times described the buildings as follows:
the architect has given accommodation to no less than 18 distinct courts, each with its own entrance and staircase, with separate approaches and doors for the judges, the jury, the witnesses, the Bar, and the public, together with rooms for clerks, secretaries, and registrars, and also waiting-rooms...'

"...the new clock at the Law courts is surely too trivial and small. The fine massive tower behind seems to be holding out a watch instead of a clock, and is thus actually robbed of its own majesty…"

(Maybe so, but we still think it's majestic)

So ends another day of adventure and learning in London. We're getting pretty good at getting around; we didn't get lost even once this time!

Bill and Carol's Excellent Anniversary

Twenty-two years today! How time flies when you're busy living your life. To celebrate, did we sit around and dreamily stare into each other's eyes? Not a chance!

We were up early to catch a bus to Seven Sisters Country Park near Seaford on the coast. We joined others in a project to clean up litter. It's called a CITO, Cache In, Trash Out, sponsored by geocachers.



The Cuckmere River at low tide.



We were all issued trash bags and a litter picker. I wish I had one like that; it worked really well.


There were lots of cuttlefish and their empty eggs. Someone said the egg clutches were called Murmaid's Purses.



But then someone else said this was a Mermaid's Purse and that seems more believable.



Bill really gets into it.






Bill looks for the laundry basket he pulled out of the water.

After returning home we quickly got changed and down to the church for a baptism. This is only the second one since we've been in Brighton.



Lloyd with Elders Simon and Lam.






There was a terrific turnout for Lloyd's baptism; ward members and his friends and family.



Foosball is always popular with children, large and small.





Next stop was dinner at the Black Lion, one of our favorite restaurants.



A very excellent day!

A Surprise Visit from Helen Gonzales!

Okay, it wasn’t a total surprise since we knew they were coming to England to see family at Lakenheath. But we didn’t know they would visit Brighton today.


Having visitors from Mountain Home is a real treat for us. We were able to see the new baby even though we didn’t get a photo.


Helen and Mike and family


Walking around the pier is always fun especially when the sun cooperates. Then is was off to find a famed cake and chocolate shop called Choccywoccydoodah.


What a name! We’ve heard of their amazing window displays but had never been there.

Historic and Grisly London

We took the train to London recently with at least two destinations in mind and we only got lost twice.

On our way to the Museum of London we passed by an area called Smithfield.

“Smithfield is an area of the City of London. It is situated in the north-west part of the City, and is mostly known for its centuries-old meat market, today the last surviving historical wholesale market in Central London. Smithfield has a bloody history of executions of heretics and political opponents,[1] including major historical figures such as Scottish patriot William Wallace, Wat Tyler, the leader of thePeasants' Revolt, and a long series of religious reformers and dissenters.”


Remember to click on the image to enlarge it.

Within a few feet of this spot, John Rogers, John Bradford, and John Philpot and other servants of God suffered death by fire
for the faith of Christ in the years 1555, 1556 and 1557.


What devotion these men had!


Roman wall by the museum

The Museum of London had a temporary display about Charles Dickens which I especially enjoyed. I’ve read some of his books since we’ve been in England and picked up little details that would have been lost on me before we lived here.

I have a small bit of a family tie-in with him. From my great grandmother’s journal as she left England: “When the ship was in the London dock Charles Dickens came on board. His eyes were on everybody and as he was walking about he was writing all the time.”

The rest of the museum is quite large; at the Roman era we suffered museum burn out. We’ll return and finish it later.


After some confusion with the buses we arrived at Marble Arch located in a corner of Hyde Park.


“The area around Marble Arch today was once the home of Tyburn Gallows. The original site is marked by a triangular plaque on the roadway.

Prisoners were dragged up from Newgate Prison and stood upon a wooden cart. The horses were then whipped and ran away, leaving them to dangle from a noose. An estimated 50,000 people were put to death between 1300 and 1783.”

The Tyburn Tree

Our destination in this area was a pub named the Tyburn for a geocaching event. It seems that every place we went today has a grisly past!


I'm sure glad my husband didn't auction me at the wife sale in Smithfield!

Visitors from Poland

Actually they are from McCammon, Idaho but they have been serving their mission in Warsaw, Poland for 8 ½ months. Due to the church hiring a new CES employee for Poland they received a new mission call to serve in England. President Shamo asked us to host them for three days. Since they’ve been out in the field almost as long as we have, we really didn’t need to train them. But we did help with the cultural adjustment. It was fun to hear them say, “Those signs are in English!”



They needed to buy a Satnav (GPS) and a good road atlas. We took them by bus to the church and showed them our Centre for Young Adults. Then a short walk away is Halford’s, an auto parts-type store where the Satnav was purchased. Elder Parrett recalled seeing a road atlas at one of the charity shops for 50p and amazingly it was still there.

The Simons knew our bishop’s son (from Idaho) when he was serving in Poland. Small world. It was great fun to visit with them and hear about their adventures and challenges in Poland.

Because of all the new senior missionaries coming into the mission, they’ve been taking vehicles from the young elders and giving them to the senior missionaries. And since we only drive one or two times a week, we were asked to give up our car. Elder Parrett could only drive on his Idaho license for one year, so we knew we’d be giving the car up at that time (late May). So we’ve been mentally preparing for this day and scheming on how to get to the temple and the stake centre. Actually the mission can help out with that a little and it’ll work out fine.


The passing of the key.

Since it was conference weekend, we mostly watched it via the internet at our flat. Sunday afternoon we watched the Sunday Morning session down at the church on a nice flat screen TV in the centre.

In the afternoon Sis. Simons and I went for a walk in the park across the street. We checked on the tadpoles in the pond. They’re still small but twice as large as they were last week. In the wooded part of the park we saw some people gathered around a tree that looked like they could be geocaching. They were. We talked for a minute and I answered some questions since they are beginners. I told them there was another one nearby that we had placed.



On their way to Newton Abbott and new adventures in England.