London Summer 2025

I rose early on Thursday, at 6:00am. I managed to drag myself out early to go for a run around the park. I found from being in NYC that I need to make the effort to get myself out on the first day, and then I’ll do it everyday.  I tried to run around the interior and staying away from the edges where the busy roads are. It was warm, but surprisingly windy.  I grabbed some coffees on the way back to the run. I got in about7:30am and Kathryn got up as we were going to the zoo. We ate some cake and leftover bun from yesterday. Ottolenghi had accidentally forgot to give us something so we only had 1 cake to eat. We got the tube to Embankment and then to Camden. It didn’t feel as long to get to as it took us last time, which surprisingly was over 10 years ago.   It required a bit of a trip through London, using the Circle Line and then Northern Line to Camden. From there is was a short walk to Regent Park which is where the zoo is located. We had a slow wonder arou...

I was up early again. This time I ran to the other nearby park which is Battersea Park. It was a bit cooler this morning, much better for running in. I was doing parkrun tomorrow so didn’t want to do too much running. I went through a few little backstreets to look at the houses. We popped over to Ottolenghi again to get cakes. We were thinking about getting lunch, and funnily enough there was a fire alarm going off and everyone was outside. When we did eventually get seated, we could have got breakfast/brunch, but opted not too. We walked back to the hotel with all the cakes. I realised halfway back I left my musette a the cafe so had to go back for it. Then at 3pm we went down to the cafe for the afternoon tea. Usually we have sat upstairs in the past, in the nice cafe bit, but it’s been rammed with families with it being summer holidays, and so we sat downstairs in the main restaurant. Thankfully we got a spot in the corned, and were largely by ourselves whilst we had the food. As a...

As usual with these trips, Saturday morning was allocated to do a local parkrun. I had spotted that there was one more event nearby that I could get to be running to the start. It was listed as a woodland and grass course that could get muddy in the wet, so I thought I better do it when it was dry so I could just wear road shoes. It was a bit of a pain to get to, as it required crossing a road and railway, but the new Strava feature for heat maps showed quite well the route that I should take. I left plenty of time to get to the start so I wasn’t stressing. In fact, in the end I arrived about 45 minutes before the start which was a bit too long. But I took a long walk around the park, and sat on a bench for a bit to pass the time. The initial route from the hotel involved going through Hyde Park and past Kensington Palace. There wasn’t too many crazy streets to take, I think it was more important to get to the route crossing. I did check the phone occasionally to keep on the right rout...