While in Gibraltar the previous September I met and became close friends with people who were living in Leigh-on-Sea, a small town on the north side of the Thames River nearly to the North Sea about 40 miles east of London. After meeting in Gibraltar we exchanged letters and phone calls through the autumn then decided wouldn't it be fun to visit back and forth. So Christmas 1997 for me was a week of enjoying a traditional English Christmas in England. Definitely a change of pace from the day-to-day of Portland Oregon.
Landing at Heathrow about 8:30 in the morning and clearing customs I phoned my friends in Leigh then caught the tube (subway) into London. There, after a change of subway I got off at the Fenchurch Street station, just near the Tower of London (but there were no beheadings scheduled) and met them. We then walked across the street to the train station at Fenchurch Street and caught a train out to Leigh-on-Sea.
The train trip out to Leigh goes through fancy neighborhoods and slums and little towns with amusing names like Barking (I asked if Meowing was the next town over) and rolling farmland. The train was quick and comfortable and by a little after 11 we were in Leigh where we caught a taxi to my friend's apartment. After a little cleanup we then caught a bus down to the town of Southend for a little shopping and a little bite to eat at a pub then called some other friends and caught a bus over to visit with them for a couple of hours. By the time we got back to the apartment it was nearly 9PM, a good time to call it a day.
This was a quiet trip of mostly visiting with friends, shopping, lots of walking, and enjoying the pubs. About the only "touristy" thing I did on this trip was to take the train into London, catch a Thames tour boat, and tour down to Greenwich. The boat tour was moth interesting and amusing. The tour guide has a humorous patter that kept the chuckles coming as he pointed out sights of London visible from the river and filled in fascinating tidbits of history one would not find in any history book. In Greenwich, after lunch in a pub, we walked up to the observatory.
The observatory at Greenwich is a must see for anyone with either a historical or scientific bent. The old telescopes, the quest for a clock that could keep accurate time even when being tossed about on a ship, the quest to accurately measure distance and position on the open ocean, the quest for accuracy in mapmaking, all of this is well described and shown in the displays at the observatory.
Once the observatory closed we walked back down the hill to the river and then walked through the walking passage that goes beneath the Thames River from Greenwich to East London. There we caught a train to Fenchurch Street and transferred to another to go home to Leigh. All in all a very nice day.
Christmas Day was a day of eating far too much, drinking just about enough, exchanging gifts, and generally just enjoying the fun of friends visiting.
A few days after Christmas I caught a train into London, transferred to the tube and went on to near Heathrow to overnight at a hotel there. As the travel time from Leigh to Heathrow is nearly 3 hours and I had a 8AM flight, staying nearby was definitely preferable to getting up in the middle of the night to catch one of the infrequent nighttime trains into town and hoping to catch the earliest subway. Next morning I was up and out to the airport by about 6AM, checked in, had a little coffee then boarded the plane for the long trip home. All in all a very good vacation.
Last Updated April, 1998
URL: http://www.europa.com/~kenh