Following the first day of reference 2, up for breakfast in the basement, complete with the higher grade table furniture which we remembered from last time.
A breakfast which was dainty rather than substantial, which was fine given that we had eaten quite late the evening before, served by a young lady dressed in black. We wondered what, if anything, she had to do to purify herself after handing bacon and such - not that, as it happens, I took bacon on this occasion.
I wondered whether these were the only stairs in the place. One might have thought that such grand houses would have had rather grander and less rickety stairs, but such were nowhere to be seen.
I had had grand plans for us to go and visit the spring flowers at the bottom of Hyde Park, a short way along from Hyde Park Corner. This scheme then morphed into a stroll down to the Kings Road, itself torpedoed by a No.49 bus to Clapham Junction turning up just as we reached a bus stop. For which our senior bus passes were ready and waiting.
Pleased to tee that the Piggies café was up and running, having been shuttered on the last occasion that I passed it.
Street art has arrived at Clapham Junction, this being the underpass which takes Falcon Road to the Falcon public house, noticed in these pages from time to time. Rather better quality than the stuff we get at home, in Epsom.
And two real tickets from the ticket office at the Station, not the paper tickets one is apt to get from Epsom. Although I do allow them to be more reliable than the cardboard ones; optical rather than magnetic,
Spiral sausages and a baguette from P&V, now occupying a chunk of the ground floor of what used to be Arding & Hobbs, noticed, for example, at reference 3. On the train, I was interested to see that their signature bag was made in Vietnam. Big case left foreground.
Quite a decent haul at Raynes Park, although I have yet to properly engage, beyond BH telling me that the McLean is a museum in Greenock and the two magazines right coming from Taiwan. Plus evidence that the botanical bookshop noticed at reference 4 is still in business.
The baguette was taken for lunch. Very good it was too. Chewy crust and open texture.
The spiral sausages taken the next day. Also very good. We did one and a half at the first sitting.
One of them in one piece.
PS 1: a correspondent tells me of a new town north of Cambridge called Northstowe. Maybe even bigger than the Wisley Acres previously noticed. But also using, at least in part, land left over from the Second World War. Not pure greenbelt, without quite being brownbelt.
Both gmaps and OS know about it. I also see that the Huntingdon Road on which we used to drive through Fenstanton on many a Sunday has been superseded twice. First by a by-pass and then by the A14, the trunk road up north from Felixstowe Docks. Felixstowe being, as it happens, my natal town.
PS 2: I had to check where Greenock was, and I have now reminded myself that it is at the mouth of the Clyde, on the south bank, to the east of Glasgow. Presumably a rich and important town in its day.
[Winter at Ornans by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877)]
The McLean museum and art gallery is clearly a serious place, well worth a visit if one were in the area. And at least one painting by someone whom I have heard of. But a painter whom, to my surprise, is not to be found in the archive.
References
Reference 1: https://www.northstowe.com/.
Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/big-case-first-day.html.
Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/cheese-day.html.
Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/11/kew-part-three.html.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Courbet.
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