This was our first trip to London to visit an attraction, in the past few months we have tried several times to come here several times, but either the weather has been against us or the trains have been on strike or something else just got in the way so it actually made a change to get here for once.
It wasn't an early start for us as we only planned on being there for 8 hours. We caught the 8.27 train from Fareham and it was good to see the assistance was there to deploy the ramp to get on the train as the gap is a bit on the large side, they also need to know that you are on the train so somebody will be at the other end to get you off it, we have been stranded like this before.
Fareham to London takes about 1 hour 50 minutes and even though it was a Saturday I think most people had spent up over Christmas so the train was fairly quiet and even arrived on time at 10:08.
The museum is only a 15 or 20-minute walk from the station so it wasn't worth getting the bus, plus with the walking directions on Google Maps, it's easy enough to find although I still managed to go down one wrong road.
The museum is free to enter and I'm glad it was as would have been disappointed if I had paid to come in, I've been to the one in Manchester & thought that was much better layout even though it was smaller. The main problem here was the central open area of the upper floors surrounds the main hall & doesn't really give you enough room to see the displays & it all felt at cramped when it was busy. It would also seem the higher up you got on each of the 5 floors the less there was to see, it was almost like they were trying to spread things out to occupy space. There were also some displays that were too close to the wall that you wouldn't be able to get a wheelchair along to see them, which seems odd as this is a fairly modern building inside.
We were in there from about 10:45 until 1pm then decided it was time to get some lunch, according to the map there was a spoons pub called the Rockingham Arms about a 15 minute walk away near the Elephant & Castle station so headed off down there although my crap sense of direction struck again so it took us a bit longer to get there.
Price wise it was almost the same as back at home so had some lunch a few drinks over the next couple of hours.
We left about 3:15 to take a slow walk back towards Waterloo & stopped off at Tesco for some beer for the train, then dropped into the Crown & the Cushion pub for a couple of drinks, this place is ideally located about a 5 minute walk from the station and it had gone really chilly it was a good spot to keep warm. I think £3.30 a pint next to any station is a good price & it was a nice enough place if you like your pubs a bit of a dive, oddly it was an Irish pub that had a Thai menu, I'm not sure what was but something smelled really nice like a barbeque sausage that was cooking.
Our train was due to leave at 18:09 so set off to the station about 17:40, one thing we had noticed while here was that the pavements are nearly all very smooth with no potholes & where you cross the road the lowered curbs are level, this makes life so much easier to get about with the wheelchair.
Once the train sets off you get a good view of the London Eye now called the Coke Cola Eye or something like that all lit up. The train wasn't that busy so had a peaceful 1 hour 40-minute ride back to Fareham arriving on time, which meant we only had about 10 minutes or so to wait for the bus back home.
Today had been a good day, even though we didn't do very much, but this has given us some more ideas the next time we come here, which could be every third Saturday if things stay the same at work, we have about 20 or so tickets left to use & I can have up to 4 people on each ticket, they reset at the beginning of April back to 48.
Fareham to London takes about 1 hour 50 minutes and even though it was a Saturday I think most people had spent up over Christmas so the train was fairly quiet and even arrived on time at 10:08.
The museum is only a 15 or 20-minute walk from the station so it wasn't worth getting the bus, plus with the walking directions on Google Maps, it's easy enough to find although I still managed to go down one wrong road.
The museum is free to enter and I'm glad it was as would have been disappointed if I had paid to come in, I've been to the one in Manchester & thought that was much better layout even though it was smaller. The main problem here was the central open area of the upper floors surrounds the main hall & doesn't really give you enough room to see the displays & it all felt at cramped when it was busy. It would also seem the higher up you got on each of the 5 floors the less there was to see, it was almost like they were trying to spread things out to occupy space. There were also some displays that were too close to the wall that you wouldn't be able to get a wheelchair along to see them, which seems odd as this is a fairly modern building inside.
We were in there from about 10:45 until 1pm then decided it was time to get some lunch, according to the map there was a spoons pub called the Rockingham Arms about a 15 minute walk away near the Elephant & Castle station so headed off down there although my crap sense of direction struck again so it took us a bit longer to get there.
Price wise it was almost the same as back at home so had some lunch a few drinks over the next couple of hours.
We left about 3:15 to take a slow walk back towards Waterloo & stopped off at Tesco for some beer for the train, then dropped into the Crown & the Cushion pub for a couple of drinks, this place is ideally located about a 5 minute walk from the station and it had gone really chilly it was a good spot to keep warm. I think £3.30 a pint next to any station is a good price & it was a nice enough place if you like your pubs a bit of a dive, oddly it was an Irish pub that had a Thai menu, I'm not sure what was but something smelled really nice like a barbeque sausage that was cooking.
Our train was due to leave at 18:09 so set off to the station about 17:40, one thing we had noticed while here was that the pavements are nearly all very smooth with no potholes & where you cross the road the lowered curbs are level, this makes life so much easier to get about with the wheelchair.
Once the train sets off you get a good view of the London Eye now called the Coke Cola Eye or something like that all lit up. The train wasn't that busy so had a peaceful 1 hour 40-minute ride back to Fareham arriving on time, which meant we only had about 10 minutes or so to wait for the bus back home.
Today had been a good day, even though we didn't do very much, but this has given us some more ideas the next time we come here, which could be every third Saturday if things stay the same at work, we have about 20 or so tickets left to use & I can have up to 4 people on each ticket, they reset at the beginning of April back to 48.
Maps are interactive, the scale and size will vary depending on the device used as will the preview.
Real times for transport stops do not work within embedded maps
Real times for transport stops do not work within embedded maps
