London Wetlands
It was half-term this last week, and I was at home on Thursday and Friday. Elizabeth said she would like to go to something – ie something like the exhibitions up in London we’ve been to on previous occasions. There didn’t seem to be any special blockbusters we couldn’t afford to miss at the moment, so I suggested the London Wetlands Centre. This is a fairly remarkable place in Barnes, on the Thames and not really very far from the centre of London. It is apparently dedicated to the principle enunciated by no less a person than Peter Scott, who took the view that ‘if you build it, they will come’; that is, that if you created a wetlands habitat, wetlands birds would come and use it, whether it was in the middle of a huge megalopolis or in the wilds of Norfolk. He has pretty much been vindicated, and the centre is now a bird-rich oasis in the metropolis, harbouring a number of unexpected species (many varieties of duck also featuring very strongly). People have always spoken very highly of this place to me in the past, but somehow it’s one of those places we’ve never quite been to. But now – why not?
It proved a pretty successful trip. We could have gone by train, tube, and bus, but since the Centre is just outside the congestion charge zone, we borrowed the car from Katharine and drove there (free parking, correctly described as ‘ample’…). Elizabeth kindly navigated for me, which (apart from a slight tendency to read out the names of every street we should shortly pass on both the right and the left) she did very well. For half-term, the place was not very busy; we arrived in time for the guided tour, which appeared to be cancelled through lack of anyone to go on it (we preferred an unstructured wander anyway). Perhaps the overcast skies and strong wind had something to do with it. Strangely, over half the people in the Centre appeared to be toddlers (referred to by Sarah as ‘munchies’ for reasons which never became entirely clear – possibly something to do with ‘munchkins’) with very few older children. Nothing wrong with taking half-a dozen toddlers round the bird sanctuary, I suppose, as lots of people seemed to be doing, although the toddlers’ appreciation of the bird-life did seem a bit limited, and their ability to remain quiet in the various hides dotted round the place was, unsurprisingly, restricted. They showed instead a marked tendency towards running up and down and screaming under the many admonitory signs which said ‘Birds have ears!’.
Elizabeth, who is getting pretty skilful with a camera, took a lot of good photographs, including two of the three here (I took the one of her, holding the camera). The centre is more developed than I expected, with tarmac paths through most of it, and some areas intended, it seems, to resemble habitats from other parts of the world. I’m not sure that that part was tremendously successful, but the main attraction remains the open water and reed beds (large amounts of water on its way to the local reservoir is pumped through here every day, it seems).After a thorough roam around, we decided to look for lunch. The centre has a nice cafe, but my gloomy prediction that it would be filled with munchies running around, screaming, and having their nappies changed, proved to be correct. So we set off. This time, I didn’t feel I needed navigation, and up to Wimbledon, where we should have stopped and taken advantage of the many restaurants, I was broadly correct. We ended up having lunch in Cheam, not a place I expected to pass through on the way home, but you know, fair enough.
Is it just me, or have retailers gone subtly but seriously insane about Valentine’s day this year? We know, of course, that Valentine’s day isn’t about declaring your love to your sweetheart, or even sending little cards; it’s about buying stuff. A card is not enough, you cheapskate; do you want the economy to collapse, or what?
