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| | | | Review by Anna Hooper from Leicester
I love visiting London. There is always something different to do, no matter how many times you visit. During our week in London we went to the theatre, a comedy club, on the Eye at night, a gallery, walked along the river (always a favourite), watched the ice skaters at the wonderful Somerset House, went to the new Planetarium at Greenwich, went on the river, ate out somewhere different every day, walked in the park, went to the Zoo (only disappointment all week, it is run down and there are very few animals), and more.
Review by stephanie cihangir from reims
There is a lovely gentlemanly atmosphere in the architecture of London, and yet you can feel this is a very young cosmopolitan city, you can always find the quirkness Londonians have in the least expected places!
Review by Neil Bresnahan from Medfield, Massachusetts, USA
London is a great city but very expensive. However, the flat was a good value for the money. The owners Jade and Riaz were very cordial and easy to correspond with. Our family would be spending Thanksgiving in London. Jade offered to help us get a turkey for our dinner. Our entire trip and the flat were an excellant choice for us. we would do both again. Spend more time in London and rent from Jade and Riaz.
How to find the boat train to Paris
At Cannon Street station in London there's an obscure doorway. Next to it is a bell. If you press this you are summoned up to a concrete walkway where you get lost for a while until you glimpse a little office.
It's fitting that the office is out of the way, for it's the source of a very unusual kind of ticket: a ticket for a boat train.
Once the words 'boat' and 'train' were easy companions. In 1939, Britain's railway companies operated 164 vessels.
Maybe terror in the skies will bring about a revival of British boat trains, but for the moment we're down to one.
The term 'boat train' was always associated with crossing the Channel, and the only service remaining with any echo of the old glamour is the 7am from Charing Cross. Officially, it is merely the recommended train for getting to Paris by train and boat, because no trains today are timetabled to connect with cross-Channel boats.
It just happens, by pure coincidence, that things link up pretty smoothly if you catch the 7.00, and you can be in Paris in time for a bath, a cocktail and a good dinner, all of which, frankly, you will need after your 10 hour journey.
There again, you will be able to afford them, for the second class return ticket from Charing Cross to Gare du Nord costs a hilarious £49, one sixth of the fully flexible Eurostar fare of £298.
The 07.00 runs every weekday. One of its attractions is that it's unlikely to be targeted by Osama bin Laden; by the same token, though, most of the staff at Charing Cross don't know that it's the recommended train for Paris either.
As far as they're concerned, it's just another knackered slam door train dividing at Tonbridge, the back half going to Canterbury, the front to Dover and other bits of the South Coast.
The Golden Arrow was the second most glamorous boat train. Between 1929 and 1972 it ran every day from Victoria to a station called Dover Marine, where it connected with a ferry; passengers continued on from Calais to Paris via the Arrow's French counterpart, the Fleche d'Or.
The carriages looked similar to a compressed version of the Royal Opera House: on the front of the engine, besides the two flags, was a noble arrow of the sort fired by Robin Hood.
There was nothing on the front of the 07.00, of course, except a lot of dirt, so I trudged to my seat. There was one other person in the carriage, a glum businessman sipping coffee from a plastic cup.
It would have been so different on the Golden Arrow; and even more different on the Night Ferry.
Travel Guide: London
All aboard the big sleeper
Thirty-odd years ago, the overnight sleeper from London to Edinburgh was the pinnacle of childhood excitement.
My sisters and I would be woken by our mother, have outdoor clothes pulled on over our pyjamas and then, soft toy and toothbrush in hand, we'd be piled, half asleep, into a London taxi.
'King's Cross please, driver,' Mum would say and we would snuggle back in the bench seat, knowing that our near-magical journey north had begun.
Half a lifetime later, and with children of my own, I thought it might be interesting to see if the overnight magic still worked, particularly in these dark days for railways and their passengers.
My sisters were doubtful - it won't be the same, it can't be - but I was determined.
One phone call to the National Rail Enquiry Service and I began to think the sisters had a point.
Yes, there was still an overnight sleeper to Edinburgh but these days it goes from Euston and not King's Cross, which as Harry Potter and architecture fans will tell you is not the same thing at all.
And no, sir, it didn't operate on Saturday nights. If we needed more information we should ring ScotRail's enquiry centre which, bizarrely, is in Cardiff.
There Gareth, bless him, couldn't have been more helpful. He booked us in for the Sunday night and recommended we took two adjoining compartments with an interconnecting door.
I still had my doubts but we were back on track.
Travel Guide: London
The world's top tourist destination
From the Mail on Sunday
It's official - our capital is now the world's top tourist destination. In a survey of more than 25,000 travel agencies in 182 countries, London has, for the first time, been voted the World's Leading Destination.
The World Travel Award could serve as a reminder for Britons to take a fresh look at this fantastic tourist attraction right on our doorstep. However, for most us, things have changed somewhat since we took a school trip round the capital.
So what's the best way to enjoy a quick tour of the major sights today? We set out to try five of the main rival tours round the city centre. They took roughly the same route, including Big Ben, St Paul's and Tower Bridge.
Most guides spout the same facts, but the prices vary from £10 to £70 for a couple of hours. Here's a breakdown of what you see and what you get. The choice is yours.
Travel Guide: London
The great rock and roll tour
London has long been the home of rock 'n' roll legends. But until now the locations which saw the birth of bands from The Rolling Stones to the Sex Pistols - as well as the spot where singer Marc Bolan died 25 years ago last week - have been largely unrecorded.
Only one is marked by one of the capital's famous blue plaques - the former home of guitarist Jimi Hendrix in Brook Street, Mayfair.
But now writer Max Wooldridge has assembled some of the greatest in a new book, Rock 'n' Roll London. Here are his top 10.
Marc Bolan, Barnes: Less than a month after Elvis Presley died, rock 'n' roll fans were mourning another loss; Marc Bolan was killed instantly when his Mini GT skidded off the road and smashed into a tree on Barnes Common in South West London.
It was the early hours of September 16, 1977 and Bolan was on his way home from a nightclub in Berkeley Square when his car went out of control on a humpback bridge on Queen's Ride.
The Performing Right Society has since erected a commemorative stone in Bolan's honour but it's the touching personal messages from devoted fans pinned to the tree that make this shrine special.
Travel Guide: London
Making a meal out of a good cup of tea
From the Mail on Sunday
When you are tired of tiers of sandwiches, scones and pastries, you are truly tired of life.
Afternoon tea, as served at London's finest hotels and department stores, is the antithesis of power eating.
Instead, it is a reminder of a time when the pace of life was slower and people still had the time to enjoy it.
Here is a selection of five venues that maintain this most traditional of traditions.
THE MILESTONE HOTEL, 1 Kensington Court, London W8 (www.milestoneredcarnationhotels.activehotels.com/WBH tel: 020 7917 1000). Cost: £14.50 per person. Teatime: 3pm-6pm daily.
Ambience: Served among the sofas in the hotel's wood-panelled library, this is a highly aristocratic tea in keeping with the views of Kensington Palace. 9/10
Taste: The finger sandwiches with a medley of fillings (smoked salmon, egg, ham, cucumber, and cheese and tomato) felt a little stale, but the scones were much better - small and pleasingly warm, with three jams and a generous scoop of clotted cream, while the miniature fruit tarts and eclairs had been piled on amply.
My companion considered the chocolate chip cookies an American intrusion. I thought they tasted rather good, if a little dry. 6/10
Service: Anton, our very tall waiter, coped with the very low table by making the initial flourish with the tea strainer on bended knee.
He brought us regular pots of hot water for our tea, otherwise leaving us alone as we enjoyed a genteel session over a copy of Hello! 8/10
Total: 23/30
Travel Guide: London
London for free
London is often lambasted for being outrageously expensive to visit. Yet nowadays it has more free first-class attractions than any other capital in the world.
In the Nineties, the Government pledged money to our major museums and galleries to enable them to scrap admission charges.
From the end of last year it hasn't cost a penny to visit the three big South Kensington museums (National History, Victoria & Albert and the Science Museum), the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth or Greenwich's National Maritime Museum.
A couple visiting all five of these amazing treasure troves this spring, instead of last autumn, would save £77.90 on entrance fees (charges for children had already been abolished).
Another big boon of free admission is that you could dip in to all three South Ken museums in the same day (they are yards apart) and focus on their best bits.
But doing away with entrance fees does have a down side: visitor numbers have rocketed.
Comparing February 2002 against February 2001, they've trebled at the V&A, and nearly doubled at the Natural History and Science museums.
Prepare for the worst at weekends, when the museums are busiest. The best way of avoiding the crowds is to hit the most popular galleries first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon.
Crowds are generally not a problem at the Imperial War Museum or the National Maritime Museum.
But the latter's Royal Observatory is small and in the middle of Greenwich park, so can be packed on sunny weekends.
Travel Guide: London
History in a pickle
The giant sea monster is just inches from my face. With his watery scowl and dripping mouth, he looks as if he's just been pulled from the ocean.
In fact, this rare arapaima - the world's largest freshwater fish - has been dead for decades.
It's just one of the millions of animals preserved in alcohol in the Natural History Museum's fabulous new Darwin Centre.
The Darwin Centre is the museum's largest new project since it moved to the South Kensington site in the mid-19th Century.
A gallery-cum-storehouse, it provides a permanent home to the 22 million animals that are pickled in spirit.
Guided tours - led by museum scientists - will take visitors through the heart of this extraordinary collection. It allows them to see scientists and researchers at work, and examine close-up the remains of the preserved creatures.
The scale of the collection is awe-inspiring.
There are two million pickled fish and more than three million crustaceans. The 25,000 shelves total some 15 miles. There are 450,000 glass jars and 50 huge tanks, the largest of which contains 1,500 litres of alcohol.
The jewels of the collection are the unique-type specimens. These are the very animals that were used to name and describe a species and are of incomparable scientific importance.
The Spirit Collection, as it's known, contains 170,000 of them.
Some of the exhibits are extremely ghoulish and could have been produced by Damien Hirst. A jar of pickled mice quite put me off my lunch, while a scolopendia gigantea - a foot-long centipede - was straight out of a horror movie.
Travel Guide: London
Dedicated followers of Kinks London
Here's a pop-quiz question: As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset, what am I in?
Yes, I am in paradise.
I'm in Waterloo now, sitting on the first floor balcony of the Reef Bar, with its commanding view down the sweeping concourse of Waterloo Station.
So, if I were to tell you I was looking down at the millions of people, what would they be doing?
That's right, they'd be swarming like flies round Waterloo Underground.
Ray Davies, writer of Waterloo Sunset and leader of The Kinks, is the poet laureate of London, chronicling in his songs its glamour, its seediness, its pleasures, its follies, and its homely suburbs better than anyone before or since.
He wrote Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, which is about Carnaby Street, Lola about Soho, and Muswell Hillbillies about his home turf up on the hill.
His song Victoria is, strictly, about the queen rather than the area, but you can stretch a point and add that in too.
In fact, so good is he at conjuring up the spirit of the capital city that you can take a Kinks Tour of London, starting at Waterloo, delving into the West End, heading north through Archway and ending up in Muswell Hill, singing his lyrics all the way.
Oddly, it's only called Waterloo Sunset rather than the original title Liverpool Sunset because the Beatles had just come out with their Liverpool-inspired Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields and Ray decided that, rather than seeming to follow in the Mersey's wake, he would transfer the location to his home city.
I am very glad he did. From my Waterloo vantage point I can do what is most interesting about railway stations - watch people.
Travel Guide: London
Camden... Lock stock and barrel
What do you think is London's most visited attraction?
According to the latest London Tourist Board annual figures, number one is the National Gallery, which is free to enter, with 4.9 million visitors.
Next is the British Museum, also free, with 4.8 million. Then comes the London Eye, for which you pay, with 3.9 million, and Tate Modern (free) on 3.6 million. In fifth place is Madame Tussauds, which is not free, at 2.5 million.
In fact, the single most visited place, according to my calculations, is Camden Lock. It attracts 10 million people a year, and is free to enter, though you usually spend quite a bit when you are there.
Naturally, the statistic is not exact, but I am basing it on London Underground's figure for Camden Town Tube station.
Every weekend it is used by 200,000 people. Not all will be visiting Camden Lock, though most will.
Then you have to add the thousands who come by bus, car, on foot, and take into account that much of Camden Lock is now open every day. That's why I think 10 million a year is a conservative estimate.
So what is it? Basically, it is a higgledy-piggledy sprawl of street market stalls, except that these days a lot of it is indoors, in purpose-built or converted warehouses and arches.
It consists of seven different markets including Camden Market, with stalls radiating from Camden Lock, where it all began nearly 30 years ago.
Growth has been spontaneous, not created by any council or government body, regenerating a neglected area into which tens of millions of pounds have been poured, and millions are made every year.
It's hard to get an accurate figure, but I estimate there are some 2,000 stalls.
Travel Guide: London
Buckingham Palace - at home with the royals
You don't have to be a diehard fan of the Royal Family to enjoy looking round what is probably Britain's most famous home - Buckingham Palace.
This year, for the first time, you can wander round some of its magnificent gardens.
Short of receiving an invite to one of the Queen's garden parties, this is as close as most of us will get to the "walled oasis" in the middle of London.
Visitors enter Buckingham Palace through the Ambassadors' Entrance at the side. The first room you see is the rather underwhelming Grand Hall.
It has a surprisingly low ceiling but don't worry, there are far more grand rooms to come.
There are dozens of helpful staff but you will get much more out of your visit if you buy the official guide (£4.50) as there are few signs.
The Grand Staircase leads to the State Rooms, several of which are on show.
First up is the Green Drawing Room - a sort of waiting room for the Throne Room. This used to be used for ceremonial receptions and investitures, but a bigger room has since been built, just down the hall.
It is important to look up in Buckingham Palace - the ceilings really are works of art.
The Picture Gallery is 50 metres long and houses works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Dyck and other great masters. It's almost hard to comprehend that just about every piece of furniture, every picture, wall hanging or sculpture that you see is priceless.
The State Rooms are magnificently opulent but, strangely, people often experience "opulence fatigue" walking round Buckingham Palace.
There are only so many grand rooms with crystal chandeliers, gold ceilings and portraits of long-dead kings that most people can take in at once.
Still the Music Room, Ballroom and Blue Drawing Room are well worth a look.
Travel Guide: London
B&B with a millionaire
From the Daily Mail
Hard to believe I'm sitting in a private Notting Hill mansion worth millions, being served fresh orange juice in an elegant, hexagonal dining room and I'm paying not much more than for a night in a Travelodge. A fifth, in fact, than the cost of a room in a Park Lane hotel, where you're not so much a customer as a clone.
Here, I have my own cosy, en-suite bedroom, with a view over a private garden, plus freedom to wander the house and perhaps take a book or two down from the shelves in the library.
Portobello Road is five minutes' walk away, Hugh Grant's house in the film Notting Hill is round the corner and so, if I'm not mistaken, is the Peter Mandelson property there was all that fuss about.
Even better, my hostess is not a gimlet-eyed landlady with a long list of house rules, but the up-market Monica Barrington, a former soft-drinks executive who now runs Uptown Reservations, surely London's grandest B&B group.
Immaculately spoken Monica founded Uptown 10 years ago, with just a handful of holiday flats on her books.
Now she has 85 properties, all in the most prosperous parts of town. 'We've got Cheyne Walk, Walton Street, Hyde Park Gardens Mews, Cadogan Square, Connaught Square and Campden Hill Square,' purrs Monica, pouring me a morning cup of tea.
'We've one place in the heart of theatreland and others tucked away behind Marble Arch and several that are within a few minutes' walk of Harrods.
'First question I ask when an owner approaches us is: "Can I sell the area to our guests?" That's before I even step inside the front door.'
So only the most pukka properties get accepted. In rapid succession, we visit a three-storey Georgian home in an exclusive Kensington square (Campden Hill), an exotically marble-floored apartment in Queensway and a beautifully wood-panelled town house in Chelsea dating back to 1708.
Travel Guide: London
All About a Boy's tour
From the Mail on Sunday
Hugh Grant's latest comedy - About A Boy, is meant to be all about Islington - a corner of London that is forever Blairsville, the New Labour stronghold where million-pound houses and environmentalists in ethnic knits meet head-on.
In Nick Hornby's novel, Islington is where Marcus, an unhappy 12-year-old, makes friends with Will, a bored rich 38-year-old, played by Hugh Grant.
But for film-makers, Islington can cover a wide territory.
Why, for instance, does Hugh Grant hike off to Sainsbury's in Richmond - roughly 10 miles away - whenever he needs to nip out to the supermarket?
According to the top-secret locations list I got my hands on, Will's flat is in Clerkenwell.
At least Clerkenwell is near Islington. The property is in Sekforde Street, a few minutes walk from Smithfield Market and the church hall that is the headquarters of SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together) which Will joins after having invented a two-year-old son in the hope of meeting desperate (and desperately attractive) single mothers.
These moody Victorian streets are good for expensive loft apartments, art galleries and people with jobs that allow them to spend hours in restaurants and bars like Smiths of Smithfield.
Clerkenwell is clearly too cool to have a supermarket - although a few doors down from Smiths of Smithfield is the Compton Gascon delicatessen on Charterhouse Street, where Will can be seen gazing at expensive condiments like truffle oil for £6.
But when Hugh Grant wants a haircut, he heads for Notting Hill - and a stone's throw from the blue front door he made famous in the film of that name.
The Parsons Skott salon (cuts from £41) is in Westbourne Grove - an area that is so trendy it outdoes Clerkenwell by having a deli run by Terence Conran's son Tom, as well as being home to Stella McCartney.
Travel Guide: London
A grisly gang show
From the Mail on Sunday
It's not every day you get to share a pint with Britain's most notorious gangster. Nor do you often get to hear - first hand - about the violent underworld of the Kray twins' London.
But, sign up for one of 'Mad' Frankie Fraser's Gangland Tours and you'll get to meet the man himself - and find out who killed whom, and why.
Frankie has been friend or foe of virtually every London gangster over the course of his 78 years. He's fought in prison brawls, had numerous nightclub punch-ups and axed fellow gangster Eric Mason.
Dubbed the most dangerous man in Britain by two Home Secretaries, he's also spent more than 40 years behind bars. Now Frankie's going straight and making an honest living from a shady past.
I meet him on his Gangster Bus, which tours London's underworld each Saturday. It visits 11 gangster highlights and Frankie himself provides a morbidly fascinating commentary.
The Gangland Tour takes us first to Evering Road, Stoke Newington, where the house at the corner of Jenner Road hides a dark secret. This was the scene of one of the Krays' most infamous murders - the 1967 killing of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie, a typical East End villain who had done time with Frankie.
'He did drugs and drink, and would smash glasses in people's faces,' recalls Frankie. But then he insulted the Kray twins's mother.
The Krays lured McVitie to the Stoke Newington house, where he was told there would be a party. 'Reggie and Ronnie were waiting for him,' says Frankie.
'Reggie went straight up to McVitie and put a semi-automatic pistol to his head.'
But the gun didn't work - so Reggie stabbed him to death, impaling him to the floor with a knife through his throat.
Travel Guide: London
Meantime, back in Greenwich...
From the Daily Mail
The biggest and most famous Dome in Greenwich, if Sir Christopher Wren had had his way, would have been completed 300 years earlier than its infamous namesake. Initially refused permission for his design for St Paul's Cathedral, Wren wanted to use the same plans for the newly commissioned Seamen's Hospital.
In the end, however, he was turned down, because a big dome would have spoiled the view from the Queen's House, built by Inigo Jones 80 years earlier and lived in by King Charles I's wife, Henrietta Maria.
So instead of one big dome, Greenwich got three: a modern fiasco - and two masterpieces, flanking the river view of the Queen's House in an ensemble that since 1999 has been a Unesco World Heritage site and is London's best-kept secret tourist attraction.
Secret because from 1869, when the hospital closed and the Royal Naval College moved in, it became Ministry of Defence property, closed to the public until it moved out two years ago.
Not that Greenwich doesn't get its share of tourists. They come for the river ride, for the Cutty Sark tea clipper (fastest ship in the world in its day) and for the Gypsy Moth (the tiny vessel in which Sir Francis Chichester circumnavigated the globe).
They come for the Old Royal Observatory, with its exhibits from the days of Sir Edmond Halley (he of the comet) and John Harrison, whose years of labour to make the perfect navigational timepiece were celebrated in the best-selling book Longitude, and to straddle the hemispheres with one foot on either side of the Greenwich meridian.
Londoners come for the weekend market, sprawling from its covered 18th-century home into surrounding streets. Here, you can buy anything from antiques and custom-made clothes to French cheese, Italian olives, fresh-pressed English apple juice, Thai fishcakes, Chinese noodles and clotted cream fudge.
Travel Guide: London
The house coming soon to a screen near you
Walking into Ham House triggers a strange feeling of deja vu. The handsome 17th Century property - a Jacobean stately home in the hands of The National Trust - sits in lush parkland next to the River Thames at Richmond.
What makes it so familiar? It could have something to do with the fact that it is one of London's most popular locations for film, TV and fashion shoots.
Period dramas are inevitably attracted to this distinguished property, but it plays its part in a much broader range of productions. Over the past couple of years everything from dog food commercials to Alistair McGowan's Big Impression - when it appeared as a creepy country pile in a Jonathan Creek spoof - have been filmed here.
Anne Partington-Omar, property manager of Ham House, receives several enquiries a week from location scouts, who like the house but find the generous amount of car parking space and the easy access to Central London 10 miles away just as alluring.
Ham House features in To Kill A King, a £15million Civil War movie starring Rupert Everett as King Charles and Tim Roth as Cromwell.
The film couldn't have had a more appropriate location than Ham House, which enjoyed its own Civil War drama.
Elizabeth Dysart, the daughter of the house's creator, William Murray, cleverly secured Ham House's future for her family by managing to maintain good relations with Cromwell yet secretly plotting the restoration of Charles II - even writing secret coded letters to the exiled court.
Ham House even boasts its own ghost - a phantom King Charles spaniel. Ms Partington-Omar says: 'Visitors complain that they've had to leave their dog in the car while they've met a spaniel happily wandering around the house. I have to tell them they've seen a ghost!'
There's plenty to see at Ham House including the dairy, featuring tables with supports shaped like cows' legs, a still house and a fine ice house which was filled during the winter with ice cut from the Thames.
Ms Partington-Omar says that the film business provides a real boost for The National Trust. She says: 'It's a double bonus. We receive the income from the film and TV companies who pay to use the houses as locations and we also benefit from the publicity they generate. It's a perfect arrangement.'
*Ham House, Ham, Richmond TW10 7RS (020 8940 1950). Open daily except Thursdays and Fridays from 1pm to 5pm until November 2. Admission: £7 per adult, £3.50 per child, £17.50 per family.
Travel Guide: London
Take a tour of Buckingham Palace
From the Daily Mail
Buckingham Palace opens to the public in August for an eight-week summer season, and it's the closest most of us will ever get to a thoroughly good snoop behind the scenes of one of the most famous addresses in the world.
Last year, on a much-awaited visit, I overheard an Australian remark: 'It's the best thing Her Maj ever did.' For 2001 she's gone one better, allowing us a glimpse of the previously unseen royal gardens.
A visit to the Palace is still an event to savour. Since it first opened in 1993, more than 2.25 million people have trooped through the sumptuous State Rooms. But that's small beer compared with the 2.65 million who passed through the gates of Alton Towers in 2000 alone.
A visit to London's most famous residence is also an exercise in royal history as, contained in the glossy 64-page brochure (well worth the £4.50 cost), are some splendid pictures taken inside Palace walls.
For example, page 25 shows a black-and-white wedding photograph of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in the Throne Room.
This marvellous room has two thrones, made for the Coronation in 1953, generously stuffed with almost comfy-looking cushions.
A few rooms later, in the White Drawing Room, you can see the exact spot where the Queen and Duke posed for the colour photograph that marked their Golden Wedding.
Tours are self-guided and you should allow about two hours, as each State Room is a treasure trove of portraits, porcelain, furniture and various gilded and gold-plated ornaments.
Be prepared to get your fill of chandeliers along the way - some of these cut-glass edifices are so large they seem the size of the average suburban greenhouse. And they sparkle intensely.
Travel Guide: London
New thrills at Legoland
Legoland Windsor did not immediately spring to mind as a fun-filled family destination, but to my surprise there was a lot more than I first expected.
I had a preconceived idea that it would simply be a collection of miniature reconstructions of famous buildings made from Lego bricks.
The park does have models of the Millennium Wheel, the Palace of Westminster and others, but also plenty of rides and attractions of its own.
Recently re-opened for the 2004 season, Legoland isn't resting on its laurels.
The new Jungle Coaster is the park's fastest ride at 40mph, full of turns and sudden drops including a 42ft plunge at one point.
For those who prefer their thrills on the ground, there is a regular live action show. Escape From Dragon Tower has a mixture of acrobatics, martial arts and audience participation.
In total, there are nine themed areas at Legoland Windsor.
Among the highlights, Duplo Land caters strictly for younger visitors, while Traffic features two driving schools for kids aged 3-5 and 6-13 years old respectively.
For older kids there is the Knights' Kingdom which features The Dragon roller coaster, while for those who enjoy getting wet the Wild Woods area has the Pirates Falls log flume.
Travel guide: England
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The Night Ferry was the pinnacle of boat train glamour. Instead of an arrow, Night Ferry locomotives had a crescent moon on the front.
The outbound service left Victoria at about 9pm pulling a heady combination of Wagon Lits sleeping cars and Pullman dining cars, in which the plates were pale blue with crinkly edges.
In what seems in retrospect a fantastical, Jules Verne-like operation, Night Ferry carriages were placed directly on a Dunkirk-bound ferry by the raising or lowering of water in the dock at Dover Marine.
Dover Marine, like its counterpart Calais Marine, no longer exists, so the 07.00 must go to Dover Priory in the centre of town. It did so on time at 09.44, and I then had to wait for a bus around the corner from the station, in front of a sign stressing that ferries and buses were no longer through connected, adding that courtesy buses to the ferry port were provided.
The marginalisation of foot passengers on modern ferries begins with that sign and continues almost infinitely.
When, in the Seventies, I went to France with my dad and the British Rail Touring Club (he worked for the railways) we used the train-connected Sealink Ferries. Sealink was the banner under which BR ran its shipping interests.
The French nationalised railways also ran their ferries under the name Sealink, and you always knew if you were on a French-run one because the sandwiches were actually edible. BR divested itself of its maritime interests in 1984, and today the ferries of Sea France and P&O Stena are floating car parks.
One hour after leaving the train, I was on board my own P&O Stena, one of the tiny minority of passengers without a car parked below, but with a licence to drink as much lager as we wanted.
As we approached Calais, the car drivers were given detailed instructions as to how and when to approach their vehicles. We foot passengers were told, as if by an afterthought, to wait outside the gift shop.
I alone, it turned out, was going to the surviving railway station at Calais Ville where my not-officially-connecting connections dictated a tolerable half hour wait for the 14.14pm to Paris.
I seemed to have the train all to myself as we left Calais, this service having been completely overshadowed by the heavy promotion of Eurostar.
From the 14.14, however, you can rediscover the mellow countryside of Northern France, which is a blur from Eurostar. We pulled into Gare du Nord at 17.17 and, mindful of the cheapness of my journey and its relative irksomeness (which only adds to the fun really), I looked forward to a night out in that most beautiful of cities, for once without guilt.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
The 'boat train' ticket is available from Connex's Network LeisureTravel Service, tel 0207 904 0500. For a taste of Golden Arrow/Night Ferry glamour, finish your journey with dinner at the Terminus Nord brasserie, opposite Gare du Nord at 23 rue de Dunkerque, tel 01 42 85 05 15. Details on The Grand Hotel, (tel 00 33 14280 20 00). Other hotels in the area tend to be bland, so go to the next arrondissement, the 9th, and try the Hotel des Croises, a bewilderingly under priced late 19th-century gem for £50 a double.
Snug sleeper compartments
Less than a week later, all remaining doubts disappeared. When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, said the overquoted Dr Johnson. Rubbish - when a man is tired of London, he should simply pile two sleepy children into a black cab and drive across the capital at night.
They were enraptured - by the buildings, the lights. 'Look at that,' gasped our three-year-old, as we swept past an illuminated Harrods. His more sophisticated, five-year-old sister preferred Harvey Nichols and the tree outside the Dorchester festooned with lights.
Even the eyes of a child would struggle to make Euston an exciting place to go to, but it wasn't long before we'd found our way to Platform One.
It was hardly the same as King's Cross's Platform 9¾, but there was a big red locomotive waiting for us.
As we paused to look, a stream of hitherto stern-faced grown-ups melted at the sight of a serious-looking little boy clutching his panda and his sleepier sister holding tightly to her dinosaur. 'Oh, I remember doing that,' said one woman delightedly, 'and having to wear my pyjamas too.'
Off we set in search of our carriage, pushing past the lounge car that was already doing a brisk but civilised trade in liquid night-caps. We found coach N, and after the children had mountaineered their way up the steps over that thrillingly big drop to the dark tracks below, we were greeted by an efficient attendant.
And there it was - almost exactly as I remembered it - two snug sleeper compartments, made-up bunk beds, with the interconnecting door open and the children's door to the corridor locked shut.
'We wouldn'a want you wandering off on your own, son,' said the attendant, fixing my son with a firm look. William solemnly shook his head... and rushed off to explore. Ten minutes later, the train gave a gentle jolt.
'Mummy, the bedroom's moving,' shouted Nancy from the top bunk next door, where she and her brother had decided they would be travelling with the blind open.
Cockney cabbie tour
You can't get a more authentic taste of London than a cheeky cockney cabbie. My driver was funny, informative and a real London character.
Most guides dried up when their script ran out while stuck in a traffic jam, but cabbie Paul kept pointing out new things such as the world's narrowest house (the others sat outside without mentioning it) or telling me his views on various Royals, like: 'That Henry the Eighth, he was stark raving bonkers you know.'
There's an intercom to make chatting easier and the driver concentrates on what you are most interested in. The nippy cab has room for five to split the bill and you can be collected and dropped off wherever you want. What you see: Up to you, guv -favourite route includes Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and St Paul's. Best joke: Alongside statue honouring General de Gaulle. 'Blimey, look at the state of his trousers!' Worst bit: Expensive if there's only one or two of you. Price: £70 per cab for two hours, can be split between five. Verdict: 10/10 Perfect introduction to history, stories and character of the city. Contact: Black Taxi Tours, 7 Durweston Mews, London W1U 6DF; 020 7289 4371 or try www.londontours.uk.com or e-mail info@blacktaxitours.co.uk
Abbey Road and The Marquee Club
Abbey Road: The Beatles' Abbey Road album cover has produced the Fab Four's most enduring image - and London's most famous rock 'n' roll landmark.
The Beatles were barely on speaking terms when they stepped on to the zebra crossing outside the Abbey Road studios in St John's Wood, North West London, for the 10-minute photo shoot in August 1969.
The cover fuelled bizarre rumours that Paul McCartney had actually died three years earlier and the cover portrayed a funeral procession: John Lennon, dressed in white was a priest; Ringo Starr, all in black, represented an undertaker while McCartney, barefoot and out-of-step, was the deceased.
Meanwhile George, in denims, embodied the grave-digger.
Originally Abbey Road was going to be called Everest - after the brand of cigarettes smoked by the engineer Geoff Emerick.
Plans to fly The Beatles to the Himalayas for a photo shoot were shelved in favour of the zebra crossing outside.
The Marquee Club: London's newest music venue has adopted the name of Soho's famous Marquee Club but it has little in common with the dive where the Rolling Stones made an impression 40 years ago.
The new Marquee Club in trendy Islington has air-conditioning and a bar/ restaurant with a Michelin-starred chef.
The club's most famous site in Wardour Street, Soho, was sweaty but atmospheric with its floors sticky from beer and sweat.
Between 1964 and 1988, 90 Wardour Street was one of the world's greatest music venues and at the forefront of every scene; R & B, psychedelia, mod, punk.
The site is now Terence Conran's Mezzo restaurant.
The Lanesborough and Harvey Nicks
THE LANESBOROUGH HOTEL, Hyde Park Corner, London SW1 (www.lanesborough.com tel: 020 7259 5599). Cost: £24.50 per person. Teatime: 3.30pm-6pm Monday-Saturday, 4pm-6pm Sunday.
Ambience: Life, as they say, is in the details and the Lanesborough makes the same case for afternoon tea, served in the serene pastel splendour of the Conservatory restaurant and complete with pianist and silver teapots. 9/10
Taste: The sandwiches featured a kaleidoscope of different coloured bread - egg-and-cress with flecked spinach bread, for example - and included a daringly retro potted chicken.
If the scones were a little dry, the raspberry jam was delicious and the crumpets piping hot and oozing with butter.
Miniature pastries, including a delightful little cheesecake, tempted the tastebuds long after we should have admitted defeat. 9/10
Service: Pleasant and attentive, if a little anonymous. Our appreciation was obvious enough for our waitress to offer us another round.
She waited until we'd finished the sandwiches before serving warm scones and crumpets. Pots of hot water arrived regularly. 9/10
Total: 27/30
HARVEY NICHOLS, Knightsbridge, London SW1 (www.harveynichols.com tel: 020 7823 1839). Cost: £12.50 per person. Teatime: 3.30pm-6pm.
Ambience: Something of a come-down after our previous tea, even at half the price - wooden tables, paper napkins and clunky white china on the 5th floor of the department store, with views of the food hall and sushi conveyor belt.
Babies were notable for their presence - and noise levels. 3/10
Taste: Oozing with neither style nor fillings, the sandwiches featured dull bread, peppery cucumber and bland egg.
The scones were large, unheated and dry, the jam was mass-market but the cream was pleasingly yellow. A large fruit tart, instead of plate jostling with little pastries, looked leaden but was rather delicious. 4/10
Service: A lack of attentiveness, but it was the first place to offer decaffeinated tea. The waitress partnered my pot of Earl Grey tea with - horror - a jug of cream. 4/10
Total: 11/30
Museums of London
V&A (www.vam.ac.uk tel: 020 7942 2000)
Former admission fee: £5
What's new: The British Galleries. Opened last November, this museum within a museum provides a chronological survey of British design from Tudor to Victorian times.
The objects - don't miss the Great Bed of Ware, a vast four-poster mentioned in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - are sensational, and their presentation is superb. For example, by touching a screen you can take a close-up tour of the Ware bed to see the graffiti and wax seals left by past residents.
Science Museum (www.sciencemuseum.org.uk tel: 0870 870 4771)
Former admission fee: £7.95
What's new: The Wellcome Wing. Opened in 2000, it shows what's going on in science and technology today.
With a vast blue glass wall as a backdrop, the wing looks thrilling, and some of the hands-on exhibits - one reveals what your face might look like when you're older - are fun. However, you need to pay to see the highlight, the IMAX films.
Natural History Museum (www.nhm.ac.uk tel: 020 7942 5000)
Former admission fee: £9
What's new: The computer-animated tyrannosaurus and the child-oriented Investigate centre, where you can study objects with computers and microscopes.
Don't bother paying to see the mediocre Predators exhibition.
Imperial War Museum (www.iwm.org.uk tel: 020 7416 5000)
Former admission fee: £6.50
What's new: The permanent Holocaust Exhibition, opened in 2000, is gruesome, powerful and holds no punches - not recommended for children under 14.
Temporary exhibitions include The Spanish Civil War (to April 28) and The Trench (to October 27), tied in with the BBC series on life in a First World War trench.
National Maritime Museum (www.nmm.ac.uk tel: 020 8858 4422)
Former admission fee: £10.50 for the museum, the Queen's House and Royal Observatory.
What's new: Inigo Jones's Queen's House - dubbed England's first classical Renaissance building - reopened in 2001 as an art gallery, showing some of the museum's thousands of paintings.
Other free museums
Admission charges have also been dropped at The Museum of London(www.museumoflondon.org.uk tel: 020 7600 3699) and the Theatre Museum (www.theatremuseum.org tel: 0207 943 4700).
Several other major institutions, such as the British Museum and the National Gallery have, of course, always been free.
Gigantic pickled swordfish
The real draw is the tank room, where the largest preserved animals are kept. Here, in massive vats, are loggerhead turtles, conger eels and giant squid.
The most impressive specimen is a gigantic pickled swordfish, found stranded in the mouth of the River Avon. Other huge beasts include a komodo dragon and several spotted rays.
The new Darwin Centre reflects the changing role of museums. Today's visitors are just as interested in the behind-the-scenes activities as they are in the objects on display.
This presented a huge problem for the Natural History Museum, where there was room for only one per cent of the collection to be on public display.
The Darwin Centre changes all that: it allows visitors to explore the museum's huge storehouse of treasures, and also enables them to meet the scientists who work there.
The centre is offering twice-daily presentations by its researchers, and is also using ground-breaking computer technology to allow visitors to watch the scientists at work.
This will include live video link-ups with scientists at the museum's field station in Belize.
In the Victorian era, some museum workers showed rather more interest in the alcohol than in the pickled animals.
One director found it necessary to issue new guidelines to his team of scientists. 'It is advisable,' he wrote, 'to mix some disagreeable ingredient with the spirit, to deter pilferers from appropriating it.'
They would have loved the gleaming new Darwin Centre, where even the taps run with alcohol.
The free, behind-the-scenes tour is available only to over-10s. Places can be booked on arrival at the museum, and each tour lasts about 30 minutes. For more information visit www.nhm.ac.uk/darwincentre
Terry meets Julie
Pensioners getting lost, policemen in twos, pigeons in flocks and at any one time at least a dozen fond farewells and heartfelt hellos.
In Waterloo Sunset, Terry meets Julie every Friday night.
Perhaps beneath the four faces of the station clock suspended, high above, from the glass roof.
These days, Waterloo is not so much a station, more a shopping mall. I could do any number of things here, eat, drink, buy a shirt, send an e-mail, check out a Dali exhibition. There's even an impotence clinic.
Today, of course, the trains don't just go to suburban destinations carved into the war memorial arch - they leave for Paris, Brussels and Lille.
But following the Kinks you walk north across Waterloo Bridge like Terry and Julie and feel safe and sound.
Ray Davies feels safe and sound in a little pub just across Waterloo Bridge in Savoy Street called the Savoy Tavern.
I walk there, against a north wind, overtaking foreign students bent double beneath their backpacks.
The journey's worth it. An unspoilt pub in the heart of London, plain bar, bare-board floor, cream-painted panel walls - the sort of place where Ray feels comfortable.
He mentions it in his book Waterloo Sunset, which is a curious blend of autobiography, fiction and myth-making.
A girl is asked 'Who are you waiting for.' And she replies: 'The man who wrote Waterloo Sunset. I've been in the bar at the Savoy every night, just as he said, but he never comes. He's not ready to leave the underground.'
Brit fashion and street style
The crowds come from all over the world. Most are young and trendy, or like to think they are mingling with the latest in Brit fashion and street style.
Because of this influx, the area has changed, with new glass and concrete buildings and offices going up all the time.
Opening on the Lock itself next month is a 130-bedroom Holiday Inn.
The area is now an international tourist attraction, featured in films, books and fashion photographs. Many well-known fashion firms began with a stall on Camden Lock.
I like to think I had a small hand in its creation, being a local who has constantly used it, and had a stall there for a brief moment.
Until 1974, Camden Lock was mainly derelict land, old railway buildings and warehouses. In nearby Inverness Street were fruit and vegetable stalls - still there - plus an old bloke, Reg, who sold bric-a-brac from a barrow. That was Camden Town's street life.
The person who did most to create Camden Lock was Eric Reynolds, a tall, handsome, officer-class sort of chap, now 60, not the type you would associate with street markets.
I was rather terrified of him when I first met him some 20 years ago, when I was in a queue of people all saying please, sir, can we have a stall?
Eric recalled: 'There was an explosion in arts and crafts in the Sixties and Seventies, but there were few places for people to sell their wares. I walked round London looking for an open space and came across this yard. In the week, it was a printers' delivery yard.
'We got a short lease and on Saturday, March 4, 1974, we opened. There were 40 stalls which we let out at £3.'
He explained: 'They were mostly craftsmen and artists - silversmiths, people selling home-made buttons, knitted children's clothes, plus a woman who sold decorated traffic lights and milk churns. But the weather was appalling and we only got a few hundred people.
A walled oasis in the middle of London
New for 2001 is a tour around part of Buckingham Palace's garden. If you have ever seen the high walls and barbed wire that surround the grounds, it is particularly thrilling to peek inside.
Often described as a "walled oasis in the middle of London", the garden has a lake with moorhens and mallards, mature trees and lots of lawn.
Considering the traffic outside, the gardens are very peaceful.
Don't go to Buckingham Palace expecting to find out much about today's royals. It's hard to believe you are in a working palace, it feels like a museum.
Don't expect to see the Queen's bathroom or, in fact, anything more personal than portraits and lots of gilt.
At £11 a ticket, it's hardly top value, but, on the other hand, it's not every day you see inside a palace.
The Royal Mews are open throughout the year and contain the royal carriages, cars and the stables.
Don't miss the Gold Coach - it is unbelievably ornate and apparently costs £3,000 or so just to get it out of its garage!
Tickets from the ticket office are £11. The State Rooms are open August 4 to Sept 30. Royal Mews' tickets cost £4.60. Booking: 020 7321 2233.
Life's little pleasures
This last property has got scalloped bookcases, vast gilt mirrors and an atmospherically flagstoned basement with a 10 foot-long oak dining table that's as solid as a battering ram.
It's the home of a Scandinavian antiques collector who, like many of Monica's owners, finds the extra £65 a night makes life's little pleasures just that bit more accessible. 'We have all sorts,' says Monica, 'Diplomats, interior designers, city financiers, actresses, authors.' You can add artists to that list, too.
The next place I stay is an enormous mansion-block apartment in SW3, home of a charming professional painter who asks just to be called Lydia (like most owners, she'd rather not publicise the fact that she takes in paying guests). Breakfast is served on her roof garden, from where you can look down on the lawns of the Chelsea Royal Hospital and across to the Thames and Albert Bridge.
Lydia says: 'Mostly, people go out first thing in the morning and you don't see them until they come back from Cats or Phantom Of The Opera.' Her service is also a boon for nervous people. 'It gives an added sense of security to stay in the house of someone who lives in London who can steer you in the right direction,' says Keith Stables, Monica's business partner 'The addresses may be up-market, but the welcome is very down-to-earth.'
TRAVEL FACTS:
Uptown Reservations, 41 Paradise Walk, London SW3 4JL (020 7351 3445) or e-mail (inquiries@uptownres.co.uk) and properties can be viewed on www.uptownres.co.uk
No sightings of Hugh Grant
Owner Guy Parsons was unfazed about having one of the world's most famous film stars in his salon when they filmed About A Boy there last year: 'We get people like Hugh Grant in every day.
'Some of the girls who work here were dribbling with excitement but I can't say he does much for me.'
Just north of Notting Hill is Maida Vale and Will's favourite restaurant, Otto Dining Lounge, where he dines and dumps a series of women.
The film's location manager Steve Hart says: 'We wanted to put Will in cool, hip surroundings - Otto Dining Lounge was so new it hadn't even opened when we filmed there.'
Leafy Maida Vale boasts the odd celebrity like Lulu and various members of Hear'Say.
So gazing out of the floor-to-ceiling windows of Otto, on the corner of Sutherland Avenue and Edgware Road, Maida Vale, while toying with aubergine and anchovy fritters (£6.50) seemed like an excellent lunchtime activity.
But Otto is so cool it doesn't open during the day.
Still, with the help of the 98 bus, dependable old Oxford Street was open for business.
In Skechers, Will buys Marcus a pair of trainers. Packed with customers and too-blase-to-bother assistants, this was teenage-boy heaven, with blaring music to match - but I imagine Hugh Grant would have got served rather faster than I did.
Time for a late lunch. The other restaurant in the film is Hakkasan, an outrageously trendy Chinese establishment off Oxford Street in Hanway Place, where a starter of abalone in supreme stock with jelly fish costs £16.
'Do you have a reservation?' asked the receptionist, poring over the book. 'We might be able to fit you in at 11pm.'
Still, there was always London Zoo for a short stroll around the penguin pool and a statue of a dung beetle.
In Regent's Park, where Will and Marcus (played by Nicholas Hoult) met on a SPAT picnic, a tentative sun shone but no ducks died after being hit with wholemeal bread.
I'd been all over London - and it proved to be about as enjoyable a day in the capital as you could hope for, dampened only a little by absolutely no sightings of Hugh Grant.
He's in New York making a film with Sandra Bullock.
Such a cult figure
Next stop on Frankie's gangster tour is Braithway House, close to the Barbican, where Reggie and Ronnie were arrested in spring 1968 by officers led by Inspector Leonard 'Nipper' Read.
Reggie and Ronnie were given life sentences and sent to Brixton Prison. Here, they were reunited with Frankie, who'd been moved from Leicester after slamming a slop bucket over the prison governor.
'He was touring with a top Home Office official and telling him how the security was top-notch,' says Frankie. 'As he said those words, I put a bucket of crap on his head.'
One of Frankie's favourite haunts during the Sixties was the Repton Boys Boxing Club in Bethnal Green. It still exists and is one of the highlights of his tour.
The walls are lined with faded pictures of sporting heroes and old trophies. 'There used to be a photo of me up there', says Frankie, 'but it kept getting stolen.'
As Frankie's Gangland Bus heads down Bethnal Green Road, I'm amazed to discover he's still such a cult figure. It's like being with the Queen Mum. There's visible excitement as we pass, and people wave and try to shake his hand.
Frankie was once one of gangland's most revered (and feared) members. One night he was having a quiet drink in the Astor Club when a fight broke out. One of the Krays's associates - Eric Mason - threatened to tell the twins that Frankie had started the brawl. 'I was furious,' says Frankie.
'I bundled Eric inside my car and chopped him in the face with an axe.' Mason was then dumped on the steps of London Hospital, Whitechapel.
National Maritime Museum
Meanwhile, just £20 million (a drop in the ocean compared with the Millennium Dome) has created a splendidly revamped celebration of our sea-going heritage at the National Maritime Museum.
See the royal barge on which George I listened to Handel's water music, an exhibition on the exploration of Antarctica and even the uniform worn by Nelson when he was killed at the battle of Trafalgar.
Cross Trafalgar Road and for the first time in nearly two centuries the public may once again enter Wren's magnificent domed buildings and see the plaque that marks the spot where a grateful nation filed past their great admiral's body.
You might be forgiven for spending little time looking down, however, for the hall itself is one of London's least-known artistic treasures, a painted chamber second only to the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall.
Underneath the second dome, and reached by an underground passageway, is the old hospital's chapel. Dating from 1789, it was the scene for the second set of nuptials in Four Weddings And A Funeral.
But what of the other Dome? It may be empty, but the site is far from abandoned. As South-East London's only Tube stop, North Greenwich (Building of the Year 2000) is awash with commuters. And all around, the saplings have turned into trees; the cinema has opened and the first homes have been occupied. Greenwich may be blooming after all. Time to take down the tent?
Agents and spies
Other films and TV series featuring National Trust properties include:
JOHNNY ENGLISH
The Rowan Atkinson 007 spoof, inspired by his successful Barclaycard TV commercials, also stars John Malkovich and Natalie I mbruglia.
The film uses Trust properties at Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire, and St Michael's Mount in Cornwall.
Hughenden Manor, High Wycombe HP14 4LA (tel: 01494 755573)Home of Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli from 1848 to his death, it was his retreat from the rigours of parliamentary life in London. Most of his furniture, books and pictures are still on show. The garden is a recreation of the design by Disraeli's wife, Mary Anne.
Open daily except Mondays and Tuesdays from 1pm to 5pm until November 2. Admission: £4.50 per adult, £2.25 per child, £11.50 per family.
St Michael's Mount Marazion, Nr Penzance TR17 OEF (tel: 01736 710507)Approached by a causeway at low tide, the castle on top of this rocky island dates back to the 12th Century. Converted into a private house in the 17th Century, it contains fascinating early rooms, an armoury, a rococo Gothic drawing room and a 14th Century church with views towards Land's End and the Lizard.
Open daily from Monday to Friday from 10.30am to 5.30pm until October 21. Admission: £4.80 per adult, £13 per family.
CAMBRIDGE SPIES
Much of the four-part BBC2 drama Cambridge Spies, telling the story of Philby, Burgess and Maclean (starring Sam West, Tom Hollander and Toby Stephens) was filmed at Waddesdon Manor, Nr Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. (tel: 01296 653211)
A Renaissance-style chateau, it was created by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in the 1870s. It has a unique collection of 18th Century French objets d'art including buttons, gold boxes, cabinets, carpets and porcelain.
There are also magnificent portraits by Gainsborough. The rococo revival Aviary is home to breeds of exotic birds and the wine cellars contain thousands of bottles of vintage Rothschild wines.
Open daily from 11am to 4pm until November 2 except Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission: timed tickets only. £7 per adult, £6 per child. Nicholas Nickleby
Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell takes the lead in this film version of the Dickens novel, also featuring Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay and The National Trust property, Gibson Mill.
Gibson Mill/Hardcastle Crags, Estate Office, Hollin Hall, Crimsworth Dean, Hebden Bridge HX7 7AP The old water mill is set in Hardcastle Crags, a lovely valley with deep ravines and tumbling streams surrounded by woodland where you may stumble across huge anthills, home to the hairy wood ant. Waymarked walks lead through the valley and link the footpaths with the Pennine Way.
Gibson Mill is closed but Hardcastle Crags is open all year. Admission: Car park midweek £1.50, weekend £2.
Regal colour scheme
Visitors enter through the Ambassadors' entrance - on the left if you are standing in front of the Palace - and exit into The Quadrangle, which you can't see from The Mall.
The Palace isn't as solid as it appears from the outside; in fact, it consists of four wings built around a central courtyard.
The State Rooms are in the rear section overlooking the garden.
The regal colour scheme of the State Rooms is set in the Grand Hall, where there is a red carpet, and cream and gilt.
But nothing prepares the eye for the fairytale setting of the curving Grand Staircase, with its theatrically ornate bronze balustrade. You go up one bit to a half-landing where the staircase splits. It's a sight one's unlikely to forget in a hurry.
Up on the first floor, highlights include the Picture Gallery and the Music Room.
The narrow, 50m-long Picture Gallery, with an arched glass ceiling, is a privilege to see. At one point you can stand between two paintings by Canaletto. If you close your eyes you can imagine the dreamy setting the gallery must have made for the 80th birthday dinner given by the Prince of Wales for the late Lord Menuhin.
Wet and wild
The log flume is one of several water-based rides at Legoland that are guaranteed to get the family wet.
If the sun doesn't dry you there is always the drying machine at the bottom of the Extreme Challenge waterslide.
Pester power is inevitable at any theme park and Legoland is no different.
At the entrance/exit to the park there is a large shop selling all types of Lego toys, while dotted throughout the park are 12 different eateries offering all kinds of kid-friendly food including burgers and pizza.
As with all theme parks it is inevitable that a certain amount of time will be spent queuing for the most popular rides.
Parents should be advised that height restrictions apply to some of the more exciting attractions. Rides like the roller coasters and log flume tend to have a minimum height requirement of 0.9m or insist on adults accompanying children under 1.1m.
Younger children may get frustrated by being denied the fun stuff, though there is still plenty for them to do.
Legoland may not hold quite the same appeal as Disneyland or Alton Towers for older children, but for under-14s there is plenty for a fun day out. Travelling by car, the attraction can be reached via the M25 and is located just two miles from Windsor town centre. Allow between six and seven hours for your visit.
The Legoland season is already up and running until October 31. There are special events throughout that time including jousting and pop concerts.
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| | | | Restorative bacon rolls
But it didn't matter, with the lights off and the compartment lit only by the purple glow of a night-light, Nancy was soon rocked to sleep. Her brother put up more of a fight.
'Are we in Scotland yet?' came a little voice as the train came to an early halt. I looked out of the window - 'No, William, Watford - now go to sleep.'
With the sleeper free to take seven-and-a-half hours over a journey that its daytime counterparts now do in four-and-a-half, the scope for arriving late is presumably much reduced.
Anyway, just before 7am, there was a knock on the door and four breakfasts arrived along with news that we would be arriving at Edinburgh Waverley in 10 minutes.
There is no rush. Just as you can board the sleeper up to an hour before departure you can have a 45-minute lie-in on arrival. But lie-ins and excited, well-rested children do not mix, so it was up and out.
By 8am, we were installed in our self-catering apartment, chomping on the restorative bacon rolls that, 30 years ago, my grandfather also laid on for overnight arrivals from London.
The journey was a fatigue-free start to a magnificent few days that took in the castle and its one o'clock gun, the Dynamic Earth exhibition and North Berwick, where the children were shown where their father learned to swim.
The high point had to be the children climbing unaided to the top of Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano that dominates the skyline and which I hadn't sat on since 1968.
The low points? Truthfully, there weren't any - we went back on the sleeper too, giving us a full final day in Edinburgh and the chance for the children to double up on those magical sleeper memories. They're already talking about the next time.
TRAVEL DETAILS:
ScotRail (tel: 08457 550033) has a Family Sleeper Ticket. Single sleeper journeys can be booked on the Internet. See www.scotrail.co.uk. For details of self-catering apartments see www.visitscotland.com.
Upmarket bus tour
Harrods Luxury sightseeing tour
An attempt to provide an up-market bus tour using an open-top double-decker bus painted in Harrods' green livery complete with driver, guide and hostess dispensing tea/coffee in plastic cups and a couple of cheap biscuits.
The tour is run by the more populist Original London Tour Bus company, but you pay a lot more for this one. What you see: All the main sights including Kensington Palace, Tower Bridge and the London Eye. Best joke: Mick Jagger went to the London School of Economics, but left because he couldn't get no satisfaction. Worst bit: Guide hides downstairs with microphone - and makes repeated plugs for Harrods. Price: £20 for two hours (£10 children under 14, under-fives free). Verdict: 3/10 Why pay £5 more for a cup of tea? Contact: Harrods Luxury Sightseeing Tours, Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1X 7XL; 020 7225 6596 or go to www.harrods.com
Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones
Brook Street, Mayfair: Only one of London's English Heritage blue plaques celebrates a rock star - 23 Brook Street in Mayfair where guitar legend Jimi Hendrix lived in the late Sixties.
He's in good company as composer George Handel lived next door at number 25. Hendrix moved to the upmarket pad after Ringo Starr evicted him and his manager Chas Chandler from his Montagu Square flat when they painted all the rooms black.
430 Kings Road: The cradle of punk was an early Seventies clothes shop at 430 Kings Road called Let It Rock which sold clothing and teddy boy outfits, run by art school rebel Malcolm McLaren and his partner Vivienne Westwood.
McLaren renamed the shop Sex and he and Westwood pioneered the punk look. He formed The Sex Pistols using shop regulars but largely as a vehicle to promote the shop.
Nowadays, 430 Kings Road is a boutique called World's End.
Edith Grove: Die-hard fans of the Rolling Stones believe an English heritage blue plaque deserves to be erected outside 102 Edith Grove in Chelsea - for it's there they believe the Stones were formed.
Brian Jones lived in the middle floor flat when the Rolling Stones first formed but Mick Jagger and Keith Richards soon moved in. All three shared a flat there between 1962 and 1963.
The Beatles visited the flat for a party in April 1963 after seeing the Stones play at Richmond's famous Crawdaddy Club.
St Martins Lane and The Ritz
ST MARTINS LANE HOTEL, 45 St Martins Lane, London WC2 (020 7300 5544). Cost: £16 per person. Teatime: 3pm-5pm daily.
Ambience: Afternoon tea Sex And The City style, with a louche selection of cocktails including Passionfruit Pimms and Strawberry Bellini, takes place amid the sleek teak of the Tuscan Steak Restaurant. 7/10
Taste: An impressive range of teas included fresh mint, while the sandwiches took a leap away from tradition with Parma ham, rocket and mozzarella.
The bread, however, was somewhat stale. The cream was dense and the jam dark although the scone wasn't hot.
The high point was the pastries - meringue and passion fruit, cream-ridden fruit and lemon tarts and cream horns. 7/10
Service: Friendly and relaxed although it would have been nice if our waiter had realised we needed forks for the pastries.
A mystery pot of honey added to the impression that the hotel didn't quite understand the concept of afternoon tea. 8/10
Total: 22/30
THE RITZ, 150 Piccadilly, London W1 (www.theritzlondon.com tel: 020 7493 8181). Cost: £27. Teatimes: 1.30pm, 3.30pm and 5.30pm daily.
Ambience: Afternoon tea here has a history and elegance that takes in Edward VII, Judy Garland, Winston Churchill, a piano, silver teapots and fountains. 9/10
Taste: The most expensive and lavish of the five. Circling waiters replenished our plates with sandwiches, then chocolate brownies and fruit cake in case the pastries were not sufficient.
The bread was fresh, fruit cake moist and pastries gooey. If I were carping, I'd say the scones could have been warmer. 9/10
Service: Where one might have expected disdain there was only delight. The pianist insisted on playing baby-themed music for the baby in our party.
The waiters made detours to amuse Peggy, lending her their silver salvers to play with. 10/10
Total: 28/30
The Muswell Hillbillies
It sounds like whimsy, but it's also a hint at the less-than-sunny side of Ray Davies. He is reputed, in 1973 when his marriage was breaking down, to have spent Christmas Day on the Circle Line, drinking cans of Kronenbourg.
From the Savoy Tavern I walk along the Strand to Charing Cross and take the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line up to Archway station on the way to Muswell Hill.
The Archway Tavern had the distinction of appearing on the cover and inside the gatefold sleeve of the Muswell Hillbillies album.
It's no longer the darkwood and etched mirror place it was then, but somehow even more pertinent as a place to gaze into your beer and think, as Ray sang in Muswell Hillbillies, of coming from a nowhere kind of place but dream of places you've never seen - New Orleans, Oklahoma, Tennessee...
Then back on the Northern Line to East Finchley. From here, tree-lined Fortis Green takes me to Muswell Hill where Ray was born 56 years ago and grew up in 6 Denmark Terrace, just opposite the Clissold Arms.
The house, a Victorian semi attached to a joinery workshop, was cramped for a large family.
It was a musical home, with a piano in the parlour, to which Ray's parents Annie and Frederick would weave back from The Clissold Arms with a gang in tow for a singsong.
Here, in 1964, Ray and brother Dave worked out the chords to You Really Got Me, the song that first put them at the top of the charts.
The Clissold Arms is a real Kinks find. The large back bar has a display of Kinks memorabilia.
Among them is a signed copy of the Kinks' first single, a cover of Little Richard's Long Tall Sally, a guitar, a wall of photographs and a small brass plaque which reads: "Site of 1957 performing debut of Ray and Dave Davies. Founding members of the Kinks."
Dave Davies's song Fortis Green goes: 'Mum would shout and scream when dad would come home drunk, When she'd ask him where he'd been, he said "Up The Clissold Arms", Chattin' up some hussy, but he didn't mean no harm.'
If that sounds a bit of a rough pub, be reassured it isn't. Actually it's an ideal place to stop for lunch (Tel: 020 8883 1028).
Artistic five-storey building
'Later that year, the canal was opened up. Then Sunday trading became legal, so the market opened on Sundays as well.'
Eric added: 'The site was derelict when I arrived because it was going to be a motorway. The Westway was going to be expanded, running down the route of the canal.
'Camden Lock would have disappeared to become a motorway spur. The motorway never happened, but it was about four years before we took off. Until then I was setting up most of the stalls myself.'
Around this time my older daughter began raving about Camden Lock. She was 14, at Camden School for Girls. Almost every girl hung around Camden Lock at weekends - and every punk in North London.
One Saturday night she came home and said she'd got a job with this old man. He was half-Russian and made these lovely badges. She was going to help him paint and sell them.
Er, how old is this old man? She thought, then guessed he was about 35.
Next weekend I went down and spied upon him from afar, but he seemed perfectly respectable.
When our younger daughter got to that age, we took a stall. It was still all small and ramshackle, and when it rained, the plastic covering leaked and the ground became a mud bath.
To get a stall, you had to queue up early and give your name to Mr Reynolds. He'd ask what you planned to sell, then he went off with all the names. If you were lucky, he would give you a stall. The price was £8 a day.
We did it twice, selling old clothes and some of my stamps and other treasures. I think our total sales came to £19. But the street cred...
'I started that system,' Eric explained, 'to keep it fair. People came down from Liverpool and started queuing from Friday night for a Sunday stall, sleeping in their vans. But when they went for a meal, someone would take their place and fights started.'
The original empty space is now an artistic five-storey building, put up in 1991 at a cost of £4 million to house permanent workshops and units.
Eric added: 'In the early days, backpackers went off to Thailand or Tibet and brought back ethnic crafts - they arrived with their packs on their backs.
Only one regret
Frankie points to the very spot where he threw Mason from the car. 'Such a shame,' he says. 'It was a brand-new axe, and I never got it back.'
Frankie's Gangster Tour ends in The Blind Beggar pub on Whitechapel Road, where Ronnie and Reggie shot the gangster George Cornell - the alleged killer of the Krays's cousin.
The twins had heard that Cornell was there and decided to settle the score.
Frankie recalls: 'Cornell was sitting on a bar stool and the jukebox was playing The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore.'
Ronnie walked up to him, pulled out a 9mm Mauser semi-automatic pistol and shot Cornell three times in the head. One of the bullets ricocheted off the bar and into the jukebox. When the track got stuck, Ronnie is said to have grinned and said: 'Well, the sun ain't gonna shine for him any more.'
I ask Frankie if he's ever had any regrets. After all, he's spent more than half of his life behind bars.
He thinks for a moment, then gives a broad smile. 'I've got only one regret,' he says, 'and that's getting caught.'
TRAVEL FACTS:
Mad Frank's London is published by Virgin Books, price £16.99. His Gangland Tour takes place every Saturday from 4 Browning Street, London SE17, takes three to four hours and costs £30 per person. Call 020 7708 5682, 11am-5pm.
Great kudos for presents
Royal babies are christened in the Music Room, which is utterly breathtaking. You can even stand on the spot where the photograph of the Queen greeting Nelson Mandela was taken.
With the sun streaming through the five floor-to-ceiling windows, the polished parquet floor had an ice rink gleam to it.
The Ballroom is the largest room at the Palace, and one of the biggest in London. It's used mainly for investitures.
It was open for the first time in 2000 and, this year, the sword the Queen uses to 'dub' Knights (touching the left and right shoulder with the blade) will be on display.
Downstairs, in the Bow Room, you join the route guests to the annual garden parties take out into the grounds. There's a crunchy gravel path and a 450m route around the three-acre lake.
Souvenirs are also on sale - from sets of postcards to enamelled boxes and jewellery. I discovered that the chocolates in a tin emblazoned with a picture of the Palace, costing £5.95, have great kudos as presents.
I left feeling uniquely privileged to have had the tiniest glimpse of an hour or two in royal life. I'll be back . . . just in case Her Maj gets fed up with the snooping and has a change of heart.
Travel facts Summer opening of the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace takes place from August 4 to September 30 - timed tickets from 9.30am to 4.30pm. Admission to the Palace and exhibition: adults £11, over-60s £9, under-17s £5.50, family ticket (two adults, two under-17s) £27.50, under-fives free. Advance tickets are available from www.the-royal-collection.org.uk or through the credit card line on 020 7321 2233.The ticket office in Green Park is open 9am to 4pm (July 28 to September 30), for advance and on-the-day sales.
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| | | | Self-guided tour
Self-guided audio tour
In advance this seems like the most independent tour, but it soon felt more like a ball and chain. The dull, slow voices sound like primary school geography teachers and even tell you where to stand, barking at you: 'Walk 60 metres to the right. Stop here. ZigZag recommends you use this spot to take a photograph.'
The free delivery/ collection to central hotels is useful, but if you're arriving for a day trip it's impossible. What you see: Five different tours featuring the Houses of Parliament and Royal residences. Best joke: Not a single smile-raiser in two hours. Worst bit: Headphones kept falling off and the player wouldn't fit in my pocket. Price: £10 for tape, player and map, delivered/collected at any address in Central London Verdict: 3/10 Dull, slow and awkward. Contact: ZigZag Audio Tours, 52 Temple Fortune Lane, London NW11 7UE; 020 8458 5310, or go to www.zigzagtours.com or e-mail info@zigzagtours.com
Clubs and coffee bars
The Hope & Anchor: Islington's Hope & Anchor at 207 Upper Street, was a seminal pub-rock venue hosting Dr Feelgood and Ian Dury's first band, Kilburn And The High Roads.
In the late Seventies all the big punk bands played there. Later, U2 played their first London gig there - but with only nine people in the audience.
The Hope & Anchor is still going strong with live music six nights a week.
Heddon Street: David Bowie had flu when he posed for the cover photograph of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars on a cold, rainy night in January 1972.
Bowie is captured outside 23 Heddon Street, just off Regent Street.
The Troubadour : This famous coffee bar on the Old Brompton Road opened in 1955, and by the early Sixties it was hosting live folk music in the basement.
A young Bob Dylan played there in 1962 and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts got a lucky break there when he met blues impresario Alexis Korner - who invited him to play at the Marquee Club.
Wimbledon Stadium: Queen rented Wimbledon Stadium for a day in 1978 to shoot the video for their double A-side single Bicycle Race/ Fat Bottomed Girls and 65 naked models were hired to stage a nude bicycle race.
Afterwards, bicycle suppliers Halfords refused to take the saddles back and insisted the band pay for replacements.
*Rock 'n' Roll London by Max Wooldridge, with a foreword by Malcolm McLaren, is published by New Holland Publishers, £12.99.
Beer-sticky Northern Railway Tavern
On my way up Fortis Green I passed number 87, the home Ray bought when he was married to Rasa whom he'd met when she was still a Bradford schoolgirl and mad-keen Kinks fan.
They had two daughters and it's Rasa's falsetto that you hear on the backing vocals of Sunny Afternoon.
Ray and Dave went to school around here and went rock and rolling at the local hop. The Athenaeum, where Sainsbury's now stands, was the dance hall featured in the song Come Dancing.
Athenaeum Place is still there like the inspiration for a Ray Davies vignette - a beggar on the corner, and cobbles leading to a former Victorian church that is now an O'Neill's 'Irish' bar.
I walk down Priory Road, high enough to see London at your feet, first the trees and terraces of the lesser houses in the valley, then the City's tower blocks and Wren churches, finally Canary Wharf, grey and blinking in the winter sunlight.
On Priory Road I find myself in another Kinks vignette as I reach the beer-sticky Northern Railway Tavern, step over a yawning dog in a tartan coat and pass a Baptist church with the sign reading, 'Heaven Knows when You were last Here'.
I'm headed for the last outpost on my Kinks tour: their recording studios, Konk, on Tottenham Lane in Hornsey.
A blue neon sign spells out the name above the door. It's a windowless, beige-painted pebbledash place. Very anonymous, very North London rock star.
Such scenes are so evocative you could write a song about them.
Or at least, you could if you were Ray Davies.
For more information on all aspects of the Kinks, including locations go to
www.cguweb.com/bigblacksmoke/bbs.index.html
Look out for treasures
'One girl sold fingerless gloves from the Andes, made of yak's wool. She staggered in with carrier bags full of them. Today there is still a huge amount of ethnic arts and crafts, but most of it comes via a warehouse on the M25.'
Eric aimed to create an artistic environment, with jazz music, concerts and festivals, and kept strict control over his stalls. 'From the beginning, I banned stalls selling manufactured women's clothes or dented tins of peaches.'
Today there is a lot of cheap rubbish in the surrounding street markets, but quality arts and crafty things are still available.
Visitors usually arrive at Camden Town Tube. Turn right up Camden High Street and you see the pavement stalls.
There is a rather cheap and unattractive clothes market on the right. Then another market over the canal bridge to the right, also tatty.
But look out and up for the decorated shop fronts on Camden High Street and Chalk Farm Road - massive 3D figures and symbols, giant boots, cowboys, pine chairs, up to 20ft long. It's a new form of street art.
The original Camden Lock is on the left of the railway bridge. Then beyond are the Stables and the Arches. You won't do it all in one visit, as much is hidden away.
If you are travelling by Tube, don't bother dragging back to Camden Town (on Sundays the station is exit-only between 1pm and 5.30pm). Head on to Chalk Farm.
I still go once a month, when I'm in London, to look out for treasures, such as old books, records, stamps, football or Beatles memorabilia.
I make a point of walking along the canal itself, as there are good, surprisingly quiet and attractive walks in each direction. Going west, you can go to London Zoo, then work your way round through Primrose Hill to Chalk Farm Tube, which makes an excellent walk.
On the way, you'll see all of modern London life, the nice and the nasty, the tasteful and the tatty, but you will have had an experience which no visitor should miss.
Other Royal haunts to visit
Royal Pavilion, Brighton: Queen Victoria sold this because she thought the town was getting a bit over-run, but as royal follies go, this one tops the bill. An extraordinary experience.
Tel: 01273 292822.
Hampton Court: The best way to go is by boat along the Thames.The Maze is the highlight for children, who whoop with excitement as they negotiate the half-a-mile of paths to the centre. Henry VIII buffs will relish every minute. Tel: 020 8781 9500.
The Banqueting House: Pop in here - it's opposite Horse Guards in Whitehall and just steps from the entrance to Downing Street. The ceiling is the gem - painted by Rubens and a marvel. Visitor line: 020 7930 4179.
Kensington Palace: Part of it consists of grace-and-favour apartments for members of the Royal Family, but it is indelibly engraved on most people's memory for the sea of flowers placed at the gates after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. There is an impressive collection of court and royal costumes from the 18th to 20th centuries on display. Tel: 0207 937 9561.
Osborne House: This is where the film Mrs Brown, starring Judi Dench and Billy Connolly, was partly shot, and it propelled Queen Victoria's seaside home to contemporary prominence. It is pure magic. Make sure you don't miss the replica of a Swiss chalet, where the royal children must have had a far more idyllic childhood than their mother's stern image implies. Tel: 01983 200 022.
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| | | | Amphibious vehicle tour
Frog tour
Riding through Central London and then plunging down a slipway into the Thames would be a thrill anyway - the live commentary is an extra. The revamped military DUKW amphibious vehicle was used in the D-Day landings. This is the only tour of London during which you will travel both over AND under Westminster Bridge. What you see: From County Hall to the Thames via Whitehall, Hyde Park Corner and Pall Mall. Best joke: Outside the Passport Office: 'If you look in the window you'll see Mohamed Al-Fayed queueing for a British passport.' Worst bit: Guide 'welcomes gratuities' and stands alongside exit. Price: £15 for 80 minutes (children £9, family of four £42). Verdict: 8/10 Informative, memorable and fun. Contact: London Frog Company, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7PB; 020 7928 6162 or www.frogtours.com, or e-mail enquiries@frogtours.com
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| | | | Double-decker bus tour
Big Bus tour
Award-winning open-top double-decker bus service with guides on board and organised by uniformed staff at designated bus stops along three different routes around the city. The Red Tour - Tower of London, St Paul's and Piccadilly - can take up to two hours and you can join and leave when you like. What you see: Three different bus routes featuring a different selection of London's main sights. Best joke: The London Dungeon shows you how they used to torture people; these days they make you come on a tour bus instead. Worst bit: Schedule is very complicated. I wasted a frustrating hour trying to find the right bus at the right stop going in the right direction. Price: £15 adults, £6 children, for hop-on, hop-off day ticket covering any of their bus routes, walking tours and boat trip from Tower Bridge to Westminster. Verdict: 7/10 Big operation, big choice, big value, but big headache when it goes wrong. Contact: The Big Bus Company, 48 Buckingham Palace Road, London SW1W 0RN; 020 7233 9533 or www.bigbus.co.uk
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