Round The Houses
Today, I visited Richmond Park with two friends for a picnic and a spot of mini-badiminton. My journey was interesting. Round the houses.
‘Did you even go to a park and have a picnic if you didn’t take an action shot with a mini-badminton racket?’
There is no ‘purpose’ for today’s blog. No take-home message nor life lesson. Just an account a great day with great people.
Suppose there is no point reading much further.
Well… if you’re still here I may as well write something.
Richmond Park is the SW London version of Kent’s Knole Park. Just bigger.
It has its own M25 within the park grounds which is supposed to be shared equally between cyclists and motorists — although cyclists take up two spaces on occasion, making it difficult to pass.
Highlight of the day: I catapulted a shuttlecock into a tree, lodged it for some time before George retrieved it with a broken bit of branch.
We saw two ponds, one was more a lake-nature, but my physical geography knowledge fails me, and I wouldn’t be able to specify further.
George saw and chased a deer. Honing his inner David Attenborough, just with equipment worth £10,000-less.
We got told by the fat conductor in a three-piece suit to not have a picnic within the Pembroke Lodge ground. He was so smug that it enticed us to disobey him completely.
That’s pretty much as good of a summary as you’ll get.
From my home to Richmond Park is 23 miles.
23 miles on the A2 towards Rochester would take no more than 35 minutes even on a bad day.
The journey took an hour and a half to get to Richmond Park and another twenty minutes traversing the ring road.
I used this app called Waze. I’m sure it’s popular amongst some people, George included.
I used it mainly for traffic purposes. At one point on my way to Richmond Park, a new route found by the app diverted me off-course.
I saw people’s front lawns. Their laundry drying on the awning. I saw countless supermarket delivery vans and many British Gas and BT vans.
I saw slow drivers. Fast ones too. Or idiots as I would like to call them. Swerving between traffic as if the South Circular was a NASCAR track.
Soon enough I arrived in Richmond, and it was almost a shock as I had the deluxe tour of suburbia.
There were some reasonable parts but otherwise wasn’t much to write home about — but look where we are.
On the way back, one driver caught my eye and tested my patience.
A new car. An incompetent driver.
He drove slowly and utterly unaware of speed limits.
The driver behind me applied pressure on me to overtake, but the opportunity never materialised.
It seemed as though he had lost his way and was unable to locate himself not direct his next move.
I realised this when we finally came to a roundabout.
He gave way to the left and proceeded to enter the roundabout at a snail’s pace.
I honked my horn and went on my way.
No point to telling that story really but it’s content.
I thought about some things on the way back, but it wasn’t anything substantial nor new to this blog.
That’s about it.
Just don’t trust Waze unless you want a suburbia tour.