KYQ4: RHS Wisley and other Parks

Entrance Terrace and the Laboratory Building

It was a very late Easter and the forecasts were for the hottest on record. We travelled to London to visit the family by train. It was the first time since the east coast mainline had been restored to a public operator following Virgin defaulting on the £2bn in franchise payments. LNER ran on schedule using the old rolling stock and on the return journey, they even offered free tickets to ticket holders who had booked onward journeys from Edinburgh on cancelled Scotrail services. Something that Virgin had refused to do on a previous journey when they had failed to keep to scheduled times. Let us hope that is the last of Virgin on the railways, as well as refusing to honour pension entitlements for staff, they have operated overpriced ticket scams, the trains they leased lack legroom, the seats are not aligned to the windows and the toilets talk at you.

We made a successful visit to the Royal Horticultural Society Wisley Gardens in Surrey on Good Friday when it was the hottest place in the UK. It is an inaccessible attraction by public transport, and we needed to order an Uber taxi service for the final 4 miles from the West Byfleet station. Apparently, the crowds were as busy as anyone could remember but the gardens absorbed everyone with ease and the whole experience was on a par with Kew Gardens, although without the aircraft noise.

The 100-hectare site is bounded by the river Wey and located in the rich fertile soil of the Thames basin. It had everything from rock gardens, vegetable and fruit gardens with the biggest collection of rhubarb species, a magnificent collection of coniferous trees in lawned areas, glasshouses, several cafes and numerous events for children. You can spend hours just walking through the well tended sections and then there is the opportunity to buy plants from the incredibly well-stocked garden centre. The children found lots of things to attract their attention and expend their energy. The only problem was getting a taxi back to the station. We seemed to be the only visitors who were dependent on public transport and the shuttle buses to the car park were the only concession to their customers. The train back to London and then the bus meant it took almost 2 hours for the 30-mile journey.

Clapham Common was in festival mode with thousands of young people playing games and drinking on a glorious summer-like evening. The weather continued over the rest of the weekend but we restricted ourselves to more local attractions in Dulwich and Brockwell parks so that the children could use their bikes and scooters. An Easter egg hunt was arranged on Easter Monday and it was a treat to see about 15 children between the age of 3 and 8 running at a pace to find eggs after reading the clues. It reminded me that as a boy I spent every Easter Monday in Avenham Park, Preston where we had Pace Egg races down the slopes of the park that was located on the scarp slope to the River Ribble. The eggs were hardboiled and often inedible because they had been smashed and the paint and colouring had been absorbed, today it was pristine chocolate eggs that were smashed and eaten.

I was delighted to see that the local primary school in Brixton had adopted the daily mile by marking out a track around the playground and encouraging children to run fourteen laps to achieve their daily mile. A simple but effective activity introduced by St Ninian's Primary School in Stirling and now embedded throughout the UK. It is a perfect example of how innovation is best achieved through local endeavours rather than centralised diktaks.