Day 50
Kennington - Kensal Green - Kensal Rise
Well, the best laid plans, and all that...
For various reasons, this morning I'm starting my journey from the third station on my itinerary - since I've had a meeting in north London first thing. I'm therefore parked on a meter near Kensal Rise, a ten minute walk away from Kensal Green (the second stop today), where I can catch a Bakerloo line train south to Kennington (or near enough) - which is the first stop on my list.
You know - there really are times when I regret my strict adherence to the alphabetical order I imposed upon myself at the beginning of this venture...
***
The regret turns fairly quickly and increasingly into frustration however, as the Bakerloo train grinds to a halt almost as soon as it pulls out of Kensal Green station. The driver doesn't seem to have any information beyond the standard 'being held at a red signal', so all we can do is sit and wait.
Eventually, though very slowly, we crawl southwards station by station. At some point the driver of our train is replaced by a different one who seems to have been given a bit more information to pass onto us. It seems there's a signal failure at Baker Street, which is naturally causing severe delays up and down the line.
It's already taken me the best part of half an hour to travel a mere half-dozen stations, and the clock (or rather the parking meter) is ticking. I gave myself the maximum 4 hours on the meter, knowing that Kennington has at least one attraction that will occupy me for the best part of an hour, and assuming that doing justice to the other two stations and their environs, together with travelling time, would easily fill the remaining 3 hours.
Now though, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to have time to visit one station - let alone three. Having sat on a stationary train for ten minutes at Marylebone, I therefore decide to change my plans and get out and walk to Baker Street - where hopefully the Jubilee Line will be running better than the Bakerloo.
As I arrive at Baker Street and descend the escalator, I see a trio of fluorescently-jacketed workmen carrying bundles of cable down into the depths. On the face of it, this doesn't look good, but the words I catch as I pass them - 'yeah, looks like it's all sorted now' - seem promising, so when I get to the platform level and have the choice of turning left and getting the waiting Jubilee train, or turning right and taking the Bakerloo, I choose to resort to my original plan and get back on the Bakerloo line.
The Jubilee train pulls away almost immediately, while the Bakerloo train remains unmoving, just long enough for the driver to tell us that the signal failure is still a failure, and that there are still severe delays on the line, before the doors close and it begins to judder away from the platform at a snails pace. And I'm trapped again.
It's about this time that I seriously consider giving today up as a bad job and turning around as soon as I get to the next station - whenever that might be.
At Regent's Park, however, I realise that I might still be able to get to Kennington in time, if I walk along the Euston Road to Warren Street station and get the Northern Line from there - and so, eventually, that's exactly what I do. And An hour and a half after setting off, I finally emerge from Kennington Station.
***
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| Kennington |
At Kennington my original plan was to have been a gentle stroll around the area, taking in the various streets, the White Bear pub theatre, perhaps a wander round Kennington Park, before heading to the attraction I mentioned earlier.
Now though, I'm clearly in a bit of a rush, and so head straight down Kennington Park Road, passing both the White Bear and the park with barely a pause, on my way to my ultimate goal - the 'attraction' I mentioned earlier and about which I have, until now, maintained a no doubt irritating air of mystery.
The reason for this enigmatic behaviour is simply that - without the afore-going explanation of my various travel woes - my current frantic haste to get to the Beefeater Gin Distillery (for such is the attraction I've been tantalising you with) as quickly as possible, might conceivably have been misconstrued.
On the other hand, after the morning I've had, the free gin and tonic on offer as part of the hour-long Distillery Tour is sounding exceedingly tempting. And I still have about two and a half hours before the meter runs out in Kensal Rise - surely that's enough to do the tour, and get back up to north London?
Hmmm...
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| Beefeater Distillery |
The Beefeater brand has been in circulation since 1876, although the distillery here in Kennington has only been in operation since 1958. A little confusing then to find the date 'Established 1820' emblazoned over the door, and I can't help feeling the manufacturers are being a little cheeky here, since their own website gives the timeline as follows:
1820 - a distillery is opened in Chelsea by a certain John Taylor - this has, as yet, nothing whatsoever to do with Beefeater Gin.
1835 - The person who would later go on to create the Beefeater brand - James Burrough - is born. Yes - born - so he'd have been very clever indeed to have established Beefeater Gin fifteen years beforehand.
1863 - Burrough purchases the Chelsea distillery from Taylor and begins making various gins, though not, as yet, under the name Beefeater.
1876 - Beefeater Gin is first created. 56 years after the date so proudly claimed by the current distillery, and some 80-odd years before they even moved to this part of London.
Isn't marketing a wonderful thing...
Now, I have to admit to personally being more of a fan of Whisky than of Gin, and in fact only a little while ago, I spent a lovely weekend on the Scottish island of Islay visiting, and being guided round, various distilleries up there.
I therefore have both a reasonable knowledge of how distilleries work, and more relevantly, how a Distillery Tour should work. People come here because they want to get 'behind the scenes'. They want to see the various stages of distillation in progress. They want to learn something new. And - let's admit it - they want a free glass of something alcoholic at the end of it.
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| Some spices |
The Beefeater tour, sadly, is a bit of a let-down in all but the last of these aspects.
The 'tour' starts with a 'self-guided' wander through a rather dull museum of Gin History. The museum has very few physical exhibits, being largely made up of semi-informative signs on the wall: 'This is how Gin started', 'This is how it's made', 'This is what goes into it', 'This is a picture Hogarth drew about it', and so on.
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| A still |
Yes, there's a Still (though whether it's real or a model I can't tell) and one or two curiosities, such as the wooden-cat sign through which gin could be illicitly supplied to passing customers, but it takes barely ten minutes to pass through these and the examples of Beefeater advertising which follow.
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| The 'ingenious' though not-very-well-disguised secret Gin dispenser. |
After that we (I'm here at the same time as half a dozen German tourists) have to wait for the next, guided, stage of the tour to start at 12pm.
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| A bit of branding |
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| The various labels |
I had been mildly surprised to be sold my ticket for the tour at the front desk by an American receptionist.
Given the 'Ultra-British' branding and heritage of this particular make of Gin, I had assumed that everyone working here would be British, and probably English, and quite possibly your genuine Cockney, at the very least.
I'm even more surprised therefore, when the tour guide turns up and greets us all with an overly-enthusiastic 'Howdy guys, y'all ready for some damn fine gin, darn tootin'?' (well, ok, he didn't say 'darn tootin' - but you get the idea).
Not that I have anything especially against Americans - far from it - it just doesn't quite fit with the overall impression the distillery seems to want to create, namely that Gin was, and is, as British as Earl Grey tea, village cricket, Big Ben, Constable's Haywain, and Mary Berry all rolled into one.
However, I decide to give the lad a chance, and follow him through to the next stage of the tour - into the distillery itself.
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| Still Life |
Except, disappointingly, and very much unlike the whisky distilleries I had visited so recently, we are led not into the heat and steam and mass of pipe-work that is the bowels of a working distillery, but instead into a rather sterile whitewashed room on a level below the still-room, from where we may (if we stand huddled against one wall and crane our necks up at a specific angle) get a glimpse, through a glass section of the ceiling, of the top-half of some stills.
Everybody say 'ooohhh!'
Our poor American friend does his best, to give him his due, but I'm afraid his attempts at humour and whipping up some enthusiasm for yet more signs on the wall telling us how gin is made, are beaten into submission by the general air of disappointment and the fact that the Germans don't really understand him all that well.
The Gin and Tonic was nice though.
***
But I haven't really got time to enjoy it as much as I'd like. I down it far more quickly than is probably advisable at this time of day (thus no doubt giving the others the impression that I'm a raging alcoholic) and hurry back to the station.
I've seen very little of Kennington, and what I have seen has been a bit of a let-down, but I'm sure the rest of it is very nice - if only I had time to visit it properly.
***
Learning from my earlier experiences I give the Bakerloo Line a wide berth and head northwards on the Northern Line all the way to Euston, from where I can get an Overground Train to Kensal Green.
I'm going to be cutting it a bit fine now, as I have just over an hour before my meter runs out, but with a bit of luck I should have time to get to Kensal Green, take a photo, walk to Kensal Rise, take another photo, and get back to the car in time to avoid getting a ticket.
With a bit of luck.
Should have known better really shouldn't I?
Not once, in all the time I've been doing this journey, have I had to wait more than about five minutes for a train, be it Underground, Overground, DLR or even Cable Car. So why is it that when I get to Euston and look at the departures board, that the next train to Kensal Green is a TWENTY MINUTE WAIT?!?!?
It leaves Euston barely ten minutes before my meter is due to expire, and I know from this morning that it's at least that long a walk between Kensal Green and Kensal Rise. There are also four stations between Euston and Kensal Green - another 8-10 minutes at least. And there's no other route which wouldn't take me at least as long, if not longer.
I'm scuppered.
All I can do is get from Kensal Green to my car as quickly as possible - not stopping for a photo or any sight-seeing - and hope that the Traffic Wardens are occupied elsewhere for a few more minutes rather than hovering around the parking meter waiting to pounce the second it clicks down to zero. This will of course mean that despite having visited them both twice today, since I have no photographic proof, neither Kensal Green nor Kensal Rise will have been officially visited under the terms of this blog. What a waste of a day!
Anyway, after my twenty minute wait - feeling very frustrated - I eventually get the train to Kensal Green. I dash up the stairs from the platform as soon as we arrive, burst through the ticket gate like an avenging fury, walk hurriedly (I'm not built for running) to Kensal Rise, and reach my car 7 minutes after the time on the meter runs out.
As I near my car, I slow down - there are no Parking Wardens in sight, but I'm already well past the time I've paid for, so they could have been and gone by now, and I can't yet see the windscreen to see whether there's a little square bundle of joy tucked under the wiper blade...
Nothing!
I've got away with it! Praise be! I jump in the car and start it up as quickly as I can.
I've now got a choice to make. I could just head home, writing the day off as a bit of a disaster, and facing the prospect of another trip up to this neck of the woods next time. Or, I could take my car back to Kensal Green, park for a few seconds (making sure there are no wardens lurking about of course!) and snap a quick photo of the station. I could then drive back to Kensal Rise and do the same there. It will mean that I get my photos at least, although it might be argued that I haven't really explored the surroundings very much. On the other hand, since I've twice walked the various non-descript streets between the two stations, and since my original pre-trip research threw up nothing more interesting than the fact that the main street outside Kensal Rise station was apparently the 'hippest street in Europe' in 2009 (according to Vogue at least), I feel like I've really seen all I want to see of this particular part of town.
And so here they both are, in all their glory. Please feel free to visit them yourselves and tell me if I missed anything exciting...
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| Kensal Green |
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| Kensal Rise |
