The Booth-opo-ben Day (Part Four)

On we go!

Now this next photo is cunning, because it covers two places - this is PARK LANE (11/26), which is in MAYFAIR (12/26) - (there's no road in London called Mayfair). Things were going pretty well!

We raced through the next few. WHITEHALL (13/26) (Half-way!)

TRAFALGAR SQUARE (14/26) (Over half-way!)

It was going so well, that we even decided to take a break at Pret. Ben was very happy about this. And because it was his birthday. He was probably most excited about his birthday. Although he did enjoy those grapes.

On we went. NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE (15/26) - we're not sure what Katie's doing either. Patrick was trying to make up for the fact that we'd told him off for not smiling enough. He's German. (Those last two sentences are completely unrelated).

Round to the STRAND (16/26):

Now this was a very close-up photo of me, which I told Ben (or Patrick - I don't remember who took it) I would delete, but my skin looks pretty good here, and it's not fair to delete other people's photos really, so here it is:

PALL MALL (17/26)

Then we had a bit of a train journey round to MARYLEBONE STATION (18/26), which we all agreed was one of our favourite stations. Well done Marylebone!

Less nice, but a station none the less, was KING'S CROSS STATION (19/26) - and there is no platform 9 and three quarters... J.K. Rowling must have been thinking of another station.*

Hard to see, but this is EUSTON ROAD (20/26):

Which leads on to PENTONVILLE ROAD (21/26):

Which leads on to THE ANGEL, ISLINGTON (22/26) -The Angel in Islington was a pub that has since left, but we found (admittedly, it didn't take much searching) a sign on a kiosk that helped us out:

And here we hit a problem. It was getting late - check out the colour of that sky. Ben had to be at home so that he could actually see his parents on his birthday (we had left just after 8am!). But we weren't finished. We still had four places left to see - and these weren't easy ones. One involved a pretty complicated journey to South London, one involved a long walk to a street in the heart of London, which isn't near to a single station (pretty unusual in central London), a station we had (frustratingly) already been to - we wouldn't need to return to as the trains home were leaving from Liverpool St (some track problem) - and another one in Soho. This was going to take some time. And time we did not have (check out the running).

Would we get so close, and yet stay so far?

* * *

*J.K. Rowling was in fact thinking of a different station. Apparently she'd meant Euston Station. Although, according to my reliable source (er, Wikipedia), the type of platform described by Rowling doesn't exist at Euston either... Bizarre. But it didn't stop King's Cross putting up a Platform 9 and three quarters sign. Interestingly, while researching this, I discovered that there's a station in Bolton called Hall i' th' Wood. I have to go there.