Tag: London

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The Tower of London & The GunPowder Plot Immersive Experience

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

I am always on the look-out for something different to do in London. We live about a half an hour train journey from central London and I try to get there at least every couple of months. I love the village where I live but it is very quiet and sometimes it is nice to feel the buzz of the city. Last year myself and a friend went to The War Of The Worlds Immersive Experience in Aldgate which was great fun so I have been searching for something similar.

I used to work for a merchant bank located at Tower Hill but have only been to the Tower of London once before, as a very small child. I decided to book tickets for the GunPowder Plot Experience followed by a tour of The Tower of London. It is not an inexpensive day out, tickets for both came in at around £90 each and then there were the train fares as well. I booked tickets for the experience via Fever https://feverup.com/en/london

If you plan on doing both The GunPowder Plot Experience and the Tower of London in one day I would recommend you do the plot first and book an early slot, 11am or before in order to fit everything in. The Beefeater led tours of the tour stop surprisingly early, we got on the last one of the day which was around 3pm. Our GunPowder Plot Experience was booked for 11.30am, for some unfathomable reason we were told to arrive half an hour early, ten minutes would have been plenty of time to stash our belongings in a locker and sign the waiver. There was a fair bit of waiting around in the bar before the experience began but it gave us time to visit the spotless loos. The venue is cashless so bear this in mind if you want a drink at the interval although you can order and pay for one whilst booking.

The GunPowder Plot Experience lasts around one hour and forty minutes and takes you through the events leading up to the execution of Guy Fawkes and his collaborators in 1605. It is a history lesson brought to life. I definitely learnt some new facts about this period. A group of participants, there were around ten of us, were given black, hooded cloaks to wear and are then led through a warren of murky passages by actors playing various characters. The participants visit houses, cellars, dungeons and churches. The actors were really wonderful and the whole experience is extremely atmospheric. There was a dad with a young son of about nine years old in our group and I did wonder if the lad would be frightened but he thoroughly enjoyed himself as did one American participant who got so into the spirit of the occasion that we weren’t sure if he were actually one of the actors. – he wasn’t.

Me wearing the rather smelly black cloak I was given upon arrival

There are a few points in the experience where the participants don virtual reality headsets and find themselves transported across the Thames or watching the night skies of London. There is one where a tortured priest is flown across the sky to supposed safety . These are very effective and quite creepy, in a good way. If you look to the person next to you on the boat you will see the other participant transformed into a dark figure wearing a plague mask. The entire experience was thoroughly enjoyable and great fun. Do bring a sweater, everybody was complaining that they were chilly in the understandably rather dank venue. The venue for the experience was a bit tricky to find, don’t walk down to the Tower itself, head for the ticket office and it is right next door. The GunPowder Plot Experience is enough by itself for a trip out, you could come back another day and see The Tower. I’d thoroughly recommend it and I thought it was good value for money.

After the experience we had a lovely lunch in the nearby Pizza Express and then returned to look around The Tower of London. The sun was shining and a Beefeater, also called a Yeoman Warder, named Tracey Machin took us on a tour. She was a fantastic speaker and really entertaining. She clearly felt her role was a huge honour and explained that she had been a nurse in the RAF for twenty two years before becoming a Beefeater . We learned about the various sad and grisly executions that had taken place hundreds of years ago and the reasons for them. After the tour we looked around the various buildings by ourselves, there is a huge exhibition of armour and armoury and of course the world famous crown jewels. I assume they are the real jewels and not replicas given the thickness of the vault doors but it does seem unlikely that these would be on display. Anyway they were all dazzlingly beautiful.

Tracey Machin, the Beefeater

At 5pm sharp everything started closing up which is why I suggest starting your day early if you wish to fit both things in one day. Sadly the gift shop closed and I was unable to waste £20 on a Jellycat corgi keyring. We did manage to buy some Palace Mints at a little kiosk though.

I would say that The GunPowder Plot Experience is suitable for ages ten and up, depending on the child. The Tower of London itself is a fascinating place to visit for any age. Both venues together were well worth the £90 price tag, less expensive tickets may be available depending when you wish to go.

Thank you for reading

Samantha

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A Trip To The Theatre – The Mousetrap

On By samanthaIn GOING OUTLeave a comment

My friend Helen and I like to go out somewhere nice every few months or so. In between these trips we will go for walks to the cinema or just have a coffee but we both work hard and like to treat ourselves to a theatre trip or visit a nice restaurant once in a while. Just for a change of scene as much as anything else I think. It’s also nice to have a catch up during the train journey into London.

This time we decided to go and see the long-running play The Mousetrap. Based on the famous murder mystery by Agatha Christie, it is the longest running play in the West End, showing since 1952 . I was in two minds about going to see this because, thanks to an unwelcome spoiler on a radio arts show, I already knew whodunnit but it seemed like something we would both enjoy and reasonably priced tickets were available.

We decided to go for dinner before the show and I booked a table at a small restaurant called Violas in Tavistock Street. As seems to be the case nowadays I had to provide my card details when booking online and was informed that, in the event of us not attending, I would be charged £40. This is the steepest no-show fee I have encountered but I suppose it is Covent Garden. Anyway, Violas is very prettily decked out with lots of artificial flowers everywhere (must be a nightmare to dust) and there are faux fur throws on the back of each chair. The staff were unsmiling apart from the French manager who was running up and down the stairs to the kitchen every five minutes and apologetically explaining to customers that there would be at least a twenty minute wait for their food. This obviously isn’t ideal if you have to be at the theatre at Seven O’Clock and the party on the table next to use took their food away in take-out boxes and asked for the service charge to be removed from the bill. 

I ordered the Black Truffle Pasta which was absolutely delicious . Helen wanted the Salmon but this wasn’t available so she ended up with the Prawn Pasta. Her dish was a plate of tagliatelle with a few prawns, one sliver of aubergine and not much else. Disappointing. We both had a coke to drink and the bill, including tip was about £50. I would have liked a desert but we ran out of time.

Thanks to the miracle that is Google Maps and Helen’s navigational skills we found our way in the nick of time to St. Martin’s Theatre in West Street. We had paid £40 for each of our tickets and we were sitting very high up in the Upper Circle, the stairs are very steep and quite deep. There was a long queue for the two cubicles in the ladies toilets which would have benefitted from a freshen up. We decided not to have a drink during the interval although we did go into the tiny bar which is right behind the light-up sign. The window was open and it was nice to get some fresh air as I had an immovable migraine. As is typical of these old theatres, there is very little leg-room between the seats. It would have nice to have had the option of borrowing some of those little binoculars, or Opera Glasses, to see the actor’s faces more clearly. 

Although I already knew who the villain was, I knew very little about the story itself. Set in a guest house called Monkswell Manor, it tells the story of the two young guest house owners who find themselves hosting an odd assortment of strangers during a snowy night. There has been a shocking murder nearby and investigations have led the local police sergeant to their door. I thought the actors were speaking too quickly at the beginning and it took me a while to settle into the story which, to be honest, was a bit daft but enjoyable. Another friend coincidentally went to see The Mousetrap the night before us and she described it as “a homely play” and that seems quite an apt description.

The woman sitting next to me kept whipping out her iPhone and checking her social media. She was in her fifties, old enough to know better and I found it very distracting. She also kept muttering the dialogue under her breath. She seemed a bit strange so I just tried to ignore her.

We enjoyed The Mousetrap but I was pleased we hadn’t spent a lot of money on the tickets and it definitely isn’t something I would want to see twice. We walked back to Charing Cross station where a train was already waiting on the platform. Towards the end of the journey a very drunk man walked through the carriage asking the other passengers for money. This can be very intimidating, especially if you are travelling by yourself. He didn’t cause any trouble though. We were back in our home town by ten forty five.

Thank you for reading,

Samantha