If you wander around the centre of Hyde Park you might occasionally catch a whiff of chips and the ocean as if you’re visiting the seaside — an unexpected side effect of an organic nursery in the centre of the park. This is the huge Royal Parks plant nursery, where over a quarter of a million plants are grown every year. The nursery has also seen a lot of changes in recent years, including bringing the staffing in-house, moving to organic horticulture, and opening the nursery to apprentices and volunteers. It’s the switch to organics that causes the occasional smells—as they use seaweed-deriv ..read more

Outside London, the rarified airs of Eton College are opening their doors to ordinary folk this summer for a series of tours. The tours take in the main courtyard, the history of the college, a number of important rooms and dining rooms, lots of old graffiti left by former pupils, and a number of chapels. Photography is allowed in about half the rooms but not in the impressive chapels. I visited in 2018 – review here. Tours run from 3rd May to 20th September 2024, always on Friday afternoons at 2pm and 4pm and last around 90 minutes. The tours cost £16.96 for adults. To book a tour, go here ..read more

The Royal School of Needlework, founded in 1872, has started putting some of its archives online, with an initial launch of the first 100 items to start the collection. Cushion Cover made late 19th century; Men’s embroidered waistcoat fronts c:1740s; Embroidered mirror frame from late 19th century – early 20th century The first hundred pieces offer an initial glimpse of the breadth and depth of the RSN’s treasure trove, which amounts to some 10,000 objects. These include textiles from the 7th to the 21st centuries, spanning from Guatemala to Egypt to the UK and everywhere in between, as well ..read more

There may be intemittent and short notice tube station closures on Friday and Saturday, as station managers who are members of the TSSA union walk out in a dispute over working conditions. Station managers who would book for a shift on Friday 26th April will not work, and that will lead to occasional station closures on Friday, and also on Saturday if station managers were due to start work late on Friday evening. That could affect Night Tube services on Friday night. TSSA Customer Service Managers will also take part in an overtime ban from 29th April to 5th May, which the union says may lea ..read more

The new King Charles III banknotes will start appearing in shops and banks from early June onwards, but if you want to guarantee getting your hands on the first banknotes as soon as they are released, you can. There are two ways of getting your hand on the first of the new banknotes. King Charles III banknotes (c) Bank of England The Postal Option You can send some banknotes to the Bank of England using their postal replacement banknote service, and they will ensure that your replacements will have the face of the King, not the late Queen on them. This service will be available from 5th to 3 ..read more

Another section of the City of London’s elevated walkways — the pedways — has come back into use after being rebuilt for a new office building. The pedway used to link the Barbican estate with Moorgate tube station but closed when the tube station entrance was rebuilt for the Elizabeth line and remained closed while an over-site office block was built on top. Recently, the replacement pedway has opened, with a new set of escalators up to the elevated walkway sitting next to Moorgate station’s new entrance. The old escalators that took you up to the Moorfields Highwalk was a rather gloomy space ..read more

Transport for London (TfL) is planning a £150 million maintenance project for the London Overground. TfL, through its Rail for London (RfL) subsidiary, has issued a tender notice to contractors to bid to carry out maintenance, faulting, repair, like for like replacement services across the entirety of its infrastructure for the East London Line Core Route The East London Line Core Route is soon to be known as the Windrush Line and covers the London Overground from Highbury and Islington to West Croydon and Clapham Junction. Apart from the railway lines, the contract also includes the depot an ..read more

There’s an exhibition of war photography at the IWM that isn’t the sort of photography you might be expecting. The exhibition, Storyteller: Photography by Tim Hetherington, is a collection of 65 photos taken by the late photographer, who was killed in 2011, while covering the Lybian civil war. While most war photography, particularly for news reports, focuses on the war, Hetherington more often looked for the warriors, photographing the people at war, and often in the tedium of waiting. In rooms filled with his records of war, you’ll meet the people who suffered its effects as much as the peo ..read more

Transport for London (TfL) is having to run shorter trains on the DLR while it waits for its new fleet of replacement trains to arrive. The issue is that the 30-year old B92 trains are past their ideal retirement age, and in order to keep the trains running until their replacements arrive, TfL has had to reduce the millage each train operates. In order to do that, on the Woolwich branch, they’ve reduced the number of cars per train from three to two cars, so that they can reduce the mileage on the unused carriages. If they didn’t do anything, then, as an FOI request has confirmed, there was a ..read more

Train drivers are to walk out on strike again, this time the week of the early May Bank Holiday. At the same time, they will implement an overtime ban, which could lead to short-notice cancellations. Most train drivers are members of the ASLEF union, and they have been in dispute over pay and conditions. They will carry out a series of one-day strikes over the first week of May after the bank holiday. The union says that its train driver members haven’t had an increase in salary for five years since their last pay deals expired in 2019. A couple of months ago, union members voted overwhelming ..read more