We arrived in London on August 23rd and stayed in the area until we went home on September 9th. I think we were both getting anxious to get home again. We had been away for two months already, seen a lot of different places, met a lot of relatives and new people. But there is always lots to do in London, so the last two weeks were filled with activities.
Of course we had to see all the regular sights – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Parliament Buildings, the Post Office Tower, Selfridges, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Monument, 10 Downing Street, Madame Tussauds, the Planetarium, London Tower, Kew Gardens and probably lots of other things too. I’m just going to write about a few of the ones that stand out in my mind. I have visited London several times since then, so memories can be hard to place in which visit they occurred. These ones I’m pretty sure were from this trip.
Post Office Tower
I was a stamp collector as a teenager, so part of the point of the postcard was sending it to myself with a special post office tower stamp and it being stamped at the Post Office Tower. The tower was opened in October 1965, so it was a relatively new structure in September 1966.
As mentioned on the card, we had good weather and an excellent view from the level we were allowed onto. There were elevators that took us up.
We had also walked up the Monument, but there one had to walk up oneself – 314 stairs according to Aileen’s notes. This is a monument to the Great Fire of London and was built between 1671 and 1677. The tower is 62 meters high and there is an open viewing platform.
Richmond
Aunt Florence lived in a residential hotel in Richmond. She invited us to stay in her hotel from the 30th of August til the 6th of August. This was an interesting experience as well as giving us the chance to get to know our aunt. She was born in 1897, so would have been 69 years old in 1966. I think she was still working and worried about being able to afford to retire. She had a lot of friends and liked to go on cruises. One has to remember that retirement plans were not so common in the 1960s.
From the hotel room, I remember the gas heater that had to be fed with coins for it to heat the room. This was something new and different for me.
Though we took the tube into the center of London some of the days, we also did things in Richmond, such as Kew Gardens and Chessington Zoo.
One day we were just wandering around Richmond and went into the cemetery at St. Peter’s Church, Petersham. It is always interesting to see who has lived and been buried in the area. We came across the well-tended grave of Captain George Vancouver, the person whose name was used for the city I grew up in. He died in 1798 at the age of 40.
Brighton
We also took a day-trip to Brighton from Richmond with Aunt Florence and her friend, Marion. I remember it as a wet day. I also remember going out on the pier. I was given a coin to play the machines and felt the thrill of winning even though I did nothing except put in a coin. I used up all my winnings (another good lesson) then quit. I’ve never felt the need to gamble money in such a way again. We also went to see the Pavilion, one of the luxurious residences of the Royal Family back at the beginning of the 19th century.
You remarked that the return trip to Vancouver was by plane. Do you have any memories of that trip? In particular it would be interesting to know the type of plane, airline, comments about the service on board, any refuelling stops, etc.
My first trip to Britain was in 1971. My memories of it are a fog, although I did visit London, Birmingham, Solihull (near Birmingham), Chester-le-Street (near Newcastle), Portmeirion (Wales), and Jersey (a channel island). I did buy a car for £17.50 which broke down somewhere in Yorkshire en route to County Durham, and was abandoned after a week. The most impressive part of the trip was the train journey through north Wales, on a railcar.
I don’t remember the plane flight at all, though it would have been my first air flight. We flew on an Air Canada DC-8 plane. See a picture of a similar plane in the blog called Summer of 1966 – Modes of Travel. I think it was a non-stop flight.