Fulham Palace and Bishop's Park

A hundred years ago - well, the best part of 50 years ago, anyway - when I first came to London, I lived in Fulham, but Fulham Palace, back then, was not open to the public - in fact, Bishops had only just stopped living there!  Bishop's Park was open, but who had time to go to parks without small children to amuse?

So neither the Swan Whisperer or I had ever been there, and we decided to take the boys there.  We picked them up from the Temple at about 10:30, and went straight to Putney Bridge on the District Line (blissful air-conditioned trains, lovely!).  There were an awful lot of steps down from Putney Bridge, which my knees didn't really like, but once we were down it was a lovely walk along the Thames Path.

When we arrived in the park, there was a large children's playground, which I think Boy 2 might have liked to have played in, but The Boy turned his nose up!  We walked round the lake, and across a bridge that Boy 2 described as "Ribenary", which wasn't a bad description, we didn't think.  The Boy was very disappointed to realise it was plastic, not real wood painted purple!

We spent a few minutes watching potential footballers training at Craven Cottage,

and then walked back to the Palace proper.  We went first of all into the Palace gardens where the boys enjoyed (typical small boys!) "picking the bishop's nose" - a carved wooden bishop, I hasten to add:

Then we walked round the walled gardens, and then it was time for lunch.  We went into the palace itself to enjoy the "Dining Room".  The children's menu was a choice of pizza or chicken goujons with baked beans - both boys chose the chicken, which also came with a small salad.  I thought they were rather optimistic, but in fact, Boy 2 ate all of his, and The Boy ate a good third of his.  Mind you, it did have a very sweet dressing (we finished The Boy's, as he didn't want it!).  I had a panini with mediterranean vegetables and hummus, and the SW had what was described as "The ulitmate" ham and cheese toastie, but frankly, that was an offence against the Trades Description act, as it looked very manky.  Then the boys and I had ice-cream, and the SW had a cup of coffee and a slice of cake. 

Then it went a bit pear-shaped, as we went into the museum, and enjoyed looking at some of the things, but then we needed the loo, so I took the boys while the SW went on looking round, but when we came back, we found the officious librarian had moved the scooters and was cross with us for bringing t hem in (though there was nowhere obvious to leave them).  So we came away, rather cross, although I felt we really hadn't seen much of what there was to see.

We cheered ourselves up, though, by a visit to All Saints Church at the entrance to the park, which was lovely.  But why do the boys have to remove their hats when they go into a church and I don't have to?  Not a question I could answer, but I still made them take their hats off!

And so we wandered back to the main road, and decided to get a bus to South Kensington to avoid the steps - just as well, as that part of the District Line promptly fell over - and so back to the Temple and a farewell to the boys.