Photo courtesy: Charlie-Gibbs

As your head hits the pillow Saturday evening, Tellyspotting will be close to the end of the nine hour trek to London to begin the 2023 All Creatures Great and Small Tour courtesy of KERA and Transcendent Travel.

So far, a pretty nondescript flight which, these days, is a very good thing. The highlight, oddly, was when the pilot again pointed out that we were crossing over the “Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone,” whatever that is. I looked it up once I got to the hotel. Fortunately, it sounded way more ominous than it was.

With the rule of thumb in my back pocket of staying up as long as you can after an overnight flight where your phone tells you it’s 9a but your body clock says it’s 3a, what better way to enjoy the 60-ish degree weather than to embark on walking tour of London that began with, perhaps, the most non-royal iconic structure in the UK — Abbey Road Studios.

Abbey Road Studios London. Photo: Bill Young

Just around the corner but still in St. Johns Wood was Lord’s Cricket Ground, known as the Home of Cricket. Hoping to find anyone employed at Lord’s that would take a few moments to, yet again, try to explain cricket to me, unfortunately, all tours were booked for today.

Fortunately, however, after reading that there will be a new ‘code of rules’ set forth by the Marylebone Cricket Club which took effect on 1 October 2022, I’d hate to have finally fully understood the game today only to have the rule changes override anything I learned putting me back to square one.

Capping off the day was a quiet walk through Hyde Park taking advantage of the perfect weather and carefully avoiding the masses attending day 2 of the Notting Hill Carnival.

Hyde Park swans. Photo: Bill Young

I bravely headed to Notting Hill next but, thankfully, the Thai restaurant that is situated in the back of the Churchill Arms pub, which has become an annual must for almost 2 decades, can easily be accessed through the back end of Notting Hill thus avoiding most of the Carnival crowd.

Churchill Arms, Notting Hill. Photo: Bill Young

First held in 1966, the carnival which celebrates the rich history of Caribbean culture in London has since grown to become the largest street festival in Europe, attracting more than one million people attending over the weekend.

On the calendar for tomorrow, a Royal London walking tour including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Green Park and St. James Park. To begin the week, we head to Essex and the Historic Chatham Dockyards (the home of Call the Midwife), followed by a tour of the village of Grantchester and a walking tour of Cambridge.

Later this week, we head to the Peak District of England followed by a tour of Chatsworth House, ending with an overnight stay in Yorkshire Dales, home of All Creatures Great and Small. The week caps off with a tour of  Burleigh House & Gardens, England’s grandest Elizabethan house.

It’s going to be a great week so for those of you that ‘wish you were here’, stay tuned to see what we have in store for you for 2024!