Day 39 - Petersham Nurseries

Self-promotion

Katrina and I

View of the inside of the restaurant - full house!

Ham House Stables - my old home is on the left side of the entrance

Beautiful Richmond

There are loads of these up for the wedding

A friend of mine from Melbourne and I had determined a couple of months ago that we would be in London at the same time - Katrina had been skiing in France.  We had therefore booked 20 April as being a day to catch up in London and do something.

I made my way via public transport from Islington to Richmond to meet Katrina, after wandering around Islington for an hour or so.  I use to live in the Richmond area when in London in 1992/3 at it was amazing what I do and don't remember.  I couldn't believe that one particular shop (Monsoon), is still in exactly the same location!

Katrina arrived in Richmond at about 11am, then we followed the directions on the website to walk to Petersham Nurseries, which took us about 40 minutes.  It was a great walk through Richmond Common, and along the Thames River to get there....again the weather is fabulous.  What a time to visit a nursery - with spring, tulips are out in amazing colours, as are blossom trees and wisteria.  The reason for visiting this nursery was to have lunch - the head chef at the restaurant is an Australian woman who recently was honoured with a Michelin star.

Lunch was excellent.  Katrina and I had a couple of glasses of wine whilst sharing 3 starters -

1. tomatoes with black olives, purple basil and goats curd
2. pan-fried squid with peas and sage
3. chorizo with chilli-jam, creme fraiche and bruschetta

We then had coffee and desert - I had rice pudding with roasted nespole, divine!!  All in all, with the venue, food, wine, and company, it was amazing.

To walk off the food, I took Katrina on a walk to Ham House, a national trust property 20 minutes walk away, and then to the stables of Ham House - where I use to live as a nanny.  Ham House is still undergoing major restoration, so I will wait til August before I go in and look around.  As for the stables, although it is a private residence I walked onto the property and ended up chatting with a stable hand who told me that the section of the stables I lived in is now owned by an American man who has been doing major renovations.  I took a couple of quick photos then left as the stable hand indicated that the American man was home and unlikely to be happy with me being on the land.

Katrina and I then walked along the river, back to Richmond.  I still can't get over how beautiful it all is with blossoms and spring flowers out in all their glory.  I will come to Richmond again and hope to spend a lazy Sunday at a couple of the pubs along the river in summer.

I then said farewell to Katrina, and headed to Canary Wharf to meet Al.  She took me out with work colleagues for drinks - all on company expense.  Drinks were at a pub on the river in the sunshine which was lovely, and from there she and I headed to Islington for a great Afghani meal.