I wrote this when we were just back from a very long day trip to London Town - about 17 hours door to door.
Train vs. car
My husband, Tom, was off to the Jericho Writers’ London Festival of Writing so I tagged along to take our younger two on a mini day trip adventure.
As we don’t travel by train very much - well, at all, we don’t have train passes and the train is therefore prohibitively expensive. So we drove, like last time when we went to see Frozen and explore Covent Garden, and parked in the carpark of the Westfield Shopping centre again, meaning a whole day’s parking cost us £12 (we went on a Sunday, it would have been £10 on a week day apparently).
The shopping centre is a 5 minute walk to Shepherd's Bush underground, which takes you past some public toilets which are handy after a long drive.
We then took the tube to Aldgate to drop Tom at the Leonardo Royal Hotel London Tower Bridge for the writing conference, which had a great looking bar and restaurant, as well as table tennis, pool and table football tables down the hall from the reception.
Tip: I checked all the tube routes before hand and took a written out plan of the legs of the journey so it was quicker and easier on the day. I always used to use an app for the Underground, but the free one I used to use is so riddled with ads now it's unusable and I haven't yet found a free one that helps an absolute beginner - if you know of one, as there MUST be one - please let me know on my Insta!
Once we'd said hi to some of the team (as they're clients of our web development agency - but haven't asked me to mention them in this post) we set off on our adventure.
Garden at 120
Our first stop was 120 Fenchurch St for the Garden at 120, London’s largest rooftop garden, which we walked to from the Hotel. We arrived at a few minutes to 10, and had to join quite a long queue, with security telling us it was always that busy. My full review is here. Overall, it's a nice quick little stop, ideal for eating a picnic and spotting some famous sights of the London skyline.
After the garden, we headed back to the tube (another tip: on my tube plan, I have alternative options if for any reason there's a delay on one line), where I discovered the joys of carrying a toddler and a push chair on an escalator. It would be fine if there were 2 of you, or a working elevator, but it was hard work on my own.
Postal Museum
We headed over to Farringdon and walked for about 12 minutes to get to the Postal Museum and Mail Rail slightly early for our 11:30 slot. We got straight on the next available Mail Rail which was really interesting, and stayed for lunch in the cafe after our visit. We were done and had pretty much finish lunch by 1pm which meant our visit lasted about 1.5 hours plus lunch, considerably shorter than the 2 -3 hours they estimate on their website. We certainly could have been there longer, especially if we’d had to queue for mail rail, because the kids loved the interactive displays, but the 2 year old was getting too far past his nap and so it was easier to keep moving.
Read my full review of the Postal Museum here >>
From the cafe we booked tickets for Frameless for 2pm. I hadn’t booked tickets in advance as lots of attractions wanted to charge more for flexible tickets and I couldn’t be sure on our timing in advance - or generally what mood everyone would be in and so how busy I wanted us to be. But I’d taken lots of notes of options between Frameless, Outernet and Twist Museum. There was still a chance Tom would want to meet via Outernet on his way back to Shepherd's Bush (despite him expecting to be too tired when we parted in the morning), and Twist museum's last entry was advertised as being at 7pm whereas Frameless' was around 4:30pm - so we opted for Frameless.
From the Postal Museum it was a 15 min walk back to the tube, and a train to Marble Arch. 3 days later - at the time of writing this - I'm still feeling it in my legs from carrying a toddler and a (compact) push chair up some VERY long stairs, even though a Transport for London gent did come to my rescue and carried the pushchair up a long flight for me.
Once we were at Marble Arch, we took for the exit for the arch itself (to find it was covered and so not on display) and then walked about 5 minutes to Frameless.
Frameless
I had been strangely intrigued by Frameless - although I wasn't sure why. There seem to be a lot of large format screen based attractions in London at the moment (even the garden at 120 had one) and frameless is very expensive at £30per adult ticket (if purchased on the day). But still, it has stood out to me and appealed - and I'm so glad we went! My 6 year old loved it and my 2 year old loved I it (until it lulled him to sleep which allowed me to enjoy it all the more) and I'd highly recommend a visit - my full review of Frameless London is coming soon.
Before we left Frameless we tried to book tickets for Twist London (online, from my phone) but the day was showing as not selectable. It was only a 15 minute walk away though so we headed off down Oxford Street to find it. When we got there, a security lady on the door told us they were closing early today for a “photo shoot” so they weren’t admitting anyone else. This was at about 3:30pm. So I can’t fully review Twist Museum, but it was quite annoying that they'd decided to close early when it hadn't previously been advertised and we'd made such good progress on our itinerary!
Oxford Street, London
By then, Tom has messaged to say he was up for meeting at Outernet, which I loved the prospect of because it was a 15min walk from us (now that we were by Twist Museum / at the heart of Oxford Street) because it meant I wouldn't need to do the tube with the toddler and pushchair on my own again.
But it also meant we had a while to kill, so the 6 year old opted for a milkshake in McDonald’s (and was apparently quite surprised and delighted when I agreed), followed by a look around the Oxford Street Harry Potter gift shop. We also had time to nip into the smaller Primark (there are 2 Primarks on Oxford Street) and get a Nirvana t-shirt for Tom’s birthday that we saw in the window.
By the time we were at the smaller Primark, we were across the road from Tottenham Court Road underground station, which is at the start of Outernet. We didn't dive deep into Outernet but I'll write up what we did see soon. Overall I wouldn't go out of my way to see what we did, but if you're in the area - or passing by underground - and you want to go to a free attraction, then it's worth a look. It claims to be the most visited attraction in London at the moment (we went in June 2024).
After that, it was back on the tube to Shepherd's Bush where we looked around Westfield village for something to eat. Like last time, Sixes appealed from outside but we expected it to be very noisy inside (as it was when we visited previously) so we went to Bill's (the 6yr old wanted to go somewhere "fancy" after our sandwich at the Postal Museum for lunch and apparently Bill's fit the bill).
Then it was time to drive home, which thanks to a closure on the m4 at Reading, took longer than it should, and we exhaustedly got home at 11pm.
The thoughts and views expressed in this blog post are the author’s own and not that of Activibees.com or it's operators.
