What are some of the more unique and maybe wacky and different things to do or experience in London?

I will already be visiting museums and all things Royal, pubs, window shopping, flea market shopping, plenty of tea and plenty of parks. But I am looking for something a bit more unique...

What are some different and off the beaten path things you have done while in London that can only be done, in London?

Try to go to Borough Market , behind Southwark catherdral, on a Friday at noon time. Purveyors from all over southern

if you search Ben Haines, he has a WONDERFUL compilation of information that he has prepared for 'off-the-beaten-path' London.

Take the Docklands Railway to Greenwich from the Tower of London area - this automatic people mover on a high raised rail bed gives you marvelous views of London and also the new Canary Wharf area - called Europe's largest commercial development scheme ever by some sources - old docklands now sporting high-rise futuristic buildings that is an extension of the City's financial center. Goes under Thames to Greenwich, scene of the Royal Naval College, the Greenwich time center, the Cutty Sark and Gypsy Moth ships - from Greenwich hop a train back to central London. An unusual day trip but unique.

Hi,
I don't know about wacky, but I enjoyed the waterbus trip along the Regent's Canal from Little Venice to Camden Lock. It is definitely London in the slow lane and very picturesque as it chugs along through Regent's Park, the Zoo and environs and ends up in bustling Camden markets. It is a good rest for the feet.
Rosemary

Our day at the Old Bailey was a bit 'wacky', from the eccentric people standing in line, to the case that we actually heard. (A lot of yelling 'you're fittin' me up' went on.) It was a hoot. A Scotland Yard detective gives some good information about visiting on this site:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=484803

Although we've never been, I think a backstage theatre tour would be fun. See list here:
http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/home/tour/tours

A pub-crawl with a theme might also be fun. You could search out places that: are the oldest in London; where famous people drank; Victorian, Art Nouveau, haunted, etc. Here's one idea:
http://www.teleport-city.com/spirits...-part-one.html

The Brits, in general, are known for being a bit wacky/eccentric ('blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light') - so thinking about a place where eccentrics might congregate could be fun. One of the daily newspapers probably lists various meetings of obscure clubs. You might pop into one or two. Here's one I arbitrarily picked from a google search (+meeting +club +london)
http://www.soroptimist-gbi.org/clubs/london_mayfair

Or you could follow the royal trail for a day or two. (That might make you 'wacky'). The Royal Circular in The Times will let you know what the royals are up to. Or you can check out the royals website and do a search: http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page3950.asp

Make sure you let us know what you actually end up doing. Have fun.

You might buy a travelcard and play a live game of Mornington Crescent. Rules at www.kevan.org/morningtonia.pl.

To avoid participant violence ("Willy Rage", named after the game's most famous player), it's essential all players agree on the status of the North London Line before the game starts. Otherwise the Canonbury reverse gambit might be disallowed (this is the convention which assumes Canonbury and Caledonian Road are connected. By tradition, similar assumptions are made about stations around Brompton if this protocol is invoked).

I've just passed a bunch of loonies on a Monopoly Board pub crawl(guidelines and bragging at www.monopolypubcrawl.org.uk) In theory, a perfectly sensible way of spending your time. In practice, they've been choosing really horrible pubs with dreadfuller beer.

A perfect of example of why being whacky is a waste of time. They could have spent exactly as much time and money drinking their way through postcodes chosen at random from the Good Beer Guide - thus sampling drinkable beer and convivial boozers.

Or dim sum crawling. Or eating each evening at a restaurant from a different Indian state, in each case using the Time Out Guide to London Eating and Drinking.

Or researching a topic then walking the research: Flanneruk, a former prolific (if sometimes a tad prolix) poster, apparently assassinated by the politeness police, had a classic such suggestion about coalhole covers at http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34458611.

In fact that Fodors thread probably gives you enough other suggestions to fill up a reasonable amount of London time

You might find some useful information at this link:
http://www.londonlostandfound.com/

Green Dragon: thanks, you are kind, but I am not sure which note of mine you mean. Perhaps http://victorianresearch.org/haineswalks.html . Or perhaps a list I made a week ago, for a Fodors enquirer who wondered what to see after the well-know, standard sights. I give this below. I fear it shows my south London leanings.

Please write again if I can help further. Welcome to London.

Ben Haines

SECOND AND THIRD VISITS

Places to see, places of national importance, but perhaps not international

Churches
We lost many medieval churches in the Great Fire of London in 1666. If I think that among what remains, Westminster Abbey of course leads. Otherwise I suggest these
The Temple. Temple tube. 12th century.
St Barthomolew the Great. Farringdon tube. 12th century
St John’s Chapel, 12th century, and St Peter ad Vincula, 15th century, both in the Tower, admission only on a Warder’s tour. Tower Hill tube
St Helen Bishopsgate. Liverpool Street tube. 13th century
Southwark Cathedral. London Bridge tube. 14th century
St Bartholomew the Less. Farringdon tube. 15th century
St Ethelburga Bishopsgate. Liverpool Street tube. 15th century
All Hallows by the Tower. Tower Hill tube. 17th century

Houses
If you ask Google for web sites for English Heritage and the National Trust for London places you find these great and interesting houses
Ham House, near Richmond, 17th century, and Orleans House, 18th century,
just over the river by foot passenger ferry
Carlyle's House in Chelsea, home of the great Victorian writer and thinker.
Fenton House to the north in Hampstead, 17th-century
2 Willow Road, Hampstead, home of the Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger, 20th century
Chiswick, Kenwood, and Ranger’s Houses, 18th century
Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington, 19th century
Eltham Palace, The 15th and 20th century
In Bexleyheath: the Red House reached by train from London Bridge,
from the 1850s, and important in the history of domestic architecture.
I add Charles Darwin’s House, south of Bromley and Eltham Palace, south of Eltham, each reached fast from London Bridge station.
Out in Kent, but easy to reach by train from from London Bridge is Downe House, home of Charles Darwin, an interesting and friendly place
Still owned by the Duke of Northumberland is Syon House, a magnificent 17th century house

Otherwise, if I think of south London from west to east to west I think also of
Lambeth North: Imperial War Museum
Dulwich Gallery and Dulwich Park
Nationally known places on the South bank: National Theatre, Old Vic Theatre, Young Vic Theatre, concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Florence Nightingale Museum in St Thomas Hospital,
Southwark: HMS Belfast, the Design Museum, Borough Market of fresh farm food, especially Thursdays and Saturdays, Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Theatre (fringe), Rose theatre partially dug out,
Deptford: St Paul’s Baroque church
Greenwich: the Royal Observatory, the National Maritime Museum, the chapel of the Royal Naval Academy, the second hand books market on Fridays, St Alphege Church

London has many small and specialised museums. In the arrival lounge of your airport you can buy at a newsagent the A-Z London Atlas and Guide, about five pounds, pocket sized, spiral bound, with good and full cover of times and prices for museums, churches, and other sights, both famous and little visited. In the same shop you can buy Time Out magazine, to help you plan theatre and music (unless can you buy it in your departure airport).

About five on a weekday you may want to exercise your mind and rest your feet, and for that I suggest you set Google to London lectures Ben Haines to see what is on while you are in town. Lectures run to May, and thin out for June. They can be remarkable: you could get an idea if you find the page now. They are free, and people are welcome.

You can draw all of these into one list, west to east, thus:
Ham House, near Richmond, 17th century, and Orleans House, 18th century, just over the river by foot passenger ferry
Syon House, a magnificent 17th century house, still owned by the Duke of Northumberland
Carlyle's House in Chelsea, home of the great Victorian writer and thinker.
Fenton House to the north in Hampstead, 17th century
2 Willow Road, Hampstead, home of the Modernist architect Ernö Goldfinger, 20th century
Chiswick, Kenwood, and Ranger’s Houses, 18th century
Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington, 19th century
Lambeth North: Imperial War Museum
The Temple. Temple tube. 12th century.
St Barthomolew the Great. Farringdon tube. 12th century.
St Bartholomew the Less. Farringdon tube. 15th century
St Helen Bishopsgate. Liverpool Street tube. 13th century
St Ethelburga Bishopsgate. Liverpool Street tube. 15th century
All Hallows by the Tower. Tower Hill tube. 17th century
Southwark Cathedral. London Bridge tube. 14th century
St John’s Chapel, 12th century, and St Peter ad Vincula, 15th century,
both in the Tower, admission only on a Warder’s tour. Tower Hill tube
Dulwich Gallery and Dulwich Park
South bank: National Theatre, Old Vic Theatre, Young Vic Theatre, concerts at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room, Florence Nightingale Museum in St Thomas Hospital,
Southwark: HMS Belfast, the Design Museum, Borough Market of fresh farm food, especially Thursdays and Saturdays, Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark Theatre (fringe), Rose theatre partially dug out
Eltham Palace, The 15th and 20th century
Deptford: St Paul’s Baroque church
Greenwich: the Royal Observatory, the National Maritime Museum, the chapel of the Royal Naval Academy, the second hand books market on Fridays, St Alphege Church
In Bexleyheath: the Red House reached by train from London Bridge, from the 1850s,
and important in the history
of domestic architecture.
I add Charles Darwin’s House, south of Bromley and Eltham Palace, south of Eltham,
each reached fast from London Bridge station.
Out in Kent, but easy to reach by train from from London Bridge is Downe House,
home of Charles Darwin, an interesting and friendly place

If you have a specific interest in mind please tell me, and I shall see what I can suggest to respond. My address is [email protected]

Mr. Haines;
I, too, have loved your posts over the years, and now find myself in a position to actually partake of some of your suggestions!
In a previous post, you describe a walk through Southwark, and mention "hop houses." I've been looking around, and the closest thing I find mention of are the Hopton Almshouses. Are these one and the same? Are they buildings that can be toured, or just interesting to note as you walk through the area?
Thanks!
Annette

I used Google for the almshouses and found http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/240/. I am afraid Hopton is simply the name of the donor of the alms houses, which you can see from outside, and are beautiful.

Hop houses are just interesting to note as you walk down Borough High Street. They are the head offices of former specialist companies, hop factors, who bought dried hops in Kent and sold them to brewers around south east England and beyond. They are narrow frontages, as the hops remained in store in cheap barns in the countryside. The houses are now just financial offices, at lower rents than those in the City over the river, but under planning laws the owners may not alter the frontages: these stand to recall the high street of 120 years ago. Another common building on the road is the pub. For centuries the city gate closed at dusk, so people moving between London, Canterbury, Dover and the continent had to settle for the night (or gather for the night) at the end or the start of their trip. Chaucer describes that first night of the party in the opening pages of the Canterbury Tales. Pilgrimage ceased under Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, but continental travel, and indeed dealings ion hops, fruit and vegetables, carried on well.

We still grow hops in Kent, but English taste has changed, and I think we send most to Bohemia, while in turn we import continental hops for our own beers. I found no factors left in Southwark, but the site http://www.wellhopped.co.uk/AboutUs.htm took me to a firm out in the country.

I was sorry to see that Flanner had been assassinated.
Oldie, a slightly irascible but harmless old geezer has also got the chop.
Can it be that the British sense of irony is not appreciated?

Thank goodness for the Hindu concept of reincarnation ;-)

You could be a Blue Plaque twitcher
Go to
http://www.blueplaque.com/
look for a famous person of your choice and go to where they lived.

For fans of houses & design

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/centlond.pdf

http://www.designmuseum.org/

Ben:

Perhaps it wasn't a post, but a direct email, but I have a list I printed off years ago of 'lesser-known London' or something similar that you wrote. Or maybe it was someone else? I always attached it to you

Bookmarking-thanks for the tips.

Camden market -- great on Sundays and fun to people watch there too