Clare Teal: Many diversions on a magical mystery tour of London

Our hero and his girlfriend have birthdays relatively close together, so to celebrate, Muddy and I decided to take them both to London for the weekend. Saturday’s plan would be to drive up and do a tour of landmarks by car – Buckingham Palace, Parliament Square, the Embankment, Tower Bridge.

Sunday would be spent pretty much on Oxford Street shopping, the weekend would be rounded off with a trip to Radio 2 as I had to do my show in the evening. Driving along the M3, rain lashing at the car, we heard to our dismay, Graham Norton and travel expert Bobby Prior warning people that London was in a total state of gridlock because of the Lord Mayor’s Show.

I assumed the Lord Mayor’s Show to be Boris doing the rounds, but no, I hear you all shout, The Lord Mayor is an entirely different kettle of fish, the 686th title holder is Fiona Woolf CBE, only the second woman to receive this honour in 824 years – there’s progress for you. It seems Fiona’s parade followed the exact route we were aiming for and blocked us at every opportunity. That said, we ended up seeing interesting parts of London none of us had ever seen before. Having eventually got fed up of the diversions Muddy headed for Soho, and, after a lovely Mexican meal, we strolled over to Covent Garden in time to see Fiona’s fireworks lighting up the sky over the Embankment. After a good night’s sleep our plan was to head out early to try to see some of the things we’d missed yesterday.

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Knowing it was Remembrance Sunday I thought it would be busy, but hadn’t appreciated how much of west London is blocked off. Buckingham Palace was a no.

An hour of chaos later we edged into Trafalgar Square to be pushed back by police to let the Salvation Army Band parade past – who incidentally sounded great.

Much shopping and a radio show later we left the BBC just after 11pm. Regent Street was closed so we turned right and drove west along Oxford St at which point London kindly treated us to a sneaky glimpse of the Christmas lights – we were enjoying it so much that we accidentally drove the length of Oxford Street without realising. No doubt the fine will be in the post.