Our day trip to Windsor was an adventure in travel – not always in the best ways – and a real historical & artistic treat. We started off with the same walk to Balham station but not to get the Tube! The Southern Line surface trains can be reached from the same station entrance and (with one catch that we’ll come back to later) we could even pay the fares with our prepaid Oyster cards, which we use to ride the Tube.
Two stops down the line is Clapham Junction, which is a serious urban railway interchange. Even at off peak times, like our mid-morning journey, there is always some harried commuter sprinting down the hall, which serves the 17 train platforms, to catch a connecting train. As we were standing on our platform, 2-3 trains would stop in the space of 10 minutes. We missed the connection that we researched with Google Maps, because we alighted on platform 11 and it took a while to find our onward South West train usually leaves from platform 5!
On arrival at the end of the line in Windsor, we looked round for a place to tap out with our Oyster cards. There was none! What should we do? What would happen if we didn’t pay? Obviously we missed a clue, so we asked a friendly station employee for help. It turns out we weren’t paying nothing for our trip, we had paid the maximum fare, 12.50£! This man explained that without announcement we had passed the boundary for Oyster card fares back at Felton and once our journey max time was reached we’d be overcharged. He says this catches people out all the time to the tune of £56M last year in overcharges. Well now we know – if leaving London you should get a paper ticket from your line. We did that for the way back.
Windsor is another of those English places where your exit from the train confronts you with a historical view. Yes, that is the castle begun in1080 that is peeking up above the trees behind the super thrilled Cary. The main attractions at Windsor are the castle grounds, the state rooms (art treasures, artifacts,history and insights into the working life of the royal family), the doll house (yes), and St George’s chapel.
There is also a changing of the guard ceremony – on even numbered dates in high season (shown in the last couple pictures of the gallery above and in the summary movie below). Good band, plenty of orders shouted in English that I didn’t understand and some deadly modern guards dressed 19th century uniforms. There were lots of highlights, but the most chilling moment was being on the sideline watching an authentic parting of the ways on the crowded north terrace at the shout of, “Make way for the Queens guards.” FIve guards rushed up the walk toward the Royal family’s private apartments and returned about 10 minutes later. Don’t know if that was an urgent call, but it didn’t look ceremonial – and boy did it startle people in the path! “Make way!”
