Ellie's Dairy goes on holiday!

As you know, David and I are very rarely able to take a day off.  But this week, leaving goatie Auntie Anita and Milking Mel in charge once again, we headed up to London for our annual away-day.  Oyster cards in hand, we set off by train from Blackheath to go and do touristy things in the big city!

We started at Covent Garden and then hopped on the Thames Clipper river boat to make our way down to Greenwich Pier and back.  Very relaxing and a great way to enjoy all the sights of London including Shakepeare's Globe Theatre ..

By the time we had got back and had dinner, it was time to get ready and go off to see the Cirque du Soleil once again at the Royal Albert Hall.

What a magnificent building that is!  No matter how many times I see it, it never fails to impress.

The stage setting for the show was incredible again ..

And the show itself was just breathtaking.  Unbelievable!

The following day, after a lie-in (what a luxury!) and a very leisurely breakfast we went to see Joe at Borough Market and then strolled along the road to go up The Shard.  I seem to spend rather a lot of time looking up at it, so I figured that it was time to start looking down!

And, what can I say?  Utterly amazing!  The view from the top is just fantastic and we spent a couple of hours picking out landmarks and watching the world go by hundreds of feet below us.

We treated ourselves to a hot mulled cider at the top level ..

Tweeted a picture of Borough Market from above ..

And generally just admired the view!

On our way back to Borough, we made a little detour to a small green area which lies on the corner of one of the busy roads.  Set back a little from the road, this place is known as Cross Bones Garden.  Well documented throughout history, it was a graveyard for the 'outcast dead'.  A paupers graveyard.  In fact, it is also known as the 'prostitute's graveyard'.

Set amidst the bustle of busy South London streets, this garden is very peaceful and has a strange poignant quality about it.  There is just a small pyramid and a shrine erected to remember the many hundreds of people buried in this place:

It is only open at certain times, but the gates are absolutely covered in messages and ribbons ..

You can find out more about it at http://www.crossbones.org.uk/

Then it was back to Borough for some lunch.  David obviously went straight round to our goaty friends at Gourmet Goat to have one of their delicious wraps ..

Check out their spanking new unit at Borough Market in Rochester Walk.  Very flash!  If you have never tried kid goat meat before, then get yourself over there and prepare to be deliciously surprised!

The final stop on our hols was the James Bond exhibition at the Film Theatre in Covent Garden.  It is the largest collection of original JB vehicles and was absolutely wonderful.  David, of course, was in his element with all those fantastic cars around him.  And each car had a running film behind it to show where it had appeared in the JB film.  Very well done and really enjoyable.

So, that was that over with for another year!  Back to reality and goats ...