Walk for December - Christmas Tree Festival

This month, we enjoyed a Christmas themed walk. We went to the Christmas Tree Festival at Upminster Methodist Church. The theme for the decorated trees was 'Around the world.' With over forty decorated Christmas trees, we enjoyed looking at each tree themed around a country. The creativity and ideas were fantastic. Members of the community around Upminster had decorated the trees such as primary schools, choirs, beavers, brownies to name but a few. As we walked around, we had to vote for our favourite tree but it was so difficult because all of the trees were fantastic. The local community had such good ideas e.g. the Italian tree was decorated with pasta whereas the choir wrote the word 'sing' in different languages on musical notes. The church also had the lovely idea for the children to go on a tree hunt and find the Mary, Jesus and Joseph hidden in the trees.
Outside the church, there were two gorgeous donkeys and Cheryl dressed up as Mary and encouraged us to join in with singing a few Christmas songs.

Afterwards, we walked down the main street in Upminster to the tea shop, Susie Bon-Bea where we enjoyed a lovely cream tea. The tea shop had decorated the tables beautifully, the scones were delicious and we were looked after very well. We are now talking about going back for some cupcake decorating lessons in the new year.

Susie Bon-Bea Tea Shop, Upminster

Walk for November - World War I

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War 1, the ladies did a guided tour for November. Keith Warner guided us around Westminster and told us the story of the First World War using building, statues and monuments as prompts.

We started the tour at the Houses of Parliament, walked around to the Foreign Office and then proceeded through St. James's Park. We listened with interest to the countries involved and the triggers for the First World War. We then walked on to Wellington Barracks to see the new Flanders Fields Memorial Garden.

The Queen had unveiled the memorial garden this week and we learnt about how the 70 bags of soil from the burial sites in Belgium were brought over to make the garden. The words of John McCrae's poem 'In Flanders Fields' are carved around the edge on the stone of the sacred soil. Keith also told us about the foot soldiers fighting in the war.

We continued the walk at Buckingham Palace and learnt about the Royal family and how they were a family at War during the First World War. We talked down the Mall to 'The Guards Memorial'.

We then walked across the Horse Guards Parade to learn about the cavalary and the 6 million horses who died during the war.

We moved on the statue of Earl Haig and learnt about his role in the war from bringing the soldiers into the fateful Battle of the Somme to then leading them into the Western Front and winning the war. He later helped to establish the British Legion.

We finished the walk at the Cenotaph. The 'empty tomb' for 'The Glorious Dead' will be scene of the laying of the wreaths tomorrow on Rememberance Sunday at 11am.

We had a wonderfully informative walk and Keith gave us a super compacted talk about the history of World War 1. We were lucky that the rain stayed away and we enjoyed our lunch around the corner at Pizza Express, Victoria Street.

Keith Warner's Walking Tours of London

More information about 'Flander's Field Memorial Garden'