Way, Way Out West

Today, I am heading out to West London to do a bit of caching. As usual, I have a list of places that I'd like to visit but I will only get to half of them, if I am very lucky. Here's how the day panned out.

My wife dropped me at the station and I easily got a seat on the 0629 to Fenchurch Street. A brisk walk round to Tower Hill and I was soon heading west to my first stop, Gunnersbury, a place that I had never visited. My first port of call was a bit of a route march down to CM Russian Orthodox Church right next to the A4. Unfortunately I couldn't find the cache so it was a great start to the day.🥴

I headed up to the CM Gunnersbury ~ Baptist for a multi. This proved to be a different way of approaching multi but soon fathomed out. With the coords in hand, I set off towards Turnham Green for a quick find of a clever placement. Over the other side of the Green was the CM trad which caused little problem. I noticed a Cafe Nero over the road so decided that it was time for breakfast. This would be the first time that I actually  paid for something by phone and not card.🤔

I set off down the Chiswick High Road down to the CM Chiswick ~ Our Lady, another multi out of the same stable as the Baptist. This was quite a route march between information points. I ended up down near the Great West Road, not where I was expecting to be down this way. I checked the map and saw that across the road was the TB Hotel Chiswick trad in the gardens of Chiswick. I had been carrying a couple of TBs so it seemed like a good idea to unload them. Unfortunately the trad was only big enough for one.🙄

I passed back under the A4 and heard a gaggle of nursery school kids singing a nursery rhyme. As I passed them, I asked them to sing louder and they did.🤣 Just thinking now about what a coincidence that was as the next cache was HAVE YOU SEEN THE MUFFIN MAN? Now I can remember singing this nursery rhyme when I was a kid. What I didn't know was that it's warning about a 16th century child murderer in Drury Lane.😱😱

I quickly found the mystery and headed back to Chiswick High Road for the final stage of Our Lady. Now I was off to the site of the Battle of Turnham Green. This "battle" was no more than a skirmish back in 1642 during the Civil War. As I read the notice board covering the event, I became aware that the Earl of Essex was the leader of the Parliamentary forces. I always thought that Essex was a Royalist county so,its a bit more information for yours truly, the Prince of Trivia. 🤣🤣

I moved down to What a Stink! #5 multi but try as I might, I couldn't get my coords through the checker.🥴 In the end, I called it a day and walked the short distance to CM Chiswick ~ St Albans. I had more success with this multi. 😀 At this stage, I noticed that my iPhone battery was ebbing out so I plugged in my batpack but no joy.😱 I asked some passers-by where the nearest Tesco was to see if I could buy a cacle or something. I set off but then the charge kicked in😀😀

I was near to Chiswick High Road so I went for the CM Chiswick ~ Baptist multi. However if the sign that held the info had been there, I might have stood a chance.🙁 I took off north to a multi in the Chiswick Series, #3 Rocks Lane. This was quickly found and I moved round to the ST Turnham Green trad and then the Chiswick ~ St Michael multi. This one was clever but eventually sorted. I thought about jumping the nearby tube but decided to walk the half mile up the recently published Stamford Green Common trad. I spent some time here with no joy when discodancingdiva turned up. We searched for another ten minutes when I decided to move on. Just checking, I see that ddd found it. Gawd knows where.🤔

I turned lots of corners walking down to TUBE ST Stamford Brook. This was a very clever idea for a multi which had me flummoxed for a while. I had to guess one part but I struck lucky with my first guess and the cache was soon in hand. This time I decided to jump the tube and got out at Hammersmith.

My first task was to set about the West London Music Venue History AL series. I was thinking about all the bands that I had seen in Hammersmith over the years. In the sadly defunct Palais, I was thrilled to witness the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the Odeon, it would hard to pick my favourite act.🤔 Ry Cooder, ZZTop and Cheap Trick come close but Muddy Waters has to head them up.😀

I had lunch here and then found two ST trads here. I decided to walk down to West Kensington for the ST trad, picking up ST Baron's Court on the way. There was another Music Venue here at The Nashville Rooms. I must admit that I'd never been here before but I have heard of it. Obviously, there wasn't anyone decent enough to schlep over here for.😀 Anyway, enough reminiscing about what may have been. I jumped a tube and alighted at South Kensington.

I was heading towards CM Kensington ~ Christ Church with plans to head into Hyde Park for some ECs but I had an appointment at 1530 and I was running out of time. So I quickly sorted the tricky multi with its final stage just off the delightful Kynance Mews shown in the main photo and headed back to South Kensington to get back to Tower Hill.

I very quickly sorted the Tower Hill Sundial AL and popped round the corner to St Olave's Church. There is a virtual here that I have been after for a couple of years bit I have never found it open.🤔 Today I was in luck but I couldn't find one of the answers in this splendid church so I will have to come back next week.

I mentioned that I had an appointment at 1530. I have booked so many tickets at the Sky Garden over the past couple of months that I had to cancel for some reason or another. However it all came to fruition and after a long queue and an airport style search, I was able to visit the garden in the sky to take my photo to qualify for the virtual.😀😀

1 Earthcache 1 Mystery 1 Virtual, 7 Multi, 8 AdLab 8 Traditional