Guest Travel Blog: Day trip to London with Railcard
25th July 2023
This week, guest blogger Heather from MyChronicTravel tells us about her recent trip to Britain's capital city, and her experience using the Disabled Persons Railcard.
A keen traveller, Heather is based in Northern England and writes regularly about travel tips, advice and accessibility, travelling on a budget and more on her blog, MyChronicTravel. Check out MyChronicTravel.eu.org for more travel stories from Heather and be sure to follow on socials at @mychronictravel.
I took a short trip to London in July 2023 so I could visit various London attractions in summer when the weather is much nicer. There are so many things to do in London which makes it my favourite UK city.
I have a disabled persons railcard which I used to purchase my train tickets down to London. The railcard gives me a 1/3 off all train travel which is great as train prices can be expensive depending where you live and are going to. As I live in Northern England, it is quite a journey so the railcard really helps save money!
The great thing about a railcard is that you also get some other benefits too, such as discounts on TFL London travel! This means that it is perfect to take to London to save even more money!
I made a post specifically about the disabled persons railcard which you can find here.
Whilst in London, I followed part of the Morph’s Epic Art Adventure Art Trail, which has various sculptures of Morph all over various parts of London. They are all designed by various artists and each Morph sculpture tells you a little about it on the sculpture, or you can see the sculptures on their website. This also tells you about each artist with detailed information.
The art walk is step free so you can do this if you are in a wheelchair too! Accessible, which is really great and very much welcome. As someone disabled this really appealed to me and I made sure to visit lots of the sculptures.
The art trail started on June 19th and ends on August 20th 2023, so you have plenty of time to visit the sculptures still and I highly recommended you do. I did it alone and it was fun, so don’t feel you have to be a child to do it, this is for everyone! Great fun for adults and especially fun for kids as you can hunt the Morph sculptures all over various parts of London. I recommend the app, especially if you have kids.
The Kings Guard “On Guard” sculpture is sponsored by National Rail. They also kindly collaborated with me for this blog post. Their sculpture is inside Hays Galleria which is right next to London Bridge and the river front. Lovely place to grab a snack before taking a stroll along the river.
You can download a map of the art trail on their website. This way you have a copy in your pocket at all times. You can also download an app for iOS and Android, which is brilliant for visiting multiple sculptures like I did! The app also lets you tick off the ones you found, so it makes it like a game which can be lots of fun for families with children. You even gather little rewards for ticking off sculptures too. If you have children or you want to make sure you don’t miss many sculptures, I highly recommend the app.
I enjoyed taking a slow walk around the sculptures and I also got on the bus to travel between areas for where I couldn’t walk due to disability.
As I walked around the Morph sculptures near London Bridge as there are quite a lot in that area, I passed through Hays Galleria where you can find the National Rail Morph sculpture, as well as some little shops and beautiful scenery. Such a brilliant place to take a walk along the river and stop for a drink or snack and I did just that! I stopped for a drink and a sit down before heading along the river to find more morph sculptures.
It was right next to the bus station which was very handy for my next journey across London. I found it a great place to start the art trail, but you can start where ever you choose. I picked here to start because of the amount of sculptures in the area, plus the bus station right next door which was very handy. If you are doing this step free, please note that there are steps in the bus station.
After I finished Morph sculpture hunting, I headed towards some other London attractions such as Big Ben which looked very pretty now all the scaffolding has been removed which was up while there were renovating it. Big Ben looks stunning now and the gold colours were shining in the sun.
Afterwards I hopped on the underground using my Oyster card with the disabled persons railcard discount added and headed towards St James Park. I grabbed an iced drink at a local coffee shop and a sandwich at a popular sandwich chain, before I headed into St James’s Park itself, which is one of my favourite parks in London. Whilst there I took a little break to rest, and I laid down on the grass in the gorgeous sun.
Lots of others had the same idea and it was busy, but nice to have a little lay down from my very busy day. I love doing this and it is such a great park for it. If you are wanting a bigger park, head to Hyde Park.
Whilst there, I couldn’t help but see the amazing Duke Of York Monument. Such amazing architecture!
That evening, my last stop was to see a play called “Witness For The Prosecution” at the London County Hall which is an Agatha Christie play. This was very different as it was a play set in an old courtroom rather than a regular theatre! The building that was County Hall is now used for the theatre as well as various food and drink places as it is a large old building.
I managed to get all this done in one day and I tell you it was a very busy day! I crossed across London multiple times and it was definitely exhausting, but totally worth it! Can’t wait to go back!
On my journey home, I got the train home using my disabled persons railcard again for another 1/3 off travel. Was a quieter train back which was nice so I could relax on the way home. Looking forward to going back to London next time!
To find out more about the Disabled Persons Railcard, and to purchase your Railcard today, visit www.disabledpersons-railcard.co.uk