Ever been to Kew Gardens? Lovely place. Go during the spring; it’s far too hot (or far too wet) in the summer.
Now, Kew Gardens is located just a few miles away from London Heathrow Airport. As such, aeroplanes fly over it. A lot of aeroplanes. An awful lot of aeroplanes.
One thing that sits in my mind in particular is a bench that I usually end up taking a break on whenever I visit. You get a nice view across the green with a few trees at the end. But this bench is underneath a flight path. From behind one of the trees, a plane appears. It flies towards the gardens. Before it disappears overhead, another plane ascends from the tree. Again, it flies overhead, only for another aeroplane to grow into existence. On average, I’d say that there’s a turnaround of a minute or two.
It doesn’t really annoy me; by the time that they get to Kew, the planes are high enough to make only a small amount of noise. It’s just something that I noticed.
If you’ve been following the news lately, you’ll be aware of the giant cloud of ash that’s been holding up (or, should I say, holding down) European flights. Across the United Kingdom, aeroplanes are grounded and incoming flights are forbidden. To some, this is a bad thing; many, many tourists are trapped in foreign nations, with limited means to get home. Ferries and trains have been overwhelmed. Personally, I’m just glad that we chose to visit Venice a week earlier.
But there is one party surely overjoyed by the airspace closure: people who live near airports. For the first time, people living in places like Hatton and Yeadon can leave their houses without fear of engines roaring overhead. Just this morning, the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 ran a lovely story on how beautifully quiet London is now. If I lived in Hounslow, I know that I’d be making the most of it.
So if you’re in Richmond, Twickenham or somewhere else on the Tube map with money enough to get you there and back again, get yourself down to Kew. This may be the only time in this lifetime that it’ll be aeroplane-free.
Or you could just come up here and visit Harlow Carr. Your choice. ㋼
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