“Railways and the Church have their critics, but both are the best ways of getting a man to his ultimate destination.” — Wilbert Awdry

What a great quote to describe my latest sojourn to London since both Church and Rail featured prominently. There were two travel objectives on my free day in London — The cycling café ‘look mum no hands’ (see below) featured in Velo—2nd Gear: Bicycle Culture and Style and the Brompton Oratory on Brompton Road. Visits to both required transit via South West Train (Richmond to Waterloo) and the Tube.

On Sunday I walked to mass at St. Margaret’s in Twickenham. It’s a twenty-minute walk from Richmond, and most of the row houses have carefully manicured flower gardens.

(1) Photos of my visit to ‘look mum no hands’ in London

(1a) The Turbulent Beauty of ‘Salisbury Cathedral’ (WSJ – Registration Required)

“An extensive group of drawings and oil studies shows just how eagerly Constable took this advice. He became obsessed with the view from the meadows, looking toward one of Europe’s finest medieval cathedrals. Devoted to the Anglican Church, Constable was worried about its future.”

(2) Summer by James Thomson:

“With what an awful world-revolving power
Were first the unwieldy planets launch’d along
The illimitable void! thus to remain,
Amid the flux of many thousand years,
That oft has swept the toiling race of men,
And all their labour’d monuments away,
Firm, unremitting, matchless, in their course;
To the kind-temper’d change of night and day,
And of the seasons ever stealing round,
Minutely faithful: such the All-perfect hand!”