Suzanne Iwai

Treasured local gem containing history of area, botanical and industrial with an objective nod to king, queen and country past and present. We visited a small ' Set to Stun ' sci Fi exhibition of Dr Who, Blakes 7, and early BBC sci Fi memorabilia spread across a few rooms on two floors. The building itself holds architectural interest in its Georgian proportions and it's Victorian fascination with iron trellised panels in the open atriums on the uppermost floor. You can pay a fee to see some of the 'royal ' state rooms which l might do on another occasion. Worth visiting the adjoining park, boating lake, orchard, and follies hidden in the borders if you have extra time to linger.

Being a bit harsh maybe because this wasn't my choice to visit. This is a long dark pub with quite a lot of access issues for people with mobility by issues. It's long, dark and narrow with a really tight space in the women's toilets. I could barely squeeze past when the staff were attempting to refill the soap dispenser and the toilet roll. They also need to use timed air freshening units. There's an unpleasant odour of fish, floor spill, and peculiar wet plastic gloves smell. Apologies for graphic description but lm definitely nose sensitive as an owner of a large Roman snout. My order of a half shandy was misheard as a pint. The lemonade out into bore no resemblance to a lemon whatsoever and level head ale described as a darker pale ale ( oxymoron) was definitely not. I like a dark shandy made from beers like Doom. My own fault perhaps for asking to taste a couple of the tap. I find pubs less keen to do that when they know you're gonna dilute it with a soft drink. To be fair l was refunded half of the cost of the mistaken pint of shandy. I drank less than 10% of it. No repeat visits here.

Full of fascinating featured plants. Who would know what the Latin names for all of them are without the helpful plant sticks to read. However l worry about how rusty some of the leaves look. Are they getting the right nutrients, are they too crowded, are they reacting adversely to the huge amount of visitors who ogle them every day. My spiky clairsentient senses picked up on some unhappy plants. The same never applies to anything outside in Kew gardens landscaping. The Palm House must be very challenging to maintain with so much of the roof's girders needing to be re painted. How can you do that whilst housing the plants. We noticed the Temperate house was closed for essential maintenance. Therefore it is very important we try to drop in extra money when we can to help those programmes. We did enjoy climbing the spiral staircase to view the palms from above. ( See photos and video)

Small recreation area with enough space to fly kites, throw frisbees, kick a football around and have a picnic though main grassy area doesn't have enough trees to offer shelter from sun or heavy rain. There are two play sets of play equipment. The one to the left hand side of the main gate is for under 8 s with a cute yellow picnic table, interesting global map panels on the slide/ climbing frames and the other set of play features are further on to the right. They are aimed at 7 to 12+ with a more demanding cargo net tower and larger swings.

First off you’d be forgiven for confusing this new City Hall frontage with two other buildings with similar glass revolve entry doors and grey n White corporate ambience. This is therefore the third of its kind on Victoria Street heading west to east from Victoria Rail/ tube station. Once inside it’s all turn stiles and secure conscious reception staff who need to thaw out ! I ‘melted’ down for them when they simply ignored the obvious solution of using a telephone to check the departments we were visiting, and our appointments when one of their terminals was down. You do not create a bottleneck at 9 am in a so called ‘accessible’ public building. The joke was we then waltzed through the barriers without a bag check. Really !!
The signage for where to go was appalling. As an Autistic person lead to rely on appealing to staff already climbing into the lifts about which lift covered the 19 th floor and how did we operate them without a key card. It’s rather ironic that was there to attend an equality and diversity event. I had plenty of material for it. I’m sure that a lot of my comments will be taken on board and significant changes for user friendly entry and navigation of this building will be implemented soon. The lifts are smooth if rather small, the floor materials seamlessly switch between cement flagging to smooth carpet tiling to laminate in the cafe area and the glass partitions are largely matte or etched finishes. I would argue again with signage when it’s applied to such chic toilet facilities. One is never enough if the doors to the cubicles are right on the corridor and they look like full length cleaning cupboards. I can’t say the view through the full length cathedral style windows on the 19 th floor didn’t make me feel queasy so if height adverse avoid standing too close. Distract yourself ! The views over Westminster Cathedral and other sites in the distance are impressive though and imagine the lights at night are pretty stunning.