Arriving in London

Scheduled arrival in London: 06:25. Here was the view as we descended through the cloud.

Most Australians visiting Britain arrive via London Heathrow airport (LHR), but our flight came into Gatwick (LGW), south of London.

I hadn’t been to Gatwick before, so hadn’t seen the amazing bridge that is part of the North terminal. Planes travel under it.

When booking the flights we knew that it would be Gatwick rather than Heathrow. No issue – unlike some Australian airports (cough cough MEL), LGW is easily accessed by frequent rail services – in fact it was built next to an existing rail line in the 1920s.

That said, despite being heavily promoted on the advertising screens near the baggage carousels, the Gatwick Express train was not running that weekend due to works.

But other trains were running, including the route I planned to use, Thameslink, which runs every 15 minutes on Saturdays.

Gatwick Express is half that frequency, which makes me wonder how many people use it, even if needing to go the same way (to Victoria Station), given other cheaper more frequent services also run. It seems I’m not the only person to reach this conclusion.

Entering Britain

We had our ETAs, and getting through immigration and customs was all smooth. Australian passport holders get to use a privileged queue at UK immigration – I assume it’s not just due to use of “e-passports“, as many countries now have those.

There was a free airport shuttle train from the terminal to the main railway station to head into London.

We had some issues getting through the railway station fare gates; they take “contactless” – eg you can use a bank card for fare payment. But one of our credit cards wasn’t cooperating.

As a quick fix, a station staff member confirmed my suspicion that a card linked to a phone can be used separately to that phone – in other words two people can use them independently, despite being linked back to the same bank account. That worked.

Lots of passengers were boarding, but this was a reminder that the Brits and Europeans (sometimes) don’t mess about with their trains: a 12 carriage train rolled up.

Thameslink apparently has 55 x 12 car trains and 60 x 8 cars. In Victoria, anything over 7 cars is cause for celebration – we’ve seen repeated government press releases about V/Line 9 car trains, which currently run just a handful of services each day, and won’t see further expansion until the Melton upgrades are completed in 2027.

On the train I fiddled with my iPhone e-SIM trying to get it working. Being able to Google via the train’s Wi-Fi helped with this. (Note to future self: the option I couldn’t find is Mobile > SIMs > Travel SIM > Turn on this Line, and Data Roaming on.)

These days, phone connectivity is a must while travelling. The great thing about e-SIMs is there’s no physical second SIM to fiddle with to put in your phone. There’s a myriad of options, but I’d bought one from Orange, a European name brand I knew. I got 31 days and 100 Gb for 34.99 EUR (about $60 AUD)… Perhaps not the cheapest option, but it worked well. (Spoiler, and also a note to my future self: over three weeks, I used less than a tenth of that data.)

The train took us north into central London, across the Thames to Farringdon, where we changed to the Elizabeth Line.

By the way, researching this a few weeks earlier, I’d found a rather amusing search engine quirk:

um no, that's not what I was looking for#SearchEngines

— Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen.au) 2025-08-21T22:24:58.000Z

A few stops on the Lizzie Line (which runs 9 car trains) took us to Paddington Station, close to the hotel I’d booked. Why? To make an excursion the following day easier.

(It’s no secret that the current operator of Thameslink and the Elizabeth Line, Go-Ahead Group, has opened an office in Australia, and is angling for work here, including Melbourne’s Metro Trains contract when it comes up for renewal in 2027.)

Exploring London

The hotel room wasn’t ready yet so we left our luggage and went exploring, down Edgware Road (which I usually think of as “The Edgware Road” from watching UK TV shows, though I can’t quite place which one, maybe Minder?) and nearby Hyde Park.

The weather was glorious, and a good walk was just what we needed after being cooped up in aeroplanes for the best part of 24 hours.

I love being in London. My mum is English, and although she grew up elsewhere in England, and I was born and grew up in Australia, I had heavy doses of English culture, so visiting represents a kind of homecoming.

After a reasonably long walk around the park, and a brief stop-off at the 7/7 Memorial, we found some lunch, explored some of the streets nearby (encountering a locked park garden, with someone locked inside politely asking passers-by who might have a key…) then booked into the hotel.

Then we hopped on a bus (front seat, top deck, of course) to nearby St John’s Wood to visit the world’s most famous zebra crossing.

Back in 1998 when I visited Abbey Road, there was hardly anybody else around. Not this time. Dozens of people were milling around, having their pictures taken on the crossing – watched by passing motorists (some patient, others less so) and locals just trying to cross the street.

The other differences are that Abbey Road now has a gift shop and a web cam. I looked in the shop and bought a couple of souvenirs, then we went and caught a Tube to Baker Street, and gradually walked back to the hotel, passing 221B Baker Street, and also getting dinner in a very fine pub in Marylebone along the way.

Happily, we’d made it to the evening without falling asleep.

So hopefully jet-lag was not going to be an issue.