A scheduling quirk had handed me 36 hours to kill in London while en route from Oxford, England, to Portugal — a happy proposition for anyone with deep pockets. Perhaps the braised rabbit at Michelin-starred St. John and an orchestra stall seat at the Royal Opera House before retiring to a suite at the Covent Garden?  For me, alas, such luxuries are well out of reach. I also had little time to waste on leisure, with several deadlines to meet before catching my flight.  The path of least resistance would be to one of the lower-end hotels near Paddington Station, and a day of nursing a pricey latte while defending a table in a crowded cafe. Instead, I set out to find a nearby spot that might have a sight or two to see, a cheapish place to stay and a calm spot to work in.  Richmond, a town about 30 minutes from downtown London (though still officially within the city limits) – a £4 (about $6) train ride — with a reputation for being quiet and lovely seemed to fit the bill. It also had two nearby attractions that appealed to me: the deer-filled 2,360-acre Richmond Park, and Henry VIII’s former home, the Hampton Court Palace. (The palace is in the borough of Richmond, a bit outside town.)  My first task was finding a place to stay. I started my search on Crashpadder, following the advice of a friend who rents out rooms in his home in Oxford. Crashpadder is a competitor of the better-known Airbnb, and had listings available in Richmond. I ended up reserving a room posted by a couple, Chris Head and his wife Kerry, who live just off Richmond Park and walking distance from the train station. They charged £50 a night (about $76) for a comfortable, spotless room — less than even the most barely acceptable hotel in central London.  They gave me the run of the house, which was filled with eclectic art and furniture Chris had amassed at cut rates thanks to his job at an auction house. (My extraordinarily comfortable mattress, he told me, was worth about $2,000.) They also recommended the Hollyhock Cafe, known for its cozy atmosphere and bucolic setting, overlooking a hill sloping down toward the Thames in the public Terrace Gardens. And they got me up to date on the celebrities wo lived in Richmond, including Pete Townshend, Jerry Hall and Emily-the-British-girl-Ross-married-on-”Friends” (not her actual name).  Perhaps most enjoyably, they informed me that Richmond Park had served as the unintentional set of a very recent viral YouTube hit in which a dog named Fenton chases a herd of deer; its owner runs after it, desperately and repeatedly invoking the name of a certain deity whose birthday is celebrated this Sunday.  After watching the video, I found myself wondering if any of the dogs I saw off their leashes were Fenton. (I didn’t, sadly, spot any deer.) Otherwise, the park was calm and beautiful (though probably much more so in the spring), and I walked for an hour through what might very well have been moors, meads or heaths — British words that I know described natural landscapes but whose precise definitions escaped me.  From there it was a short walk past Pete Townshend’s house, a storied structure known as the Wick (there was no direct sign of the musician, though a silver Porsche Boxster sat in the driveway), over to the Hollyhock Cafe, housed in a little cottage-like building perched on a green hill that I was told becomes a sledding hotspot when it snows (making the cafe a hotspot for recovering parents.) The cafe offered fair trade lattes for £2.50, lots of vegetarian and gluten-free choices (I had a Greek salad with oversize hunks of feta; £4.40), a copy of The Guardian (perfect for writers who really shouldn’t be procrastinating), and blankets and hot water bottles to those who preferred to sit outside on the porch overlooking the hill — which I did until my typing fingers froze. It was, in short, an ideal spot for a writer on deadline.  After a few hours of work, I made my way by bus to Hampton Court Palace, passing through lovely, leafy neighborhoods. Being in a somewhat puerile mood after my time spent poring over my notes, I chuckled a bit at oddball place names like Ham Common (near the Ham Parade bus stop!), though they all paled in comparison to a street I had spotted in Oxford days earlier: Crotch Crescent.  I arrived at the palace knowing that admission was a painful £15.95 (actually £14.50, plus a technically “voluntary” contribution). Though well outside my normal price range, it was worth it. This is no ordinary tourist attraction: the palace is vast, the gardens are seemingly endless, and entrance to the famous 17th-century hedge maze is included, as are free and encyclopedic audio tours (including a version for kids) that could keep you busy for hours. There are also all kinds of live presentations throughout the day, both by staff historians and actors playing the palace’s famed denizens. I arrived too late for those, but did bump into Henry VIII himself, sweeping through the royal apartments with one of his wives. (I’m not sure which one, but she still had her head on.)  My only disappointment in Richmond, as it turned out, was of my own making. That evening I wandered into the downtown area looking for a dinner spot. French and British restaurants on the same block were offering competing prix-fixe dinners, available before 7 p.m. For £9.95, an outpost of the Cotê Bistro chain had combinations like vichyssoise and poulet chasseur, which sounded pretty good (and I would later see had been named “Best Value Restaurant” in Britain). But I chose Moomba instead, perhaps entranced by its sleek, glowing design, and then blew £10.95 on a watery onion soup and a bland Somerset pork casserole. It was an ill-advised gotta-eat-English-food-in-England moment at the end of an otherwise splendid (and affordable) London day trip.
With time to kill in London, where to spend 36 hours without breaking the bank? Richmond, a charming town with deals to be found, fits the bill.