The Big Ben Here I Come Ya Bas

Posted by admin in Travelling In London on November 1st, 2009 | no responses

I have received my date for getting on the “Clock Tower Tour” or more commonly know by its nickname of the one and only, “Big Ben”. The Big Ben tour has finally come through for me, I had almost thought that they had forgotten about me.

Big Ben isn’t the easiest tour in London to get yourself onto. It is a long-winded process, which involves contacting your local MP, who then has one of there minions carry out a security check on you to make sure you aren’t some crazy terrorist that is going to blow up one of the worlds best known and loved icons.

It takes a few months for it all to come together, but I think its going to be worth the wait. Thankfully I don’t seem to be on any wanted lists or classed as an international terrorist.

Well I have my date, which is sometime in January 2010 for the Big Ben tour. The good thing about the tour is that numbers are limited to 16 people at a time, which sounds good to me. The bad news for foreign tourists is that the Clock Tower Tour is only open to UK residents. Overseas visitors are not currently permitted to go on the tour. And best of all the tour is my kinda price, its free!

I better get start practising some stair climbing, because there is of course no lift to the top of Big Ben. There are just 334 steps that need to be climbed to get to the top of Clock Tower, which is 316 feet high (96m). I can feel my legs and knees hurting already.

When I recently climbed the Monument, there were 311 steps, which I managed, but it wasn’t easy. On seconds thoughts stuff the stair climbing training, I will just have a couple of cans of energy drink and a couple of Bars Mars. That will do the trick and I will be flying up Big Ben like a man possessed.

The Big Ben Here I Come Ya Bas

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