The Big Ben Tour Here I Come

On the 7th of August 2009 I emailed my local MP to arrange a visit to one of London’s greatest icons “Big Ben” or if you prefer its official name “The Clock Tower”. On Monday the 11th of January the time for my visit had finally arrived. A wait of almost 5 whole months, that makes the queue for the London eye seem tame in comparison.

The Big Ben tour is however is not a normal tour it is not open to the general public, you have to be a very special person to get on this trip. Only kidding. If that was the case I would still be waiting for another hundred years to visit “Big Ben”.

The Big Ben tour is only open to UK residents and is limited to a maximum of 16 people and there are three tours daily Monday to Friday. This is basically because of security reasons. Every person that goes on the tour has to be security checked and cleared to make sure you aren’t up to no  good. I had chosen the 9.30am tour.

The tour starting point was at Portcullis House, where? A quick online check and I knew where I was heading too. I had to make sure I knew exactly where I was going because if I was late, I wouldn’t be allowed on to the tour.

I have walked past Portcullis House numerous times in the past without really paying it any attention or even knowing the significance of the place. It was built to provide MP’s and their staff with extra office space. Seemingly things were a wee bit cramped for them in the Houses of Parliament. As we all know they are experts at wasting and squandering money. This lavish building only cost £235 million pounds to build, which included £150,000 for decorative fig trees, £2,000,000 for electric blinds and would you believe a reclining chair for each MP at a cost of £440. There are of course plenty of beautiful paintings scattered all over the place.

I had an extra large portion of my power breakfast because I knew I had 334 steps to climb to visit Big Ben. I arrived at Kilburn Park tube station in plenty of time to get to Portcullis House on schedule. The inevitable happened and there was a bit of a delay on the tube line. Fucking great, I could see those recent price increases are doing wonders for the quality of service.

I arrived at Embankment station, with only 10 minutes to get to Portcullis House, I had to run most of the way and I really hate running. But this was a emergency. I arrived bang on time, sweating and with my old knee injury hurting. The security is fairly tight to get into the building. You have to go through an airport security type entry system and have your photo taken. It was a bad start and I wasn’t happy with my picture, which would go onto my security pass and I could tell the cops wanted to eat my packet of Jelly Baby’s.

I must admit I was impressed with the inside of the building, it is the sort of office building I think anybody would be happy to work in. The inside of the building was built to resemble the inside of a ship and I think it works brilliantly. I wonder how many MP’s sat in these lavish offices trying to figure out how much more they could scam from their expenses.

There was 15 of us gathered to embark upon the Big Ben tour. The youngest was around 11 years old to the oldest who was perhaps in his 60s. I was of course on my own because my African Princess couldn’t face climbing those 334 steps to the belfry where Big Ben is located within The Clock Tower.

I was wondering how we were going to get to Big Ben, which was located on the other side of the road. There was of course an underground passage way. I should have known that, silly me. I wonder how may secret tunnels, rooms, chambers and dungeons there are underneath the Palace of Westminster.

I will continue with my thoughts on the Big Ben tour tomorrow……

Related posts:

1. The Big Ben Here I Come Ya Bas
2. Big Ben The Tour
3. The Icon Big Ben | London Titbits