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Published: January 20th 2024
South Bank View
During my walk along the south bank.My wife and my son had booked to do some sourdough bread making in London, so I thought I would go in as well for a morning of photography. It was an early start as we needed to be in Borough Market ready for the breadmaking to start at 9.30am, which meant leaving home well too early for a Saturday morning. We were treated to a stunning sunrise, but it was just a shame that the setting was the railway tracks heading off towards London.
I left my wife and son at Borough Market, but as soon as they were out of sight, I sneakily diverted to Humble Crumble. It's a favourite of ours, as you can choose your own tailor-made fruit crumble, but even I would admit that it's not really what I should be having for a healthy and nutritious breakfast. It'll have to be healthy breakfasts all next week. And maybe some toasted sourdough. At least I wasn't the only one as the nearby bin was already loaded with empty Humble Crumble cartons. Still, the queue was nothing like it has been when we've been there before, at a more appropriate crumble-hour.
I enjoyed my crumble
Train Station Sunrise
Great sky, shame about the foreground. whilst I walked along the south bank towards Waterloo. It was a cold, crisp morning, but very pleasant and not too busy. Mainly lots of early morning runners. Once, I'd finished my crumble, I took some photographs, although the sky wasn't great, so they weren't great photographs - it's a shame I was too lazy to get here for that earlier sunrise.
The photography plan for today was a diversion from my usual landscapes (or cityscapes in this case I suppose) and more about close-ups and abstracts. A consequence of a book that I recently bought.
I made a few diversions along the way. One was to Westminster, which was already starting to get extremely busy. There were crowds by the heavily gated entrance to Downing Street and further along getting pictures with the mounted guards outside the Horse Guards' Parade. I had wanted to get a picture of the red phone-boxes in front of Big Ben, but all of those already had a huge queue of tourists to get their photos looking out of one of these phone-boxes. It's obviously a very popular Instagram shot (feels like Oia in Santorini all over again - see
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em).
Breakfast
It would be rude not to. Perfect to help cope with the cold. I also made a diversion to a building that is not 10 Downing Street, but the front door is known to look very much like it. It's actually number 10 Adam Street, near Charing Cross. I debated a selfie of me pretending to head in there to see Rishi and give him a piece of my mind.
The end of this walk was at the Leake Street Graffiti Tunnel, which is in the arches under the approaches to Waterloo station. It's huge (some 300 metres long apparently) and is completely covered in graffiti from floor to ceiling. It is obviously a bigger tourist attraction than I thought and not the backstreet lawless ghetto I was half expecting. There are even spot-lights along the length of the tunnel to illuminate all the graffiti.
Some rap music echoing through the tunnel did help the ghetto image a bit. There was also the smell fresh spray paint and, sure enough, there were some men adding a new design to a section of the tunnel.
I walked the short distance to Waterloo station to get the tube to Canary Wharf, with a quick stop at Southwark Station as it has quite
Not 10 Downing Street
Your government is a joke, your party is a joke and you’re a joke! Oh, sorry, wrong address. an abstract interior. It was very easy just to jump off the train, get my photos and then jump back on the next train that was following a few minutes behind. It did take a bit longer than I planned, as I waited to get a shot with no people in - rather annoyingly there were also these people who insisted on walking through to get to the platforms.
I didn’t hang around in Canary Wharf as I have been there before (see
Should I be Surprised That London is Full of People?) and I walked to the Docklands Light Railway station to go two stops to Poplar. In hindsight it probably took longer to wait at the station and take the train than it would have done to just walk as the DLR stations are extremely close together.
There's a glass tunnel at Poplar station, which I had seen in my book. Again, it involved waiting for a gap between all the people who, rather inconveniently, felt the need to use the station, although I think having a person in the picture actually enhanced it by giving the tunnel the right sense of scale.
I then got the DLR to Bank and then the Northern
Horse Guards
A guard on a horse guarding Horse Guards. Line back to Borough. Whilst walking to meet my wife and son, who had finished their bread making by that time, I came across a little garden called Crossbones. This is actually a memorial garden and is on the site of a medieval cemetery where all the prostitutes, the sinful and others who were considered undesirable at the time were buried, given that they were considered unsuitable for proper Christian burials. The prostitutes at the time were known as "Winchester Geese" as, apparently and rather controversially, their brothels were all owned by the Bishop of Winchester. Some very definite medieval hypocrisy there!
It's understood that there are about 15,000 people buried there, in what looked to be a relatively small area. Apparently, it caused work to stop on the Jubilee Line extension when they suddenly came across all these thousands of bodies, many of which needed to be moved and reburied to make way for the tunnels.
It's a really interesting little garden, with lots of unusual and, in some cases, quite bizarre tributes dotted all around. I timed it well and was lucky as it's only open from 12.00 to 2.00pm and, often, not at weekends.
Phone Box Queue
Santorini all is forgiven. I met up with my wife and son for a sourdough lunch back at my son and his girlfriend's flat on the very busy and very noisy Borough High Street. Making the sourdough sounded very complicated, but they really enjoyed it.
After our lunch, my wife and I walked to St. Katherine's Docks on the north bank of the river near Tower Bridge, as there was a view I was hoping would look good at sunset. Sadly, the sunset was nothing like as good as the sunrise had been.
My wife went to Costa Coffee whilst I stayed out in the cold, waiting for the not-to-arrive sunset. She had an excellent view of Tower Bridge whilst drinking her nice hot coffee, whilst I was freezing in the cold wind blowing along the river. I only had myself to blame.
Afterwards we walked to Monument Station to get the tube to Euston and the train back home. We decided against going out for something to eat as we were still both full from all the sourdough.
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