Category: London

Two Bloggers Take a London Stroll

It’s always fun to spend time with a fellow-blogger, and a bit of a coup to be in London at a time when Sarah, of Travel with Me fame is actually not travelling! We’d met before, both in London and in Yorkshire. But we wanted to link up again, cameras in our hands.

Sarah had suggested a short stroll from Camden Town, along the Regents Canal, to Camley Street Natural Park and Coal Drops Yard. Come along with us.

Camden Town has changed a bit since I last visited. It’s Tourist Central. I heard more Italian than English, and Spanish school students seemed to be everywhere. No wonder Sarah and I didn’t at first spot one another. Here are a few shots I took whilst we were still hunting each other down.

Those 3D reliefs on the front of almost every shop seem to be a feature. Once Sarah and I found each other, we retired instantly for a relaxing canal-side coffee – in the open air!

Next – our stroll along the canal. Plenty to see. A Banksy? No, apparently not.

I don’t know how I cut off the left hand edge …

Walking under a bridge, we spotted reflections …

…. then graffiti …

… and a group of people chatting, and echoing the bright colours of the graffiti behind them.

We popped into St. Pancras Old Church and its churchyard. It’s the burial place of the writer Mary Wollstonecraft who way back in the 18th century was a passionate advocate for educational and social equality for women. Her tomb has acquired a dusting of small tributes fom those who come to pay their respects to her memory. There’s a Thomas Hardy connection here too, AND one to architect Sir John Soane. Sarah’s account of our walk together tells the tales, so you can read all about them here.

Coins and trinkets left on top of Mary Wollstonecraft’s tomb.

We had an agreeable saunter round the Camley Street Natural Park. It’s a tiny oasis of wildness bang up against a busy part of London. You’d never know that Kings Cross, traffic, shops, offices were only a couple of minutes walk away. I was so carried away by the peace of it all, I clean forgot to take a single photo.

Back to civilisation, Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square. Lunch was the plan, but before that, time for a wander. An exhibition (beauty products?) was just being dismantled, but the copper-effect display structures still stood, presenting an opportunity for selfies.

Sarah’s already taken a photo or two, but here I am, still seeking that perfect shot.

Granary Square is full of places to find interesting food. Sarah had experience on her side, and picked a good ‘un, Caravan. We’re not on Instagram here, so no artful shots of our lunch. We were too busy talking anyway.

A few more photo ops afterwards, from an unhurried little corner dedicated to Everyday Mental Maintenance where people could sit for a few quiet moments, resting, chatting, or simply reading one of the poems forming a backdrop.

We wondered if this was a long-distance friendship. Texting each other as an alternative to chatting? Probably not. They almost certainly had no idea that anyone else was sharing the space.
So they did!

But that was our time together over. Sarah had a journey back to her corner of London, and I was on Post School Duty back with the family. So we went our separate ways, promising that we’d try to meet again in the summer, when Sarah hopes to be once again in Yorkshire. Thanks, Sarah, for a day well spent!

For Jo’s Monday Walk

Wandering Away from Woolwich

I was back on the Thames Path again last week. I’ve already had two goes at it, here and here. There’s no hope that I shall walk the length of it in an ordered sequence, but no matter…. This time, I started in Woolwich once more but walked away from London. And not very far either- just two or three miles there and back again.

Woolwich fascinates me. The elegance of the fine buildings constructed during its time as a military centre of great importance contrasts with its sometimes down-at-heel tower blocks and shopping streets, and its more recent apartments which are anything but shabby.

See what I mean?
I showed you a detail from’Assembly’ in a recent post. This group of men, sculpted by Peter Burke is intended to reflect the industrial heritage of the Royal Arsenal, which was previously a major munitions factory. 

But it was the Thames that really commanded my focus. Selections of waterbirds, like this one ….

Egyptian goose

… industrial life. Look at the weight of that sand and gravel weighing down the barge purposefully ploughing onwards.

Suggestions of the river’s industrial past and present were everywhere.

Little dramas played out before me …

And a cemetery’s worth of abandoned bicycles spoke perhaps of thefts abandoned once the reason for taking them no longer applied.

The shore itself was worth exploring …

And the views back to London …

Even the lichens on the concrete walls edging the Thames merited a look.

In fact there was wildlife a-plenty…

Who knew that only a few hundred yards or so away from the path, double decker buses, lorries, cars, trains, shops, pedestrians and all the trappings of city life were carrying on regardless of the tranquility I enjoyed as I explored the riverside path?

For Jo’s Monday Walk – When she gets back from her travels….

Oh Look! There’s Bird on the Roof

I thought of Brian on Sunday. Here’s why. Brian is the blogger charged with introducing this week’s theme for Monochrome Madness. And he’s chosen ‘On the Roof’.

I was with the family in Borough Market on Sunday. And we were having fun as we picnicked, at the expense of this poor gull try to land – time after time after time – on the roof of one of the sales kiosks.

Every time his feet touched down, he slithered and skittered, unable to find any purchase, until at the bottom, he more or less tumbled off … again. He persisted and persisted until, finally…

Here are some more herring gulls, all in either Whitby or Staithes: the seaside in fact. Perhaps they feel more at home and comfortable.

Here are birds who are definitely at home on a roof. Storks. A roof’s the perfect place for nest-building and raising a family. Let’s go to Tudela in Spain.

We could go to North Macedonia now, and stay in a hotel crowded with peacocks. One even had to escape to the roof for a bit of peace.

Back home for some more domestic shots: a crow on a nearby chimney pot, and a robin on the roof of a nearby bird house (does that count? I think so.)

We’ll finish off with a shot to complement the featured photo. Here’s a line of pigeons on some ridge tiles. They echo the ones which begin the post: a host of ceramic cockatoos (?) decorating the roof of a house in Busan, South Korea.

Thanks for a fun challenge, Brian!

Juxtaposed in London

Juxtaposition. That’s what Patti wants from us for this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge. The unexpected frame-pairing.

I thought immediately of London, of a shot I took a while ago now showing the Gherkin, begun in 2001. Nearby, in the foreground, is one of London’s oldest still-standing buildings, the Tower of London, begun almost 1000 years before, in 1078. One, a glass and steel landmark in London’s present-day financial district: the other a foresquare stone monument to royal power, to Norman dominance, and to conquest. One is peopled by office workers – financiers. The other, once upon a time, by royals, nobility, and political prisoners. It’s my featured photo.

Let’s continue down the Thames on the waterbus service, the Thames Clipper. It’s easy to spot new development – apartment complexes for more moneyed citizens, with rusting old ships and barges tied up in the shallows.

We’ll leave our Thames Clipper at Greenwich, and walk up towards the Royal Observatory. Let’s join the crowd leaning over a balustrade to look at the city beyond. They echo and complement the skyscrapers they’re looking at.

Nearby, in Woolwich, an unlikely garden. A cracked and battered wall serving as an impromptu flower pot.

My last London shot is a slightly incongruous juxtaposition. Mudchute Farm, a community city farm and charity is on the densely-populated Isle of Dogs, surrounded by city life in all its forms – tower blocks, offices, social housing, businesses old and new. How mis-matched it feels to wander among farm animals browsing in their fields with the nearby back-drop of the high-rise development at Canary Wharf.

Thanks, Patti for an interesting challenge. I thought I couldn’t come up with anything. But I (sort of) got there in the end.

Alexis Soyer: My Latest Pin-Up

Last week, a blog post by Steve of A London Miscellany took my eye. It’s about a 19th Century French celebrity chef working in London who became struck by the plight of the city’s poor. Do read this post about a remarkable man: a talented cook and inventor with a practical social conscience.

I heartly recommend Steve’s weekly blog posts. He always has interesting and curious tales to tell about London’s past

Ham Yard, an apt setting

The image of Alexis Soyer shown as the featured photo is a picture painted by his wife, and currently in the Reform Club, London.

A Ghost Sign is a Shadow of its Former Self

I love a ghost sign. Advertising from way-back-when that simply took the form of the product’s name painted on the wall of a house or shop. Faded now, they’re a reminder of simpler times, and are merely a shadow of their former selves.

Non-Brits may not know that Courage is a British beer. This sign I spotted yesterday near Borough Market was sited near where the brewery began in 1787, founded by one – John Courage.

For Becky’s November Shadows.