Monday 25th March 2013

The one bonus of the trip back from Stratford to Dover Friday night was being able to keep up with the England game on the BBC website and via Twitter. England were playing the might of San Marino, and ran out rather easy winners of 8-0, 5-0 up at half time. The eighth and final goal went in as we were heading up Jubilee Way on the way home, so I missed all the goals and in the end did not turn on the TV once home.

Saturday morning, and we were up at the crack of sparrahs, as we had a mighty busy day in that there London. As I have been travelling so much, and needed to try and sleep a little bit longer, we did not catch the train until a quarter to eight, which meant being able to lay in bed until very nearly seven o’clock.

It was snowing steadily as we drove down into the town to find a place to park near the station. In an unprecedented move, I had noticed a mail from Southeastern advertising an Easter sale of 25% if tickets were booked online, and so before bed on Friday I had ordered our tickets, and it was a simple task to go to the machine, enter the order number and out popped our cheap tickets.



As usual I walked the length of the train before deciding on seats that satisfied my requirements for travel; in particular, seats with a table, and which lined up with the windows. Not much to ask one would think, but something which seems to be beyond modern train designers. Anyway, we settled in our seat and watched the station entrance for later arrivers rushing to get on the train before the doors locked 30 seconds before departure. And we were off into the wintery wonderland of Kent and Essex.

Snow fell most of the way to London, but once away from Dover it wasn’t settling, but the leaden skies did not bode well for our day of walking and photography. It was nice to stay sitting on the train and heading past Stratford and heading into St Pancras. As we got out of the train, and Eurostar at the neighbouring platform roared out, and I managed to get a shot as the rear of the train cleared the trainshed. And so the day began, all based around photography.



We headed over to Kings Cross to see how the work is progressing on clearing the square in front of the station and also to record the progress. In truth, it doesn’t look like much work has been going on, as I was expecting to see most of the 70s buildings to be gone, but it seems to be as it was at the beginning of February last time I was here. I am sure much as been done, but not just obvious.

We went down into the Underground to head over to St Pauls to find a place to grab a coffee and so be near for the start of our walking tour. We found a Costa so were able to get out of the snow and have a warming cup of coffee. And with ten minutes to spare we head round the cathedral to the information office at the end of the path to the Millennium Bridge just as our guide arrived and began checking names off his list. We had booked to go on a three hour walking tour around The City looking at the mix of old and new buildings and get some history of the City. Anyway, for twenty quid it didn’t seem so bad and we might find some new places.



Outside the snow still fell, although the ground was warm enough so it did not settle, but taking photos in it meant regular cleaning the front element of the lens to get clear shots. We walked along main roads, through narrow alleyways, up and down former medieval streets and across parks that were churches before the great fire of 1666. As a friend pointed out, the sites of churches destroyed in the great fire 347 years ago are better preserved that those destroyed by the Luftwaffe during the blitz.

Sadly, we did not get access to any buildings, but we saw buildings, or the remains of buildings dating right from Roman times, through Saxon, the Norman occupation and into the Middle Ages and later. And it is all there, if you know how to look and where. I will post shots on my Flickr stream in the next few days, and where possible I will explain the buildings photographed.



Once we got past the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, it was gone midday and we were cold: Jools and I agreed that if we went past the Weatherpoon pub we took an American friend a couple of years back, we would break off from the tour and go and have a drink and a bite to eat. Within 5 minutes the guide pointed out that some former banks had been turned into bars or restaurants. And there was The Cross Keys, just the place we wanted to stop. So, we thanked the guide and went into the pub, a cider for Jools and a pint of mild for me.

After eating, we walked into Leadenhall Market to snap ‘the Walkie-Talkie’, a massive new building on Fenchurch Street which is now looking complete, or its outer cladding is. It is massive, and towers over its surroundings, and in a move by the designers is wider at the top rather than the base. I think it’s a wonderful design, but out of place with its surroundings. And then there is the new Leadenall Building, opposite Lloys which seems to have risen 500 feet since last September, and will soon have its own cladding put on. Over the six years Jools and I have been going to London together, we have seen the old building demolished brick by brick and this monster rise from the same piece of land. And so the City changes and yet stays the same. New being built on the old over and over again.



We headed to the West End and got out at Oxford Circus. We picked up our tickets from the theatre box office, and had an hour to kill: what to do? OK, another pub, right next to the Palladium, although it had no free seats, we found a quiet corner to stand and sip away. Back outside and it is still snowing, so as the doors were open we went in and waited in one of the bars. The Palladium is one, if not the most famous of London’s theatres. Most of the entertainment world’s most famous people have played there at some point, and the biggest shows. And now we were there to see A Chorus Line.

I had decided that another three hours of walking around would be too much, so I thought about going to a cinema. But our experience at the IMAX shows that it can be cheaper to get seats at a matinee of a big show in the West End. And indeed, so it was the case on Saturday, where £19 bought us seats in the upper circle, upgraded to the stalls, with fine views of the stage. Well worth the cost of the tickets.

And the show: well, All I knew about the play was the hit song, “One”, and that was it. Turns out it is a look at the audition process of a show. A producer is looking to recruit dancers for a chorus line, and he has to whittle down those who turned up. And that is it; but it is a brilliant premise for a show, and gives opportunity to introduce the dancers and for the audience to empathise with them. And there was songs and dancing. Lots of dancing.

Yes, it was a triumph, and well worth nineteen pounds of anyone’s money.

At just gone five, we left the theatre and made our way to Southwark for the final event of the day; a trip up the tallest building in Western Europe at 1,016 feet, although the observation decks are over two hundred feet lower. I won’t go into whether the building itself is good or bad, but the views from the top should be sensational, if the weather allowed.

We had an hour to kill, as we wanted to go up at dusk, but due to the low and thick clouds it was almost dark by a quarter past six. So, we went to the ground floor, collected our tickets and queued up go through the security screening, and we came to the lift. Or, the first of the lifts! The doors opened to allow half a dozen of us in, and whisked us to the 33rd floor. We got out went round a corner and entered a seconded lift which took us to the 69th floor. Then, up a short flight of stairs, and there we were; in the clouds.

Well, not quite, but the cloud had rolled in, and I guess visibility was down to about half a mile, the lights in The City could just be seen. It was quite crowded, but with a little patience, you could get to the windows on each of the four sides. Sadly, due to the cold weather, ice on the 72nd floor meant the open air observation deck was closed, so we had to make do with the views through the thick glass.

Once we got our shots, we headed back down, and once on firm ground thought about how to get home. We hoped to get to Stratford to pick up the twenty past seven train to Dover. We went to the Jubilee Line and got on a very crowded train, and at each station more and more people got on. We got to Stratford with two and a half minutes to get to the International Station, and I knew it was something we just were not going to do, and there was no point in us trying. So we went into Westfield to get a bite to eat and rest. Although it was evening, the shopping centre was still crowded, and the food court even more so. But we found a table, and Jools went and got us a Chinese meal. We timed it just right to walk to the station to pick up the ten to eight train to Stratford; in fact we were walking down the steps to the station as the train pulled in, and so soon we were whizzing through the night to Kent.

A short ten minute wait at Ashford for our connecting train to Dover, and we were back home, just after nine, and pooped.

But it was another one of those good days.