I spent Sunday having a Proper Wander with a good friend of mine - London Bridge to Greenwich (mostly) along the Thames Path. You can see the resultant photo set here - there's not a lot of either the London Bridge to Tower Bridge leg, or the Greenwich end, as they're more familiar to me than the bit in the middle.
The BBC have a good illustrated guide to a chunk of the middle of our route, including the part we missed, around the Pumphouse Museum, by following a park and loosing the Thames Path. Still - free range navigation on the principle 'that looks kind of interesting' got us to the city farm via Stave Hill so all was well. Compared to the central London stretches the path is less well signposted, and less, well, Thames-based, than you might assume, but still perfectly followable, and we had fun exploring odd corners and dead ends.
We were most taken by the semi-derelict Chambers Wharf and Cold Stores, which is slated for imminent re-development, but at the moment is beautifully and eerily deserted. The contrast on the river front with the turbo-posh flats next door was far more marked than I managed to capture.
We also collected several lesser-known bits of public statuary - Antony Donaldson's 'Waterfall' off Shad Thames; Doctor Salter's Daydream by Diane Corvin, which I found, frankly, creepy (the cat's the least creepy thing about it - the style just does nothing for me); the almost equally creepy animals advertising the City Farm; and Chemiakin's pleasingly whimsical Peter the Great group. (And I finally took a photo of the Navigators in Hays Galleria that I don't hate.)
There's about a hundred pubs and cafes along the way, although we mostly sat at various points on the river admiring the view and swigging from our water bottles, and Greenwich isn't short on places for dinner at the end of the walk, so, all in all, a good way to have spent the day.
The BBC have a good illustrated guide to a chunk of the middle of our route, including the part we missed, around the Pumphouse Museum, by following a park and loosing the Thames Path. Still - free range navigation on the principle 'that looks kind of interesting' got us to the city farm via Stave Hill so all was well. Compared to the central London stretches the path is less well signposted, and less, well, Thames-based, than you might assume, but still perfectly followable, and we had fun exploring odd corners and dead ends.
We were most taken by the semi-derelict Chambers Wharf and Cold Stores, which is slated for imminent re-development, but at the moment is beautifully and eerily deserted. The contrast on the river front with the turbo-posh flats next door was far more marked than I managed to capture.
We also collected several lesser-known bits of public statuary - Antony Donaldson's 'Waterfall' off Shad Thames; Doctor Salter's Daydream by Diane Corvin, which I found, frankly, creepy (the cat's the least creepy thing about it - the style just does nothing for me); the almost equally creepy animals advertising the City Farm; and Chemiakin's pleasingly whimsical Peter the Great group. (And I finally took a photo of the Navigators in Hays Galleria that I don't hate.)
There's about a hundred pubs and cafes along the way, although we mostly sat at various points on the river admiring the view and swigging from our water bottles, and Greenwich isn't short on places for dinner at the end of the walk, so, all in all, a good way to have spent the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment