A Day in London

On Sunday, Mrs RC and I headed to London for the day to meet up with a blog friend.

 

When we set off, the sky was clear and the sun was shining, but by the time we reached London, things had changed - cloud had set in and there was the constant threat of rain, with drizzle in between.

 

We met up on Vauxhall Bridge.  The south bank of the Thames has seen a lot of development in recent years.  Mrs RC said that these made her think of a hillside shanty town.  Not sure the people who paid vast amounts of cash to live here would like that comparison, but I can see it too...

 

 

 

 

Looking up river, at least one of the old land marks is still standing...

 

 

And how about this one?  Agg79 (the blogger who we met up with) recognised this as the MI5 HQ...

 

Who says that James Bond movies aren't educational?

 

We grabbed some lunch in a pub and then went for a stroll along the south bank of the Thames.  We just ambled along, sharing stories, taking photos, commenting on what caught our eye.

 

The river was fairly busy, including site seeing trips in these old amphibious trucks (DUKWs, known as Ducks)...

 

They were OK going down stream, but we saw one having a real struggle when going up stream.  Still, at least it didn't sink like one in Liverpool did a few months ago!  (I told Agg that it was one of these London ones, but was mistaken).

 

 

Although Agg79 was technically the Tourist, it has been a long time since Mrs RC and I have been in London without having a specific reason for being there.  In fact it is the first time that Mrs RC and I have actually been to London together!  So we played tourists too, taking all the tourist photos, like this one...

 

 

There is some very quirky building going on, like this thing that looks like it fell off the bottom of a Zeppelin...

 

 

Food sellers were in various vehicles too...

 

There were other special ones too, but I will let Agg talk about those as they were closer to his heart.

 

 

Anyone remember playing Lemmings?

 

Luckily, no one exploded  :-)

 

 

And here is Agg79 in action...

 

This is the Millenium Foot Bridge - very unstable when it first opened, but now fixed.  Agg slipped into Engineer mode for a moment here, working out how it stayed up.  I live it when people have something like that - I guess it is like the musician in me, who unconsciously deconstructs songs to see who is playing what...

 

 

It was at this point that we decided to cross the river and head back to our start point...

 

Here you can see The Shard on the right and the Walkie Talkie Tower (with Death Ray disabled by the weather) on the left.  Tower Bridge is in the distance.

 

The south bank of the Thames is fascinating, all sorts of stuff going on - music, mimes, moving statues, various museums, art galleries, cafes, etc, etc -  and it just draws you along.  By the time we had completed our circuit we had walked 8 miles!

 

 

On the north bank, we found this Police phone - a sort of mini Tardis...

 

 

 

Nearing the end of the "stroll".  Damp, a little foot sore (OK, VERY foot sore for Mrs RC who had managed to wear a couple of blisters but not told me) but having had a good time playing Tourist...

 

Agg79 is holding the camera - I think he should have a pic of the 2 of us together.

 

After this, we returned to the pub for a final drink before heading our seperate ways.

 

Nice to meet you again, Agg!