Monday, October 29th - Volksmarch along the Thames.
Bob: From the remaining Permanent Trails in London we chose the one emphasizing the Thames River, more formally known as the "South Bank Trail" or PT96. The trail started at the Tower Hill Tube Station, and right off the bat at the station exit we saw the Tower of London right in front of us. Since we had a bright, sunny day for our walk, the towers and turrets shooting up from the main bulk of the fortress/prison looked very nice. Walking alongside a grassy sward that was probably a protective moat for the fortress in the old days, we curled around the East side of the old fortress. We didn't stop to take the tour, but that would be one great way to extend the walk if you had the time. Instead, we continued around the Tower to get to the Tower Bridge, an old but very sturdy looking bridge crossing the Thames River. The Tower Bridge was clearly kept in excellent shape, with brightly painted structural beams and supporting towers that just gleamed in the sun. Tour boats were churning up and down the Thames, and there were what looked like old warships moored along the shore upstream. |
Monika: Another day, another permanent trail. The question was whether to go downstream along the Maritime Trail. The names of some of the wharves would remind us of the Monk crime series, but the appearance has probably completely changed during the last 150 years. So we decided to do the more traditional South Bank walk. This walk started at the Tower of London, went across Tower Bridge and then along the South Bank of the Thames upstream past all the landmarks to the Vauxhall bridge, where it crossed the Thames again and came halfway back. So it was 3/4 of a loop. Today was a beautiful sunny day, but cooler. Just made for a walk and lots of picture taking. And the scenery was picturesque. Coming out of the underground at the Tower of London, I was impressed by the fort aspect of this landmark. Walking around it and across tower bridge, it lost some of the fortlike feeling. |
Bob: We turned right (West) to follow the south bank of the Thames, and along the way passed the first of the moored ships, the HMS Belfast, which now serves as a floating Naval museum. We continued underneath the (new) London Bridge along a riverside promenade that continued on with a few gaps along both sides of this stretch of the Thames. As a study in contrasts, the next nautical museum was a replica of Sir Francis Drake's "Golden Hind", the ship he sailed around the world during the reign of Elizabeth I. Of course, he was basically a legalized pirate plundering the Spanish Main. And, as I recall, he chose to cross the Pacific and work his way back around Africa mainly because the Spanish were waiting for him on the East coast of the Americas. But still, when I looked at that tiny ship, no more than 100 feet from stem to stern, I just couldn't imagine sailing around Cape Horn or in the Roaring 40s in something like that. However, the information published alongside the ship claimed that the replica had sailed 100,000 miles including an around-the-world voyage, so maybe it was far more seaworthy than I imagined it to be. As we continued our walk along the curiously named Clink Street, I found a plaque commemorating the series of Clink Prisons built on that spot from the 13th to the 18th Centuries. I suddenly had one of those "Aha!" moments: That old idiom of "Throw him in the clink!" that is used for putting someone in jail, actually derived from putting people in the real Clink Prison! That made me wonder just how many other English idioms are based on some long-past reality that somehow survives over the centuries as a colloquial expression. |
Monika: . From there we walked upstream and past a lot of history, even if some of it was reconstructed, like the Golden Hind, the ship in which Francis Drake sailed around the world. The Golden Hind was in a dock called St. Marys Ovaries. We had been curious about that name, and found out that the original name of the Southwack Cathedral next door had been St. Mary's Ouverie. Well with a little mispronunciation you can change almost any meaning. |
Bob: All of a sudden, another vision from the Elizabethan Era loomed up on our left: a reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. A playlist outside listed regular performances during the summer, but the last one had been on October 7th so we were out of luck. Even worse, the guided tour had just left and we would have had to wait a half an hour for the next one, so we filed it away as a place to revisit and reluctantly continued on our way. At Blackfriars Bridge one of our eight checkpoints was the remains of a mid-19th Century railroad bridge, and I found the ruins to be quite pretty. The remains consisted of a neat series of squat, sturdy-looking red stone pillars that marched across the Thames in very orderly progression. The sunlight striking them turned them into a rather vivid red-orange and the effect was, to me at least, quite cheerful and very unlike the effect that old ruins typically have on me. |
Monika: After the dock we came to the reconstructed Globe Theater. Unfortunately the next guided tour was not for 20 minutes; so we decided to forge on (another one for Next Time). We passed the checkpoint at Blackfriars bridge and could see St. Paul's Cathedral in the distance |
Bob: Continuing along the southern bank on the Queen's Walk, we passed under Waterloo Bridge and curved left to head pretty much due South for the next couple of kilometers. We encountered crowds for the first and last time on our walk at the "London Eye", a huge Ferris Wheel with cabins that operates like the "Riesen Rad" in Vienna (see Wanderung 12). That is, they fill each cabin and then rotate the Ferris Wheel just enough to bring the next cabin into place. The cabins are big plastic eggs, so the impression given is a starkly modern one in contrast to the creaky old wood cabins of the Riesen Rad. To me it looked very out of place up against the more traditional architecture of Parliament just up the river and could equally well have been called the "London Eyesore". However, you would probably get nice views and photographs from the top of the arc. In any case, the entire trip around takes over an hour and we certainly couldn't afford that much time, so we continued on our way. Along the next stretch we had great views of the Houses of Parliament across the river and that looked quite grand to me. The sun had passed the zenith by this time, however, putting the front facade into shadow and making photography deucedly difficult. Monika and I spent several minutes taking pictures from various angles before we finally gave up and continued South. We ended the southward trek at Vauxhall Bridge where we crossed over and turned north on the opposite bank of the Thames. Right at Vauxhall Bridge we found MI-5, which is Britain's intelligence service, which was a surprisingly graceful and pretty modern structure, even with the protective fences encircling it. I couldn't help wondering, of course where MI-1, 2, 3, and 4 were, but that was just idle curiosity. I was, however, surprised that we were allowed to walk right around the perimeter fence at the river's edge, but on the other hand I was pretty sure our movements were being followed by those TV cameras that are so ubiquitous everywhere in London these days and definitely ring MI-5. |
Monika: Once we came around the bend in the river, we came to the newest London attraction, the London Eye, a gigantic Ferris wheel like the Riesenrad in the Prater in Vienna only a lot bigger. And where earlier there had been some but not too many people, there suddenly where lots of them and a long line a la Disney waiting to get on the London Eye. I was thinking, if the line is this long in the off-season, I can't imagine what it might be during high season. Oh well, even without the wait in the line, the Ferris wheel did not really hold much attraction for me. It is too large and too slow; so you see a lot, but you I see the same thing for a long time. I was told, one circuit takes over an hour. We forged on past the next bridge, where there was breathing space again and now we were across from Parliament and Big Ben. The sun was shining on the buildings and anything golden was sparkling. Of course, now we spent a lot of time taking just the perfect picture, again and again. Judging by the first and the last picture of Big Ben, we must have been there for about 15 minutes. On we went to Vauxhall, where MI5, the British Secret Service has its headquarters, and this was one beautiful building. Of course, it had fences and cameras everywhere, but the architecture was just astounding. Definitely not just another office building. |
Bob: Returning North along the river we got an "up close and personal" look at Parliament. On the park at the south side I found a statue that looked very familiar, and when I went over for a closer look I indeed found that it was the "Burgers of Calais" statue by Rodin that I have also seen at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Museum in Washington, D.C. We also had a nice view of Big Ben on the clock tower and heard it chime the half hour, which was the original Westminster Chime! We had to detour inland to go around Parliament as the riverbank path was closed at that point, but we could return to the riverbank just beyond a statue to Bodiccae, the fiery Celtic priestess/warlord who fought the Romans and won a few rounds before losing in the end. Passing Cleopatra's Needle with the Egyptian-style lions on either side, we continued up around the curve in the river to Temple Station where the walk ended. We both agreed that this was a great walk, particularly on a nice sunny day where you could constantly get great views up and down the river. The path is quite flat and ordinarily that would make this an easy walk, but it took us about 3.5 hours and I was quite tired at the end. I think this walk was suprisingly tiring because of the "stop and go" way we walked it. We would walk about 100 yards, stop to take a picture, then walk another 100 yards, and so on, which is a far slower and more exhausting way to walk than keeping a steady pace. |
Monika: Back we went across Vauxhall Bridge along the Jubilee Walk and past the Tate Gallery. Here we were supposed to find a statue in the garden. But the only statue visible was next to the building. So I wrote that down. Going back across the street to the embankment, I again noticed the peculiar crosswalks in London. They want to make sure, people do not make a mad dash across the street, so you get a set of lights for the first lane, with a nice painted sign on the road reminding you to look right. Then you have to walk about 5 feet to the left before you get the next light (look left). In between are barriers to stop you from ignoring their zig-zag. Back at the embankment, we walked through the gardens to parliament. First was what looked like a little brightly colored steeple. This turned out to be a monument to the abolition of slavery which occurred already in 1836; actually in 1807 slave trade with the US was already outlawed. Closer to parliament was the Rodin masterpiece "The Burgher of Calais". It seemed a lot smaller than the one in the Hirshhorn sculpture garden in Washington, but that may well have been a matter of placement. This sculpture was amid a large grass area next to the rather large House of Parliament, in Washington it is in a small corner of a small sculpture garden. Walking past Parliament, we noticed that they took security seriously. The guards where watching the pedestrian with machine guns at the ready. Across the street were demonstrations to get England into helping Burma and out of Iraq. You kind of wonder about the logic of that. Walking on past Big Ben and across Westminster Bridge we were across from the London Eye. It still looked enormous and out of place. Oh well, no accounting for taste. A little bit farther on we finally ended the walk at the Temple Tube station. |
Bob: Monika, however, was apparently less affected by this than I was. After returning to our room and having a light meal, she skipped out to walk another hour and 5 kilometers or so criss-crossing the area North of Hyde Park while looking for a Post Office. I collapsed onto our sofa with a nice Acrostic puzzle, stopping only to let in the cute 20-something Polish girl who came in to clean our rooms. She had been in England for 3 years, but still used colloquialisms like "Hoover" for vacuuming the floor. The vacuum cleaner itself, however, was called "Herbie" (name and smiling face writing on the front) so I took her to task about whether she was really "Hoovering" or "Herbieing". She flounced out and I finally solved the puzzle just about the time Monika returned and turned the lights on as it was getting dark. We then had Abendessen and I was finally rested enough that we visited the local internet cafe (1 pound per hour) and found out that most trains to Southampton ran from Waterloo Station rather than Victoria Station as we had assumed. Our 3-day passes were still good, so we walked up to Paddington Underground station and jumped on a Bakerloo line train to get to Waterloo Station. There we disembarked, found information about the trains (3 per hour during the middle of most days!), and bought tickets for the next day thinking it would be easier to do so when not encumbered by all our luggage. Finally, we both returned home and, rather exhausted, soon went to bed. |
Monika: At Lancaster Gate station, the fountains were going in Hyde Park and the sun was shining. I dragged Bob back into the park for a nice session of picture taking. After being back at the hotel for a bite to eat, a lot of water to drink and a little rest, I was ready for some more exploring. In particular, I wanted to find a post office to get some stamps for a return envelope when we send in our start cards. After all, we did want to get stamps for all our effort. Our nifty map had the post offices marked, so I studied the map and went off - without the map, a mistake. I walked the way I thought was correct, but the road had changed names on me and got me confused and I did not find the post office where I expected it. So I started to meander around. I found out where Paddington Station was and from there just walked around the neighborhood, lots of nice looking apartment buildings and hotels. The street alongside Paddington Station was commercial but otherwise the streets were non-commercial with lots of trees along them. I found one pub which quite obvious was dedicated to Queen Victoria with pictures to prove it. I finally ended up back at Paddington Station and had to go in to take a look. No I did not find a little lost bear, but lots of people to-ing and fro-ing. Back outside, I finally remembered my original purpose for these meanderings and that the map had shown another Post Office just past Paddington Station, and there it was. I had to wait in a queue for about 10 minutes, but got my stamps. By now I was worried Bob would be worrying, so I just went to the store to get food for the evening meal and hurry back. Bob was indeed just starting to worry. He knew I did not have map or GPS and a rather limited sense of direction (but he always forgets, a rather good sense of streets once I have been on them). After our evening meal, Bob thought it might be a good idea to go to the Internet Cafe to check in one more time before we went off to sea. While there, I also checked the information on Southampton and found that the best trains leave from Waterloo station rather than Victoria. Well, we still had our three day pass on the tube and decided to check out the ride to Waterloo, in particular the getting on and off the tube at Paddington and Waterloo. There were at most three short stairways down at Paddington and all escalators at Waterloo. Furthermore, by going to Paddington rather than Lancaster Gate we did not have to switch trains although it did involve two more blocks of walking and pulling the suitcases. But walking in the street seemed to be preferable to switching trains which can involve a lot of walking and sometimes also stairs up or down. At Waterloo, we found out that trains to Southampton left every 15 minutes or so. We went ahead and bought the tickets for the next day, figuring it was easier to do without luggage. With our course set for the morning, we could retire to our little suite and get a good night's sleep. |
| Prolog | Germany Map | Cruise Map | Epilog |
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