If you've been counting down my longitude as I travel across London, you'll have realised we must be getting darned close to the Greenwich Meridian. Now here we are on the North Greenwich peninsula, approaching the precise point where the eastern hemisphere meets the west. But first, well, 51½°N couldn't have delivered us anywhere better... [map][photos]
Dangleway South [51.5°N 0.008°E]
Of all the places to coincidentally end up, the southern terminal of London's best-loved cablecar is surely as good as it gets. Nowhere else in London can you take off and soar over the breakers yards of Silvertown, taking in all the glories of the estuarine Thames as you go. On the day of my visit the service is being well used by out-of-town parents keeping their kids busy with a brief school holiday treat, and ageing rockers who've arrived at the O2 too early for tonight's Iron Maiden gig and need something to fill the time. Despite the fact that Oyster and contactless is the cheapest way to fly, everyone's queueing up to pay extra for the Airline Discovery Experience emblazoned on a sign stuck above the ticket office, which'll bring them straight back here after they've discovered how dull the area around the Royal Docks terminal is. My cynicism for this Mayoral white elephant remains undimmed.
The latest commercial development inside the terminal is a souvenir kiosk, carefully positioned to attract passengers coming down the stairs after southbound flights. One of the Dangleway's many surplus members of staff hangs around in front of shelves of branded goodies, including a fridge magnet for £3, a fudge bag for £4, a thermal cup for £7 and a selfie stick for a tenner. They know their target audience well. If you've ever wanted an Emirates-red baseball cap with the cablecar's logo on the front, and have £9 to spare, you know where to come. None of this is freshly sourced, it's the same tat they've been selling in the gift shop in the cafe opposite for years, and another member of stuff lugs extra boxes of snowglobes over should they run out. Every year, without fail, the cablecar provides additional confirmation that it remains a tourist-milker rather than a useful means of public transport.
North Greenwich Bus Station [51.5°N 0.003°E]
...and not just the bus station but the centre of the bus station, the midpointof the arc, immediately opposite the escalators where the Jubilee line disgorges. Here are blue bins stacked with copies of this morning's Metro, and plastic bags into which tonight's Standard will later be flung. Three yellow cones warn that the floor might be wet, two purple footprints point off towards the local animatronic dinosaurs, and arrivals from Charlton dash to grab a Caffe Nero before descending into the depths. This is a space which sometimes seethes with people, but today is quiet as a lamb.
Of course this millennial transport interchange is due to be swept away in a few years's time as the Lords of Greenwich Peninsula replace it with a three-pronged crown of shops and flats, which'll be great if you've ever dreamed of something better than a W H Smith, but likely less convenient if all you want to do is catch a bus. In the meantime, if what you truly desire is a copy of the May 2017 tube map, the Travel Information desk has a handful in its racks and a box of 3000 on the counter (but you'll be lucky to catch it open).
Delta Wharf [51.5°N 0°W]
Dammit, it's impossible to stand on the precise spot where fifty one and a half degrees north crosses the zero meridian because it lies in an undeveloped zone behind hoardings. The intersection's about halfway between the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel and the River Thames, on a former aggregate-processing site called Delta Wharf. The godforsaken backwater of Tunnel Avenue is as close as you can currently get, unless you're the lackey who picks up the golf balls at the far end of the Greenwich Peninsula Driving Range. The last vestiges of industrialisation were razed from Delta Wharf in 2009, but the rest of the site remains vacant until developers Knight Dragon finally get round to building Meridian Quays ("boutiques, bars and towering waterfront living at its most glorious").
For the riverside view, take the Thames Path south from Drawdock Road, almost to the jetty [51.5°N 0.002W°], where a semi-overgrown bench has been provided for your comfort. The skyscrapers of Docklands look particularly imposing from over here, I always think. Frosted half-globe lights line the promenade, wild flowers sprout in the gap between footpath and cycle path, and all could be quite pleasant were it not for the fenced-off nomansland behind you. In a city with a housing crisis, it seems insane that a peninsula cleared for residential redevelopment almost twenty years ago still hasn't got its act together (and, affordably at least, probably never will).
GREENWICH TOWER HAMLETS
Pierhead Lock [51.5°N 0.008W°]
My line of latitude's arrival on the Isle of Dogs coincides with actual riverfront access at the tip of Stewart Street. The dominant building here is quite something, an apartment block of pure white graduated towers stacked high with circular balconies, dipping backwards in a kind of swirling horseshoe formation around a landscaped terraced garden. It almost looks like some giant 1930s ocean liner has docked beside the Thames. This is Pierhead Lock, completed in the year 2000 before the area became hugely desirable, hence of far lower density than anything Barrett Homes would build today. There's no gym on site, the poor darlings, but residents do have access to a tiny private concrete jetty with two benches and a flagpole. I don't know what you do when you see a sign that says "Strictly No Loitering", but I hung around for an extra few minutes to revel in their glorious meandering panorama.
South Quay DLR [51.5°N 0.016W°]
If you're familiar with Docklands, 51.5°N sadly misses the main highrise cluster and crosses the peninsula to the south, approximately along the line of Marsh Wall. But it does score a direct hit on the bridge at the entrance to Millwall Inner Dock, where red flashing lights would halt the traffic if only any of the sailing boats moored up alongside wanted to nip through. This is also where South Quay DLR station was relocated in 2009, spanning the waterway and creating a gloomy undercroft beneath its platforms where yesterday's lunch wrappings inexorably accumulate. I particularly liked the street sign at 191-195 Marsh Wall, across the road, which still bears the original 80s logo of the LDDC quango.
The only skyscraper on the 51.5°N line of latitude is the 48-storey Pan Peninsula, which overtook the Barbican's Shakespeare Tower as London's tallest residential building in 2009. Some of the office blocks close by are the same bullet-grey cuboids erected when Docklands was new, others are covered in the telltale multicoloured panels of the late Noughties, and several more are in the process of being demolished to make way for something bankers can live in. I don't know how much longer the geometrical sheds of Skylines Village can hold out against the 48-storey tower described in the planning notice pinned to a lamppost outside, but for the time being they house a useful collection of (very) small businesses which help keep the neighbouring financial empire ticking over.
Millennium Harbour [51.5°N 0.028W°]
And on the western edge of the Isle of Dogs, another screen of flats. You can probably guess roughly when Millennium Harbour was built, its residents cursed by tiny slanting balconies smaller than the minimum area permissible today. I turn my attention instead to the Thames, a classic section downstream of a serious bend, and watch the river traffic riding the tide. i) a Thames Clipper, zigzagging over to Greenland Dock. ii) three Rigid Inflatable Boats, giving their paying customers the weaving speed-blast they paid £30 for. iii) a bright orange open-topped launch, ferrying a trio of hi-vis guys upstream. iv) three dozen empty waste containers on a chain of barges, heading to the City for refilling. v) a cruiser called Pride of London, its rear deck packed with identikit beery blokes in Crystal Palace jerseys singing "Who are ya?" at the tops of their voices, a huge St George's flag draped from the stern. It's a fabulous spot to pause and watch London drift by.
