Liverpool postcard:Pier Head England's greatest maritime city owes its wealth to the River Mersey. Two long stretches of docks and warehouses grew up on opposite banks, focused on the Pier Head, where stand the so-called Three Graces. The two less well-known of these are the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, while the tallest (and most famous) is the Royal Liver Building. Revolutionary for its time (circa 1910) it's built from reinforced concrete, and is named after the insurance company it still houses. Its clock faces are larger than Big Ben's, all the better to aid passing shipping, and atop its two clock towers are the famous Liver Birds. legend has it that if they were ever to fly away the city would fall, but a) they're each attached with metal struts which are perfectly visible from the ground b) they're both made of copper, so Liverpool's safe for a while yet. There were once plans for a Fourth Grace, a millennial building to be erected on the former docks alongside, but a combination of inappropriate architecture and spiralling costs thankfully put paid to that. Instead the Mann Island site has been filled with tall black wedges, purportedly a mixed-use development but essentially dead at ground floor level. They look utterlyout of place, and were nominated for the Carbuncle Cup in 2012, but were instead beaten by the restored Cutty Sark. A far worse abomination would be the LiverpoolWaters project, pencilled in for Central Docks to the north, which would totally overshadow the waterfront with a 50-storey residential tower, and which forced UNESCO to place Liverpool - Maritime Mercantile City on its List of World Heritage in Danger. The commercial obsession with desecrating the sky with luxury apartments is by no means restricted to London.
Equally modern, and jarring in a more acceptable way, is the Museum of Liverpool, a long low concrete building that opened in 2011. A huge rectangular window pokes out at each end, while at its heart is a splendidly sweepingspiral staircase (warning: 84 steps ahead). Such is the city's historic importance that this is a National Museum, despite having Liverpool as its sole focus. And the good news is it's all terribly well done. Rather than a scattergun approach the museum focuses on a few choice areas, for example providing a fascinatinglyin-depth look at the Liverpool Overhead Railway rather than dipping into all forms of local transport. One of the best galleries is devoted to the city's creative flair, from playwrights to comedians, but more specifically football and music. The Beatles merit an entire case and a fifteen minute theatre show, but don't think John Peel and Echo and the Bunnymen don't get a look in. And by the time I'd immersed myself in The People's Republic gallery I was struck by what stands Liverpool apart. Other cities, Birmingham for example, use museums to celebrate their commercial heritage and entrepreneurial flair, while Liverpool maintains a laser focus on society, workers and community. Its glory days may have passed, but its people shine on.
Liverpool postcard:Albert Dock Back in the 1840s this large rectangular dock lined by warehouses was cutting-edge, indeed Britain's first entirely wood-free commercial premises. A secure place to store precious cargoes it thrived, then boomed, then inexorably declined. In the 1980s a restoration project saw the Albert Dock reborn as a mix of office space and retail, the most famous tenants probably Richard and Judy's This Morning and its floating weather map. The warehouses along one side are filled by the Merseyside Maritime Museum, a multi-storey memory bank of all things seafaring. A little tired in places, but by no means lightweight, two engrossing displays tell (in some depth) the story of the sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania. The third floor is separately branded as the International Slavery Museum, a little on the small side given the tale it has to tell, but a timely reminder that Liverpool's financial success (and that of the British Empire) rests on the disgraceful exploitation of Africa. It has some excellent staff too, for example Barbara whose Scouse tales of first-hand racism in the not-so-distant city had groups of visiting children suitably enthralled.
Oh, but the rest of theAlbert Dock is mostly a disappointment. It's all restaurants, gift shops and bars, appealing to lowest common denominator tourists in need somewhere to spend and slump. I was reminded of the back avenue at the O2 combined with the Trocadero, and scuttled round the perimeter in extra quick time. Although there is one cultural triumph, namely Tate Liverpool, the gallery's first venture outside the capital, and home to four floors of modern art. At present the paid-for exhibition is a display of Jackson Pollocks, so I gave that a miss, whereas floors two and one housed an eclectic constellation of pieces that merited more concentrated attention. Meanwhile if you step away from the dockside at the far end you'll find the entrance to The Beatles Story, because there had to be a Fab Four immersive experience somewhere, for £14.95 minus any Tesco vouchers you might have. On my whistlestop tour, a This Morning museum might have been much more appealing.
I dunno, Gerry and the Pacemakers write one song about it and suddenly it's the most famous ferry in the world. It also runs two very different services - one for tourists and one for locals. Tourists get the daytime to play, with a 50 minute triangular "River Explorer Cruise", which departs from the Pier Head and visits two stops on the Birkenhead side. At Woodside there's a U-Boat to explore, and at weekends a historic tramway outside the terminal too. Meanwhile Seacombe boasts a stellar-themed Spaceport, aimed firmly at families with children, and visiting which increases the prices of your £10 round ticket. Meanwhile before 9.30am and after 5pm the ferry operates for the benefit of commuters, shuttling back and forth rather faster, and that's when I chose to travel. The fare was included in the price of my Saveaway rover ticket, which also allowed me to travel on buses and trains all day, and which came loaded on an almost-smartplastic card. In London we have Oyster, in Liverpool they have Walrus (and insufficient card readers, so you have to carry your receipt around to avoid an excess fare).
I turned up at Woodside after five, fresh from the Merseyrail at Hamilton Square, only to be told that the ferry had stopped running for the day. I hadn't read the timetable carefully enough, and had missed the crucial detail than the commuter service ran from the other pier. Don't worry, said the cleaner, it's only ten minutes up the waterfront, and like a fool I believed her. In fact the distance was more like two miles, as I began to deduce when I triangulated the direction in which the latest ferry appeared to be heading. The intervening Mersey-side path rounded all sorts of decaying docks and outlying detritus, including the mammoth ventilation shaft for the Birkenhead Tunnel. What I thought was the correct pier turned out to belong to a much larger player, disgorging ferries from Belfast into a watery wilderness. I like this kind of urban desolation, don't get me wrong, but it took three-quarters of an hour of indirect route march to finally reach my quarry.
Not surprisingly, for a late-in-the-day against-the-flow service, the Mersey ferry wasn't busy. That was great because it meant the chance to stand in the small space up front and watch the river rush by, rather than being crammed out back or down below. But not right at the prow, of course, because that was fully occupied by a family filming themselves doing Titanic 'Jack and Rose' impersonations, because this never gets tedious to watch, natch. Until the end of next year the ferry is in full DazzleShips mode, a multi-coloured wartime redesign orchestrated by Sir Peter Blake, which livened up the surrounding grey somewhat. But there's always a proper estuarine feel, the surrounding land being relatively low and the Irish Sea not too far downriver. Although a diverse cavalcade of buildings hugs the Liverpool shoreline it's always the Liver Building that draws the eye, growing ever closer because that's where the boat docks. And although the tourist services always get it loud over the tannoy at this point, we commuters thankfully don't get to listen to Ferry Across The Mersey at this point, because the river itself has been experience enough.
I booked my day trip to Liverpool several weeks ago, when rail tickets were going cheap, so turning up on the day of Cilla Black's funeral was quite a coincidence. Not just the chance to pay my respects as the cortège passed by, but also the possibility of seeing Cliff, Tarby and Biggins, a heady celebrity brew. But the procession was going nowhere near a station, and I had other things to shoehorn into my ten hours, so I thought I'd likely give the event a miss. Except...
The tall blonde looked like being a handful when she boarded the train at Euston, making a show of settling down and laying out her belongings on the table. Officially she was only entitled to a quarter of it, but she positioned her pieces with aplomb - the laptop swivelled into the space of the man next to her, the notebook into the shadow behind, the coffee into the gap by the aisle, the bottle of water plonked in the outfield - like a master chess player on the attack. Then from her bag she retrieved a sheaf of papers, with Cilla's funeral order of service on top, then various other printouts from the internet. Chomping down on a Pret sandwich she started to read Cilla's Wikipedia article, dutifully underlining certain key passages. Then she started on the newpspaper obituaries, but underlined nothing this time, presumably because most of these were based on the same Wikipedia foundations. Journalist, I thought.
Eventually she reached for her notebook, once she'd remembered where she'd stashed it, and started transcribing various key phrases for later use. Among the scribble was the email address of a certain Julie at itv.com, which you should know I wasn't trying to read, but this is precisely what happens when someone pushes their belongings into the nether reaches of a rail carriage table. Eventually everything came together as she started to type purposefully into her keyboard, possibly completing an article you read online yesterday, or maybe a script you heard on the television. If so, be alerted that it was written hours before the funeral even took place.
Somewhere around Nuneaton her cameraman rang up. He was already in town, and had a couple of items of bad news to relate. Firstly there was nobody outside the church yet, which I thought wasn't surprising because it was still before nine, and the service wasn't until one. Secondly the family had banished the media from the church grounds, leaving a space for photographers far enough back that they wouldn't be able to see much, but this was still the best place to be so they'd need to arrive early. But there were still voxpops to be done, because modern TV news cannot function without, so the two of them would need to head first to Woolton Road and interview any earlybirds they could find, then rush along to St Mary's to stake out their sub-prime spot. It didn't sound like the day would be brimming with job satisfaction.
In Liverpool city centre, around ten o'clock in the morning, Mathew Street was being hosed down in readiness for the day's revelries. A small collection of floral tributes had been laid on the cobbles in front of the Cavern Club, where Priscilla was once a cloakroom attendant, and somebody had stuck the front page of the Liverpool Echo to a pillar. 'Our Cilla' said a homemade poster in bright pink letters, sellotaped by the door, below a scrappy 1980s photo with a certain Diana-esque touch. Two white haired ladies stopped in the street to examine the haul, while a few of us earlybirds with mobile phones stood back to await a clear shot of the scene. Rather more flowers were laid out up the road by the Cavern Pub, a space with no Merseybeat connection having been opened in 1994, but then this is a street which also boasts a Lennons Bar and a Fab 4 Pizzeria.
I spent the rest of the day avoiding Woolton, instead dashing across town from the Albert Dock to Toxteth, and from West Derby to Birkenhead. The city seemed to be powering ahead as usual, and not especially mournful, although I did notice that the flags on the Pier Head by the Liver Building were all at half mast, which was a nice respectful touch.
And here I stumbled upon a TV news crew set up by the dockside, their three vans arranged into an L-shape to shield goings on from either the wind or the public. I was excited to see that this was indeed ITN, with one of their trademark blonde anchors carefully positioned with the Liver Building behind her, ready to feed live into the six-thirty news. When the time came she delivered a mere ten seconds to camera before a pre-recorded film cut in, with eventually some more general spiel to follow. The palaver that goes into giving you the viewer something to watch is immense... as Cilla the professional presenter would undoubtedly have known.
And there in the front of one of the vans I spotted the woman from the train, I think, stuffing her face with another sandwich while the key broadcast went out. But as for what the report said, or how the funeral service played out, alas I missed everything Cilla-related on the TV yesterday because I was in the city where it was happening.
ROUND TOWER A walk around the edge of Tower Hamlets
7) the Tower → Shoreditch(1½ miles) [19 photos]
For the last ten miles or so the edge of Tower Hamlets has followed the water - first the Lea, then the Thames. Now it breaks off to follow man-made boundaries, historic in origin, which makes for a completely different kind of journey. The next mile and a half straddles the dividing line between the City and merely Middlesex, hence some of the contrasts are quite sharp, after which it's Hackney alongside and the two almost merge. A planning battleground lies ahead... [map]
After dallying with the delights of the Tower, the Tower Hamlets boundary slinks back into relatively mundane territory. Shorter Street is a good example - to one side one of the City's peripheral multi-storey car parks, on the other an anonymous office block, as one-way traffic slipstreams through the middle. The Royal Mint used to stand on the corner of Mansell Street before escaping to Wales, now an adjacent site awaits rebirth as Royal Mint Gardens, bringing "luxury lifestyle living" to 500 fortunate apartment owners who'll get their own private cinema on site. Best not mention the seafood outlet andeel slaughterhouse lurking beneath the railway viaduct alongside, where the proper East End survives somewhat uneasily, for now.
Mansell Street is peculiar in that the Tower Hamlets side is lined by offices while the City side is all residential. Almost 15% of the population of the City of London live in Portsoken, the small eastern ward that's essentially Aldgate. The two long slab blocks here are Guinness Court and Iveagh Court, built around 1980 by Guinness Trust Housing on the site of a railway goods depot. The business premises opposite aren't especially prestigious, such is the effect of a Tower Hamlets postcode, running in occasionally-Georgian sequence from a bland Wetherspoons to an even blander Sainsbury's. The Aldgate gyratory is in considerable flux, enduring yet another remodelling in an attempt to finally remove all trace of gyrating. Braham Street has already been replaced by so-called public realm, essentially a semi-green strip with mounds and fountains where workers come for a fag. Soon every scrap of traffic will be forced through the Aldgate High Street crossroads, along with a remodelled Cycle Superhighway, while the former pedestrian subways are bulldozed out of existence. It's not somewhere I'd choose to linger.
Zealous restructuring also means that Middlesex Street will be sealed off, indeed already has been. Originally known as Hogs Lane, the first hints of urbanisation came in Tudor times, and by the 17th century it had become a commercial district specialising in second-hand clothes and bric-à-brac. Petticoat Lane market survives to this day, indeed is world famous, although if you've ever turned up you'll know it's more poundshop than boutique. Sunday is the big day, when Middlesex Street teems with life, while adjacent Wentworth Street market also bubbles away on weekdays (and never come on Saturday). Again the two sides of the road are very different, the City flank all 1970s residential, while Tower Hamlets boasts older smaller more run-down retail units. In amongst these are various traditional textile outlets, and several modern ethnic restaurants out to entice local office workers.
The boundary next follows a really narrow street, Sandy's Row. This kicks off at Frying Pan Alley and bends in the middle at Artillery Passage, with much to explore up perpendicular alleyways (including the last Jewish synagogue hereabouts). Walking this way is a reminder of long-ago London, both its street patterns and its buildings, which is in disappointing contrast to what lies ahead. I'd like to walk along Fort Street but it's closed for construction works, and has been for some time, the adjacent block a depressingly inoffensive brick cuboid with no redeeming creative touches whatsoever. I've arrived at Spitalfields Market, once a characterful trading hub, now a heritage shell whose retail units exist solely to empty tourists' pockets. If your idea of a good time is a hot drink and a browse and a meal and a fashionable purchase you'll love this heritage-lite marketplace, but in reality it's sheep like you whose anodyne tastes are sucking the life out of this corner of the East End, and indeed have almost succeeded.
Rather than approach the piazza we turn left to reach Broadgate, where RBS and Nat West choose to occupy major offices on the non-City side of the street. This busy financial canyon peaks in the shadow of the Broadgate Tower, 33 storeys tall, while the buildings on the Tower Hamlets side are considerably older and lower. They form part of Norton Folgate, another of London's former Liberties, again under considerable threat from developers. British Land would like nothing more than to bulldoze the block they've bought and sequentially boarded up, but last month campaigners successfully persuaded the council to refuse the planning application that would have expanded the commercial district inexorably northeast. A conservation area runs alongside, and a mighty fine one too, including the very marvellousDennis Severs House, its Georgian setting at least temporarily preserved.
After a brief spell following the railway, the boundary breaks off through the heart of another controversial building project. This is the Bishopsgate Goods Yard, a derelict site surrounding a listed railway embankment, on which it's obvious something should be built but nobody's quite agreed what. Plans for a massive development with two forty-something floored towers have had local residentsup in arms, so the masterplan keeps being rewritten to reduce the heights of things and knock down less of the existing structure. Both Hackney and Tower Hamlets councils need to agree, the site being divided between them, which may be delaying things a little longer. But eventually the developers will come up with plans that satisfy, unleashing monumentalchange. Boxpark will be wiped out - the container market was only ever meant to be temporary - and Shoreditch High Street station will be encased by offices - as was always the intention. Battlelines are drawn.
ROUND TOWER A walk around the edge of Tower Hamlets
6) the Tower(¾ mile) [21 photos]
In case it ever needed confirmation, Tower Hamlets gets the first word of its name from the Tower of London. William the Conqueror's defensive fortress was built just outside the walls of the City of London, hence its administration has always been separate. For centuries the immediate area around the fortifications was known as the Liberties of the Tower of London, independently governed, and bolted into Whitechapel District as late as 1889. And it's this which explains why Tower Hamlets pokes its nose to the west of Tower Bridge, including both Tower Hill the Tower itself, and its this ancient boundary I get to follow today. As historic as Tower Hamlets gets. [map]
I left you last at St Katharine Dock, the luxury marina and tourist trap to the east of Tower Bridge, brimming with people who've had their fill of the Tower and are seeking local entertainment. The perimeter path misses the livelier bits, bad news if chain restaurants are your thing, diverting instead down the exit channel to the Thames. Here you'll find a fine modern sundial, 1973-style, consisting of a large stainless steel ring supported by three thick iron cables. More to the taste of the selfie generation is a somewhat twee fountain of a girl with a dolphin, seemingly unsupported in mid-splash, installed on the waterfront in the same year. Perhaps they were meant to divert attention from the monstrosity behind, the Tower Hotel, whose sole architectural saving grace is that guests can't see the hotel from within.
Exit from Tower Hamlets: Tower Bridge
Which brings us to Tower Bridge proper, the uber-Gothic river crossing whose unique form makes it one of the capital's most well-known visual icons. Opened around 120 years ago, the central span of this bascule bridge used to lift far more frequently than it does today, hence the walkway positioned 42 metres across the Thames. Pedestrians were directed this way if tall ships were passing through, which meant a lot of steps and dark passages, and in 1910 the upper route closed through fear of crime. Nowadays the main deck shimmers with tourists, photographic devices in hand, while the upper walkway (and its new glass floor) can be accessed on payment of £9. Although the bridge is run and maintained by the City of London Foundation, the northern half is in Tower Hamlets and the southern half in Southwark.
The cobbled walkway between the Tower and the Thames is one of the capital's visitor hotspots where Londoners themselves rarely go. At one end of the cobbles a semi-posh restaurant offers 'traditional' sit-down fish and chips, at the other French pastries have them queuing. Meanwhile the view across the Pool of London is impressive, past helmet-shaped City Hall and onwards upriver, though increasingly filled with modern apartments and offices taking advantage of the World Heritage panorama. Tower Millennium Pier marks the western edge of riverside Tower Hamlets, unbelievably the end of almost eight miles I've been walking along the Thames within this single borough. Here too is the main entrance to the Tower of London, where HRP staff check your bags before allowing you inside to meet the Yeoman Warders.
And at this point, because I can, I'm going to take advantage of Tower Hamlets' biggest perks. Residents of the borough are allowed go into the Tower of London for only one pound, which is brilliant, given that everyone from everywhere else gets to pay £24.50. All you need is an Idea Store card or Leisure Services card, and proof of name and address, and then simply turn up at the ticket kiosks. The lady behind the screen barely blinked when I presented my credentials, but she did attempt to charge me £1.10, including a tiny Gift Aid uplift, but I told here where to stick her extra 10p because, sheesh.
I recommend turning up at the Tower of London when it opens, which most of the week is 9am, because that way you get to see the internal courtyards almost devoid of people. In particular you can get into the Crown Jewels exhibit straight away, and see the sovereign's bling before the queues outside start to get silly. If you ever needed proof that our royal family is seriously loaded, the cases of crowns and ornate giltware will soon ram the point home. Incidentally, my top tip when you reach the twin moving walkways past the shiniest regalia is always to ride the walkway on the right, else you'll miss the Cullinan and Koh-i-Noor diamonds, and that would never do.
The White Tower is a treat for anyone who likes stairs, because there are many, including some proper twisty spiral staircases. It's also amazing to think that this buildingis over 900 years old, and still playing its part in telling the story of the Tower to visitors. The Line of Kings has been a tourist attraction here since the 1600s, essentially a sequence of royal armour on horseback, while the tower's history as a mint and armoury is also thoroughly explored within. Other towers are also available, at least a dozen, including the infamous Bloody Tower (whose stairs are ridiculously narrow), the empty crowns of the Martin and the prisoner-scratched walls of the Beauchamp. And yes, last year's poppies get a reverential look-in via a WW1 display in the Flint Tower, plus there's a child-friendly look at the Tower's days as a menagerie two turrets along.
To walk the walls of the Tower requires locating the right start point, after which you can stroll round peering down into the Yeoman Warders' quarters and out across the City. Alternatively you can follow one of the stocky gentlemen (or ladies) around on a free tour, assuming you don't mind standing at the back of a huge throng. There are ravens of course, but not up close, and costumed actors popping up on schedule to tell their historical stories in context. Another treat is King Edward's medieval palace, on the outer wall above Traitor's Gate, plus the site of the Tudor scaffold on Tower Green, plus tons of different nooks and crannies to explore. I was done by noon, having explored pretty much everywhere, but then I've been before, and a proper tourist would take much longer. Maybe £24.50's a bit steep, but then this is absolutely Heritage Central so what the hell, and for ONE POUND, get in, almost worth all that council tax in itself.
And back outside again to continue my circumnavigation of Tower Hamlets. The borough boundary runs up the far side of the piazza, officially known as Petty Wales, where once a row of householders lived under the jurisdiction of the Liberties of the Tower. The squat cylindrical shaft below the ticket kiosks used to be the entrance to a narrow gauge railway, quickly converted to a public subway, then (once Tower Bridge provided a toll-free alternative) closed and handed over to a water company (it still carries a water main beneath the Thames). Modern tourists ignore it, drawn instead to Starbucks and Wagamama (fractionally in the City) and KFC and Eat (fractionally in Tower Hamlets). Indeed few spots are quite so depressingly foreign-currency-oriented as the souvenir honeytraps and refreshment pits of the Tower Vaults locale.
Across the main road was once Tower Hill, conveniently located outside the fortress walls, where over 100 unfortunate prisoners lost their heads. Now Trinity Square Gardens, it contains two large memorials to those with "no grave but the sea" and a big lawn surrounded by trees. The Tower Hamlets boundary runs round the northern edge, past the front of Trinity House, then takes in the whole of Tower Hill underground station. This opened as recently as 1967, replacing a gloomier portal located just inside the City, and is currently undergoing major external works which require a substantial pedestrian diversion. Expect a new hotel to go up in the gap between the District line and DLR, while the Emperor Trajan looks on (beneath the building site) in front of a chunk of Roman wall.
Norfolk postcard:Castle Acre Located a few miles north of Swaffham, Castle Acre is one of the best preserved Norman towns in the country (though today 'village' would be closer to the mark). The castle itself comprises a large motte and bailey - both earthworks still eminently recognisable - with the foundations of a keep overlooking the site, river valley and piggeries beyond. The village maintains its medieval street pattern, and through traffic has to negotiate a stone Bailey Gate (width restriction 6 foot 6) to reach the High Street. To complete the historic triumvirate the remains ofa Cluniac priory lie in meadows to the west of the village, remarkably intact given that Henry VIII had the place pulled down, now run by English Heritage for visitors to pore over and explore. Castle Acre is densely-packed heritage par excellence, but how the residents cope with the influx of erudite tourists I'm not sure.
Norfolk postcard:The Green Britain Centre Formerly the Ecotech Centre, this sustainable attraction lies off the Swaffham bypass at the back of a commercial estate. Conceived as a millennial project, its worthy credentials were in the right place but lacked a certain oomph to make the project a success. Now sponsored by a green electricity company, the centre makes more money out of conferences and school parties than casual visitors, but still attempts to spread the eco-message to anyone who stumbles by. Exhibits include the world's fastest wind powered vehicle, and the structure itself, the largest timber framed building in the UK. But what should really draw in the punters is the 220 foot wind turbine at the foot of centre's large garden, and the opportunity to climb 300 steps to the top. At the top is a unique observation deck designed by Sir Norman Foster, where you can look out across Norfolk through the swishing blades, so long as you arrive in time for a scheduled tour. Open weekdays and summer weekends only.
Norfolk postcard:City of Norwich Aviation Museum On a patch of grass behind the control tower at Norwich Airport, the city's aviation museum lays out its aeronautical wares. The most impressive of these are the old aircraftlined up on the lawn, mostly jets, ranging from a quite small Cessna to a massive Nimrod. Pay a token extra and you can go on a tour inside the latter, ditto the opportunity to climb into an actual Vulcan bomber and stomp around the actual cockpit, which is rather special. Elsewhere on this somewhat compact site the story of Norfolk's aviation history is told, which of course means an awful lot about Second World War British and American airfields, but also touches on the fate of the commercial airlines Air Anglia and Air UK which used to fly from the terminal across the fence. An inexpensive half-day out, ideal for excitable grandfathers and their progeny.
Norfolk postcard:Wroxham The town at the heart of the Norfolk Broads is a heady mix of messing around in boats and shopping. The River Bure ripples with pleasurecraft either owned for years or hired for the day, trying hard not to bump into each other or the swans on the water. I was particularly unnerved by one man who'd turned up on the quayside specifically to communicate with the swans, hiding small chunks of bread in his mouth in an attempt to get the birds to appear to snog him. Most other holidaymakers were here for the fish and chips, or for the chance to spend money at the legendary Roy's of Wroxham, a department store spread out across several buildings in the heart of town. The store has the common touch, and reels in punters seeking cheap gifts, clothing, toys and other bargains, because there's only so much water you can stare at on an East Anglian day out.
When Boris took over City Hall in 2008, one of the first things he did was end the monthly opportunity for Londoners to see inside their seat of government. It used to be possible every four weekends or so to take the lift up to the ninth floor to enjoy the view, and then walk down Norman Foster's centralspiralstaircase to the chamber down below. But opening up to the public cost money the taxpayer could allegedly ill afford, so the weekend openings ceased, and Open House has become the only opportunity for a proper peek. But what's perhaps not well known is that the public are still perfectly entitled to see inside City Hall whenever it's open, and that three floors of the building are accessible. Plus you don't need to book to see the big swirly wonders, you can just walk in.
My excuse for going in was the Bleeding London exhibition, a photographic display up and running until 4th September. But I could have come in anyway, there's sufficient reason, and staff on the front desk shouldn't challenge your ultimate destination. What you do need to do is subject yourself to the full security check beyond the revolving door, which involves a full X-ray for any bags and electrical gadgets you may be carrying, plus that embarrassing thing where they ask you to take your belt off. It's just enough to stop you nipping in simply to use the toilets, although if you're ever caught short in the Tower Bridge area feel free.
The building's trademark spiral staircase descends from a bifurcation point beyond the main desk, where the building's genuine employees split off to head to their offices. But take the loop down to the lower ground floor and there's a public space the workforce are happy to share with you. In pride of place is a giant satellite map of London, and I mean giant, with every street and field and borough boundary displayed across a vast vinyl carpet. You can walk across it to try to find your road, house and workplace, explore the centre of town or wander through the outskirts, it's a magnificent resource. Meanwhile a tall metal tower rises out of Richmond riverside with a subtitled TV bolted to the top, should you want to keep tracks of the latest news.
The other key resource on the basement floor is the cafe, otherwise known as London's Kitchen. It supplies subsidised food and drink to the building's workforce, but anyone's welcome to grab a primary-coloured chair and partake. Breakfast is served until 10.30am and lunch from 11.30am, with the hot meal of the day competitively priced at £5.24, and all the usual coffee and pastry options are available too. Who knows which important City Hall representatives you might be sharing a table space with?
The canteen space is also where you'll find the first half of the Bleeding London exhibition. This is a grand project organised by the Royal Photographic Society which is attempting to accumulate a photo of every single street in London. The inspiration was Geoff Nicholson's book of the same name, in which the protagonist attempts to walk every road in London, hence the desire to crowdsource one image from everywhere, from Oxford Street to Glenfield Crescent (Ruislip). The public duly sent their photos in, so far 58000 in total, and 1200 are now on display at City Hall on big yellow boards. Try not to peer into the conference rooms beyond as you enjoy them.
They're an eclectic selection of photos, from professional captures to almost-blurry smartphone snaps. Some show recognisable tourist spots, others a snatch of graffiti or parade of shops, others simply a street name on a wall. Perhaps a row of washing, perhaps a local 'character' sitting on a wall, they combine to form a strong broad portrait of life in our capital today. I wondered if I'd be able to spot Bow Road, hidden somewhere on one of the many display boards, but I needn't have worried because it was the only photo featuring the Mayor, and thus damned obvious. There was Boris in his yellow bike helmet poised outside the St Clements development, rucksack on back, ready to burst out into the traffic. Result.
To view the second half of the exhibition you have to go up to the second floor. There are no obvious signs to tell you this, unless you noticed it on the way in, but I got a tip from the bored-looking security guard perched by the basement exit. As a member of the public you're allowed up in the lift, and trusted to press the right button, although if you exit anywhere else you'll not get through the security barriers. On the second floor there are lots more photos to enjoy, and information panels explaining how to view the project online, and some comfy seats where you can sit and use the free wifi unhindered. Plus there's the main reason the building exists, which is the main chamber where Assembly members grill the Mayor and other experts.
Should you turn up on the right day (and they'readvertised) you can sit in on a GLA meeting or TfL committee, such is the nature of public scrutiny. But on my visit the chamber was sealed off behind glass, and all I could do was peer inside. Oh, and circle round the edge down the spiral corridor, which at this point is broad and impressive and returning gently to the ground. View the chamber from all sides, then follow a long quotation round the More London side before finally returning to reception, your adventures in democracy complete. For a building you probably thought was out of bounds, there's really quite a bit to see.
This poster has recently appeared on every DLR platform.
Changes from next Sunday? How exciting! But, even though there's plenty of room underneath, the poster reveals no specific details.
The text goes on to point out there'll be further temporary changes at the end of the month for a major event at ExCel, but gives no details of those either. Then at the bottom of the poster there's a final line inviting you to "plan your journey at tfl.gov.uk". Or in other words, we're not going to tell you what the permanent changes are, go work it out for yourself.
DLR management have been keen to tell us less about their services over recent years. They used to post timetables and route frequencies at stations, now they only post vague service intervals and times of first and last trains. This non-announcement of a poster is merely a natural progression.
If you have the foresight to head to the DLR page on the TfL website, and find the right link, then some further information is provided.
Well that sounds good. But how much of an increase precisely? There are no clues, not unless you dig into the Journey Planner and experiment with several different starting dates and times. And even that's easier said than done, because recent changes to the Journey Planner mean that the default is now only to show you one journey, not the next few. But I've had a go, and I think the increased frequencies are as follows...
Stratford → Canary Wharf (peak): was every 6 minutes, will be every 4 minutes Stratford → Lewisham (peak): was every 12 minutes, will be every 8 minutes Stratford → Canary Wharf (inter-peak): was every 6 minutes, will be every 5 minutes Stratford → Canary Wharf (weekend): was every 10 minutes, will be every 5 minutes
So hang on, this is great! In peak hours this means five more trains an hour on the Stratford branch, and far more through trains, and a whopping boost to capacity. And at weekends that's a doubling of frequencies, which for those of us who live along the route is excellent. I currently have to time my departure from the house carefully to avoid a 9-minute wait at Bow Church, but in future I'll have a genuinely turn-up-and-go weekend service on the DLR for the first time. Why are TfL not shouting this from the rooftops?
This too is good news. Currently there's only one train to Lewisham every 10 minutes on a Saturday evening, but in the future there'll be one every 5 minutes. Again you'd think TfL would want to shout about the improvement, particularly as its the result of targeted investment, but instead they've hidden the figures in the Journey Planner, and in a brief summary sentence on their website.
That's no great loss. The West Ham service was a brief and lacklustre attempt to serve the Stratford International line, but nullified by the trains running precisely one minute behind an existing service. Good riddance, basically.
Oh, so it's not all good news. As the Night Tube approaches, it appears last trains on the DLR are getting earlier instead! But on which lines, and by how much? This could be crucial information for some people, but again the DLR's press department don't want to tell you, they want you to work it out for yourself.
It seems the watchword now is personalisation, because the only person who knows what journey you actually want to make is you. If you'd be good enough to get your phone out and check your journey every time you travel on the DLR, and then follow the spoonfed instructions given, that'd be great. If there are new underlying patterns to your journey, maybe you'll work them out eventually and become a more independent traveller. In the meantime ssssh, it's a secret. Just turn up, you'll cope.
Sunday afternoon update:A new poster has appeared at DLR stations giving considerably more information. Its timing may be a coincidence.
ROUND TOWER A walk around the edge of Tower Hamlets
5) Limehouse → the Tower(2½ miles) [21 photos]
Here's the section of Tower Hamlets' boundary you're most likely to have walked. The Thames Path from Canary Wharf to the Tower forms a popular riverside stroll, or would do if the path hugged the riverside a bit more. Instead there are lengthy diversions through the older parts of Limehouse and Wapping... but when the panoramas open up, they're excellent. [map]
Welcome to Narrow Street. It used to be narrower, especially in Elizabethan times when hundreds of mariners first moved in and opposite houses almost touched. One survivor from this period is The Grapes, a suitably narrow pub resplendent with hanging baskets, and part-owned by local resident Sir Ian McKellen (who might be present should you ever nip inside). These days the oldest houses tend to be Georgian, there's a long terrace of these near the end of Ropemaker's Fields, but much of the other housing is built on former wharves. Partway along is the exit from Limehouse Basin, now a marina for wealthier boat owners, where a swingbridge rotates to let loose any masted craft. And that gastropub overlooking the Thames is The Narrow, one of Gordon Ramsey's stable, where the riverside path allows you to peer in at what all the diners are having. It's probably reheated.
The restaurant lies directly opposite the tip of the Rotherhithe peninsula, so there's a fine view in both directions along a great bend of the Thames. Rotherhithe itself looks rather featureless, but that's because almost its housing was built before luxury highrise was the norm, so I'll take that relative dullness as a good thing. This riverside spell is brief, before returning to one of Narrow Street's more lifeless sections (look, they have Italian restaurants and drycleaners) before returning to the river. This thankfully is an extended stretch, but the last of these, so best make the most. Here two converted warehouses have been named "The Listed Building" by unimaginative developers - both were originally used by the East India Company to house saltpetre. Free Trade Wharf nextdoor is rather more memorable, a huge irregular stack of overlapping brick balconies, but all gated off because its residents are sensitive like that. Meanwhile a large wooden pier survives alongside, its boardwalk temptingly extensive, but sadly sealed for reasons of safety.
King Edward Memorial Park is the only public open space along this entire walk, opened in 1922 by George V and Queen Mary on the site of an old fishmarket. It boasts tennis courts and a bandstand, even a bowling green, plus a much loved panorama from the promenade. Unfortunately the park is under immediate threat from the Thames Tunnel, a multi billion pound sewage conduit beneath the river, and plans require the building of a shaft (for four years) on the foreshore. Localresidents are furious at the disruption, so much so that Thames Water have had to amend their plans slightly and extend the park into the Thames on top of the shaft once they've finished. Meanwhile the Rotherhithe Tunnel already passes underneath, and already has a shaft, but everyone seems to like that because it's ornate and properly Edwardian.
Exit from Tower Hamlets: Rotherhithe Tunnel
At this point in my walk I checked my phone and discovered that I'd been walking uninterrupted for ten miles, so paused on a bench for a well-earned rest. At the time I had no idea precisely how much further there was to go, but it turned out that this was the halfway point, so the good news is there's only the same amount again to go.
The Thames Path emerges onto Shadwell Basin, where kids at the Outdoor Activity Centre might be out on the water learning to sail or canoe. The basin is the last surviving remnant of the London Docks, at the turn of the 18th century the closest docks to the City. Most of the land between here and Tobacco Dock became housing in the 1970s, while half of the Western Dock was later transformed into Rupert Murdoch's Fortress Wapping. As for the hydraulic pumping station beside the bascule bridge, that became a gallery/restaurant called the Wapping Project, alas closed a couple of years back after a handful of irritable neighbours complained about the noise. They probably live in some of the expensive converted warehouses along the waterfront, of which there are many, as this part of town gentrified decades before other now trendier quarters.
If you follow thesigns, and know where to look, the Thames Path occasionally manages to slip back briefly to the Thames. There's one decent loop at the top of Wapping High Street, but the rest are generally accessed through time-barred gates and occasionally prove to be dead ends. However at one point I'm fortunate enough to be beside the river when something extraordinary happens... the Woolwich Ferrypasses by! Its proper place is normally several miles downstream, but once a year it hosts a party on deck for disadvantaged children, complete with ice cream van and cheesy music. It's a joyful and unexpected sight, and I'll be catching up with them again later.
Exit from Tower Hamlets: London Overground (Thames Tunnel)
Wapping station marks the point where the original ThamesTunnel crosses the river, this a groundbreaking project overseen by the Brunels circa 1840, and now carrying the London Overground over to Rotherhithe and beyond. Ahead the high street is narrow and occasionally cobbled, a particular struggle when two buses meet, and lined by a mix of megawharfapartments and more mundane flats. Two of Wapping's three historic sailors' taverns are along this stretch, the Captain Kidd and The Town of Ramsgate, while inbetween (in two parts) are the Met's waterborne police station and maintenance yard. Meanwhile the two beautifulrows of townhouses overlooking lush gardens were once either side of the entrance to Wapping Basin, now filled in. So much of Wapping is so wildly heritageworthy that I feel sorry for rushing through.
At last rights of way allow me back to the river, revealing how close I suddenly am to the Pool of London and to Tower Bridge. As I wander past banks of shiny luxuryapartments I spot the Woolwich Ferry again, waiting patiently ahead of the Gothic crossing for its set time to come around. A few other strollers have worked out what's about to happen and have their cameras trained on the roadway, expectantly, as the traffic is stopped and pedestrians hold back. It may not happen often, but for the benefit of the big boat blaring out Bucks Fizz the two halves slowly lift, and every foreign tourist within sight gets wildly excited. For the next minute they have the jackpot view, an iconic shot they'll be able to circulate worldwide, until the ferry slips through and normality swiftly returns.
Two new homes have been built on Bow Road, about halfway along, in arches underneath the railway. There's one on each side of the road, the first near the cab company, the other by the booking shop. They're pop-up homes, helping to meet the capital's housing needs. They're sustainable homes, created out of recycled material. And they're already taken.
The first appeared a few weeks ago, as a temporary shelter from the elements for one of London's homeless. A mattress on the pavement sufficed for a bed, stored elsewhere during the day to prevent it from being stolen. I'd see the occupant, a young-ish gentleman, as I walked to the tube each morning. He'd usually be asleep, because that passes the time, with a half-read Second World War book upended by his side. And eventually what looked like a brief stay turned into a residency, and he's there every day now.
Additional home comforts have gradually accumulated, from a welcome mat out front to a Union Jack flying at the foot of the bed. Last week a stack of shelves appeared, somewhere to keep a library of books, a stash of supplies and a cuddly toy. Foodstuffs acquired included a packet of Ritz biscuits and a tub of Pringles, plus no beer, but a very necessary supply of bottled water. It being a dull life beneath a railway arch, a large boxed jigsaw somehow found its way here, and a battery operated ghetto blaster, and a set of Scrabble, should anyone stop to socialise.
A second resident set up home across the road shortly afterwards. His home was initially a little less elaborate, more a sleeping bag on the ground, but still taking full advantage of the protection the arched Victorian brickwork affords. Then his shelter developed too, and somewhat creatively. A widescreen TV packing box was broken apart to provide walls at either end, and two yellow diversion signs were 'borrowed' from a nearby street to prop up the cardboard. A colourful rug allowed the owner to read and eat without having to place his goods on the pavement. Meanwhile a scrubbed readymeal tub on a small table awaited coins or other donations, should passers by choose to throw them in.
I walk past daily but without interaction. Usually that's easy, because the residents are asleep, or elsewhere carrying out some mundane daily task. Even if they're present and awake they might be reading, or engaged in household activity, and therefore willing to let you pass unhindered. But sometimes they're looking up, in that silent pleading way that says "you have more than me, share a bit", and I harden my heart and walk on. It's not my problem is it, it's society's. Plus a one-off financial contribution's all well and good, but I have to walk this way twice a day, and a friendly gift might soon become an obligation.
At the start of this week events in the southern arch took a fresh turn. At breakfast time when I walked by there were two people on the bed, the man and a woman, having seemingly spent the night. They were sat up and chatting, nothing awkward, but I was still struck that what had looked like home for only one was suddenly taking on a new role as space for two. What does it say about the state of housing in the capital when snatches of pavement that've been empty for years suddenly acquire seemingly permanent residents for lack of proper provision elsewhere?
On Wednesday morning the entire prefab structure looked to have been kicked in. The shelves had disappeared and the carefully accumulated set of provisions vanished with them, leaving the occupant exposed to the morning's rain. It wouldn't have taken much for one drunken overnight passer-by to demolish the lot, or for someone who'd taken offence at the man's presence to pass sentence. But by Thursday things were starting to get back to normal again, as Bow Road's newest homeowner proved more than resilient, maybe even fully settled. Should we fund his escape, or does something deeper need fixing here?
I think we have a new contender for TfL's worst map. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's on the Overground.
When you travel on the Underground, every carriage contains a line map (so you can see where your train is going) and a network map (so you can see how everything links together). When you travel on the Overground unfortunately you only get the network map, and the network map is bloody complicated.
Things were fine when the Overground launched in 2010, and remained mostly comprehensible when the orbit completed in 2012. But this year's takeover of the completely separate West Anglia lines appears to have been one step too far, making everything that bit too complex.
Online, or in the Overground's printed timetable, the good news is that the map is square. This allows the layout to be approximately geographically correct, and therefore legible.
But on board the trains there isn't space for a square, only a very long thin rectangle. Alas somebody's decided to try to cram the whole network into this rectangle by wrapping it up like a bowl of spaghetti, and the end result is a tangled mess that's verging on unusable.
Here's the eastern half, in close-up, because that's where the topological disaster is.
The underlying layout is much as it was before this recent expansion, with three approximately correct east-west lines and the West Croydon branch bent awkwardly underneath. Obviously that great U-bend around Canada Water doesn't really exist, the line's more north-south than that, but this was the only way to fit everything into a narrow rectangle. What the new map's designers have had to do is squeeze in another line that forks into two, then into three, and this has meant several awkward compromises. At one point, aligned with Walthamstow, there are eight separate lines all jockeying for position within the same shallow vertical slice!
In particular they've had to shove Liverpool Street way out to the east, in line with Stratford, rather than position it nearer the centre in its correct location. In reality Liverpool Street is a very short walk from Shoreditch High Street, whereas in this misleading arrangement they look miles and miles apart. More importantly this arrangement means Overground trains out of Liverpool Street have to head to the left, whereas in reality they run east, and services to Chingford have to track relentlessly up and left, whereas the true direction is northeast.
It's not good news for unfamiliar passengers aboard these trains. It means anyone glancing up at the map while they travel will likely first be looking in completely the wrong place, and then scanning in the wrong direction. It means those boarding at Hackney Downs will be forced to think in the opposite direction to those boarding at Hackney Central, and the same at the two Walthamstows. The map is deliberately instinctively incorrect, and all for the sake of brand inclusivity.
Nobody, I'd argue, gives a damn about the entirety of the Overground network apart from the management who run it. If you're on a train to Willesden Junction it's surely not important that the Overground also runs to Enfield. Likewise the line to Chingford is almost entirely irrelevant to travellers in Watford, Wapping or Wandsworth. And as for the runty separate branch line to Upminster, that doesn't even connect to anything, so why is it here, apart from to satisfy some high level orange delusion?
These new maps are currently rolling out on Overground trains on certain lines - I spotted them on a Crystal Palace service earlier this week. This might make sense if the rolling stock could be used on any Overground line, because then you'd always have the map you need. But not so. The Gospel Oak to Barking line uses different trains, ditto the Romford to Upminster shuttle, and ditto all the Overground services out of Liverpool Street, so the all-inclusive nature of the maps is practically unnecessary.
Ironically the newest Overground services, the lines that have made these maps so complex, have the simplest maps of all. Trains to Chingford, Enfield and Cheshunt have instead been fitted out with simple tuning fork-style diagrams, without a hint that Dalston or Clapham even exist.
But passengers on the main Overground network now have to contend with a godawful muddle, their journeys harder to follow, and the lines they need hidden amongst a tangle of superfluous irrelevance.
Until TfL admits that there are in fact several Overgrounds, rather than colouring them all orange and promoting them all equally, this sort of mess is alas increasingly likely.
ROUND TOWER A walk around the edge of Tower Hamlets
4) Island Gardens → Limehouse(2½ miles) [21 photos]
The western rim of the Isle of Dogs is part of the Thames Path, indeed from here to Teddington this National Trail can be followed on both sides of the river. The Thames is quite wide at this point, and not at its most exciting as it sweeps past Rotherhithe and Deptford. As such today's walk may have more to excite estate agents than sightseers, but bear with me, it has its moments. [map]
Island Gardens, at the foot of the Isle of Dogs, is also the point where the perimeter road changes its name from Manchester to Westferry. The riverside was once lined with berths and cranes: sequentially Midland Wharf, Livingstone Wharf, Felstead Wharf, Parry's Wharf, Locke's Wharf... and that's just the next 200 metres. It's all housing now, of course, plus one very 70s boathouse built on top of the terminus of the London and Blackwall Railway. The Ferry House claims to be the oldest pub on the island, although the building's changed a lot since 1722, and local residents are possibly more tempted by the Thai cocktail bar on the foreshore. From here the bend of the river is clearly seen, with Maritime Greenwich now fading into the distance and the occasional Thames Clipper or speedboat zipping through. Focus your eyes on the water here, because that's where all the interest is.
Exit from Tower Hamlets: Masthouse Terrace pier
Except Burrells Wharf is rather nice, as converted ironworks go. This residential cluster was once a shipyard, and it was here that the heaviest ship of the 19th century was built, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Eastern. Clad in iron, this six-masted transatlantic liner was so long that it had to be launched sideways, a groundbreaking approach which nearly bankrupted its manufacturers. A sizeable chunk of the 1858 slipway remains, laid out as a wedge of parallel low wooden beams, adding a little wow factor to proceedings on the promenade. The other sight of note is across the water, the enormous iron-roofed Olympia Warehouse, part of the historic Deptford Dockyard and about the only building due to be retained when the whirlwind of residential redevelopment finally hits. Oh, and the City looks impressive from here, don't you think?
Before long the riverside housing on the Tower Hamlets bank becomes too self-important and the Thames Path is diverted back inland. This provides a useful opportunity to be reminded that there's another community here, living in former dockers terraces rather than modern highrise stacks. The fabulous building that looks like a brick pumping station is in fact a church, or was until 1989 when it was taken over by a community theatre called The Space (patron Sir Ian McKellen). Ahead the far end of Millwall Outer Dock abuts the main road, on which canoes and yachts are often seen, although for landlubbers the watersports centre blocks the view. And alongside is the huge West Ferry printworks, where the Telegraph, Express and Star used to be printed until Richard Desmond sold up in 2009, hence a printworks of the same name now graces an industrial estate in Luton.
It's a relief to eventually slip back to the river, beneath the silver and bronze turrets of New Atlas Wharf. Seven windmills once stood on the waterside along this stretch, hence the name 'Millwall'. The mills disappeared in the early 19th century, replaced by factories and workshops, whose owners eventually got tired of residents walking along the embankment so the right of way was sealed off. Only in the 1960s was a park laid out between declining wharves, reconnecting residents to the river, and now the Thames Path runs all the way. Major housing developments are named after the industrial features they replaced (Ocean Wharf), or else given aspirational names (Millennium Harbour, the Cascades) to make them sound less like interconnected boxes. Some quite peculiar apartment blocks with portholes and funnels now grace the shore, as was early Docklands' habit. But look out for one nod to a more humble past, a plaque commemorating 40 people killed by a direct hit on a bomb shelter at Bullivants Wharf (of which, more here).
Exit from Tower Hamlets: Jubilee line
After a good four miles my walk has finally returned to the neck of the island, the narrow strip across the top of Docklands where the towers of Canary Wharf reign supreme. To enter the promised land requires crossing a narrow channel, once the Lower Limehouse entrance to the great South Dock, now sealed by a strategically critical pumping station. A huge tract of land to the south of Westferry Circus remains somehow undeveloped, despite being prime skyscraper territory, and of considerable commercial interest. Investment bank J.P. Morgan & Co. are the current owners of the Riverside South site, which they flattened several years ago in readiness for building a new twin towered HQ, but then moved to new offices in the City instead. At least they've reopened a footpath along the river, saving a major detour, but it's a desolate slog.
Exit from Tower Hamlets: Canary Wharf Pier
Canary Riverside is not my kind of London. Options for financial workers at leisure include three waterside terrace restaurants (attempting atmosphere by erecting box hedges), a large hotel and a Virgin Active Health Club. If it weren't for the Thames Path, and the chance to catch a clipper from Canary Wharf pier, I'd be more than happy to avoid this commercially bland cultural vacuum. But I've always loved the balconies at Dundee Wharf, arranged in a tapered iron tower, and accessed via walkways from the flats with the best river views. Alongside is the short inlet of Limekiln Wharf, where quicklime was produced in medieval times and porcelain in the 17th century. Very much a silted sleepy backwater, it's hard to imagine that the Limehouse Link (the most expensive mile of road tunnel in Britain) runs directly underneath.
ROUND TOWER
ROUND TOWER
ROUND TOWER
ROUND TOWER
