St Paul’s Cathedral has been the scene of some great events in British history: the funeral of Winston Churchill, the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth 11, the funeral of Wellington, the bombing of the blitz in the Second World War. Continue reading
The flags were hanging everywhere and the bunting was covering everything so London was ready for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, a massive party to celebrate 60 years on the throne. Continue reading
The start of Olympic Games is only 73 days but many of us are focusing on the Diamond Jubilee at the moment. The build up the Jubilee is very exciting, especially as we look ahead to the River Pageant. This is going to be the biggest event on the River Thames for 350 years (since Charles 11 if you like to know) with over 1000 boats forming a procession that will be 7 miles in length taking 90 minutes to pass by. There will even be a boat as a belfry with newly cast bells on ringing all the way and being ‘answered’ by bells in church towers along the route. The Royal Family will be on a boat and your blog writer will be in the Tower of London on the day so expect lots of photos and excitement in future blogs!
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| Olympic clock 73 days to go! |
As well as the build up to the Jubilee, the Olympic preparations are all around us. I heard that the wonderful viewing platform and cafe by the Olympic Park was closing as the area will be an access route to the Park, so I headed down there to bring you the last photos of the venues. Stratford is the main gateway tube station for the Olympics and you can see their signage is up and ready!
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| Stratford station |
There are 2 key places to view the Olympic Park in Stratford, the first being an indoor viewing area in John Lewis which gives you the chance to see the stadium and the wonderfully curved aquatic centre, on the left of this photo.
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| View from John Lewis |
Across the other side of the park is the Greenway with its View Tube Cafe where you can see the stadium and Orbit right in front of you and they serve a great cup of coffee too!
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| View Tube Cafe |
The stadium looks wonderful and will be the centre piece of the games and the park, seating 80,000 spectators for the much anticipated opening ceremony which has Danny Boyle (director of Slumdog Millionaire) as its Artistic Director . The red Orbit tower is impressive, looking like a crazy helter skelter and was designed by Anish Kapoor.
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| Stadium and Orbit |
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| Olympic Stadium |
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| Orbit |
The Orbit tower has a viewing platform that will open during the games and will be accessible by a lift or by the 455 spiral staircase if you are feeling very energetic! At 376 feet/114 metres it is Britain’s tallest sculpture. It is made from 60% recycled steel to reflect one of the key themes of the London Olympics. It is a controversial structure but I love it, it is crazy and wild looking but has energy and distinctiveness.
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| Orbit viewing platform
The great views from the View Tube cafe will be closed from 18th May but will reopen later in the year so I will keep an eye open for this news. Soon, however, you’ll be able to see the park from the inside as, after all, it is only 73 days to go!
Bye for now,
Sue
itsyourlondon.co.uk
@itsyourlondon
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Here at It’s Your London we love the River Thames and this week’s blog will give you 5 big reasons why:
1. Number one has to be Tower Bridge, one of the most iconic sights in London. If you are lucky you can catch it as it opens and here are 3 shots of the levers up to allow passing traffic. One of the shots is really unusual as the sides are completely open to allow a tall ship through.
Tower Bridge was built in 1894 and the design is an amazing arrangement which allows traffic to flow by road and by river with the minimum disruption and they can open and close it in just a few minutes. It is situated next to the Tower of London making an amazing pair of sightseeing treats.
2. Number two reason is that there is always a great event going on. In the last month we’ve had the inspirational swim by David Walliams. He swam the full length of the Thames, a daunting 140 miles, for the charity Sport Relief, raising over £1 million pounds for his efforts. We rushed down to catch him coming out of the water for the last time and then could see him being interviewed by Lenny Henry holding a bottle of dubious looking water! The Thames does has fish in it in now so it reasonably clean but definitely not for drinking!
Then on the south bank of the river a set of beautifully decorated life sized gorillas appeared to publicise their plight as endangered species. They were fabulous – just another day on the river bank!
3. Number three is the Thames Barrier – an extraordinary feat of engineering that saves London from major floods and keeps the river under control. It’s out in the east of London and you can visit to see how it works and also see what a beautiful construction it is. Without this barrier London would be in great danger as climate change brings higher waters surging up the Thames estuary. Built in 1983 it is the second largest of its type in the world (after the one in Holland).
4. Number four reason why we love the Thames is the brilliant views you get from so many angles. The river bank is lined with historic and fabulous buildings and where ever you look there is a great photo opportunity. I have hundreds of photos to chose from and have picked out just 2 here. One is taken from the top of Millbank Tower and shows the sweep of the Thames past the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. The second is at dusk with the sun highlighting the bridge with St Paul’s and the Gherkin behind.
London is a photographer’s dream and the Thames is at the heart of that dream, so do come and visit and get snapping!
5. Our number five reason was hard to chose as there are so many more….. However we went for Richmond as it is one of the lovely towns along the Thames which are easy to reach from the centre of London. It has a wonderful old bridge, great walks along the river banks, excellent bars and restaurants. It also has an outstanding view of the Thames, across a meadow showing the curve of the river, one of its islands and the countryside stretching out in the distance.
Hope you enjoyed the Thames as much as we do!
Bye for now,
Sue
itsyourlondon.co.uk
On this week’s list we have: lunch at the Royal Opera House; a new art course: a blogger meet up; and, the river by night
Lunch was a just the warm up event for the start of our art course. We’ve signed up for 10 weeks on Contemporary Art which is a fabulous course involving visit about 3 small commercial galleries each week to view and discuss the art on show. So, no classroom work at all! We get to visit a whole range of new galleries with a friendly, knowledgeable tutor and it costs just £136 pounds. Week one saw us at 3 new venues around Picadilly: Spruth Magers who are home to Cindy Sherman’s new photographic murals; Marlborough Fine Art home to Cathie Pilkington striking sculptures made from a wide range of materials; and, John Martin Gallery showing a range of work with some potentially purchasable work (funds permitting of course!). It was mostly new work to me and new galleries so a great start to the course. I’ll take some photos next week as we head out to the East End.
London Bloggers Group held one of its regular meet-ups this week which was a great chance to chat to some rather more established excellent bloggers and try to pick up some tips over a free glass of wine – great stuff! Leaving the venue on the River Thames I took the time to admire the wonderful sight of the river and the river banks by night and here are a small selection of photos for you to share in this – and what a view!
Must be off – lots to do. Bye for now.
Sue
http://itsyourlondon.co.uk/
Twitter @itsyourlondon
Summer has burst out in London and the weekend was amazingly hot and the sky was sparkling blue. We’ve had a long and cold winter so we are all very excited by this change and it’s all the more precious because we know it won’t last…. These photos are taken on the Thames in the centre of London. One is where a gang of sand sculptors use the low tide to create new art works every fine day. And the other is by the Royal Festival Hall where a temporary fountain tempted people to get completely soaked! So, it was like being by the sea side without being stuck in traffic for hours getting there…
London has gone mad about elephants and elephant tracking is now a major activity with people trying to snap as many of the 250 as possible (see last 2 blog posts if this doesn’t make sense!) I’ve attached a couple of my favourites from this week. If you are looking for them, try near City Hall and Covent Garden where there are small herds!
There was one day trip out of town this wee
k to St Albans, the old Roman settlement of Verulamium with its fine cathedral and old streets. So much wonderful history that we really needed a guide book but just wandered around instead tho’ we did know that St Alban was the first British Christian martyr and is buried here so it became a site of great pilgrimage.
Restaurant report this week focuses on the Blue Print Cafe near Tower Bridge where we spent a wonderfully long Sunday lunch with a great view (see photo) and good food. The big treat was to see an old sailing boat go through Tower Bridge – they opened up the middle and in a mere 5 minutes it was up and down and the traffic and pedestrians are crossing over again. It’s such an amazing sight, everyone stops to watch.
So much to tell you about this week that I’m going have to keep 2 things til next week or this’ll go on for far too long. So next week you’ll get a day out in Cambridge and a London walk as bonus items!
This week started with a visit to the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank to see a friend sing in the Bach choir i
n a wonderfully powerful performance of Verdi’s Requiem. We had Prince Edward in attendance as he is a patron of the music school who were also on stage. Here are 2 photos – one of the outside and one of the musicians’ final bow to a madly clapping audience and you can see just how many people were taking par
t in this magnificent piece.
to collect rubbish for a couple of hours. It was a great thing to do as I hate to see the Thames with litter in it but was surprised to find how much cloth rubbish there was, I guess the plastic floats off to sea but I dug out 4 bin bags full of the stuff! It was fine but very cold and I needed a huge hot coffee to get myself warm afterward. Hopefully the Thames is just a little cleaner now. Here’s a photo of the gang hard at work…
The following day I was outdoors again (with more cold weather clothing on!) on a photography course at the London Wetlands Centre to try to improve my wildlife snapping skills. The centre is an amazing place as it’s within sight of London but is a great place for a whole range of birds to live or pass through these former reservoir waters. I took some good and some dreadful shots so here’s just a few of the better ones – I just couldn’t cut it down to less than 7 – sorry! Our teacher was Iain Green who is well known for his books of tiger photos from India, so our targets on this course were somewhat easier to find! 
As we know football is a very important game and in London we have 
several major rival teams. Mine is Tottenham, known as the Spurs and their rivals are Arsenal, known as the Gunners (when we are being polite). The grounds are close together but I’ve never been to Arsenal’s, neither their old ground nor their new one called the Emirates thanks to the power of sponsorship. So, when Visit London said they were holding a business seminar there I jumped at the chance and must admit that it’s a very impressive stadium. It did feel odd being in the home of the enemy and luckily the photo is too small to see that they have all of their achievements inscribed on the second tier hoarding and they do have rather a lot of cups and championships.
We are still beset by rain but it is not constant and I went to the South Bank to meet a colleague in the wonderful British Film Institute (BFI) cafe. I love film and walking around there you just want to spend the rest of your life in the cinema catching up on old films. It was a beautiful day and the river Thames was at its best so here’s a photo showing the river, the boats, St Pauls, Tower 42 and the ‘Gherkin’ and the classic double decker red bus on the bridge.