Mute swans
On the Greenwich Safari we studiously ignore any animal that moves. But as we’re not on safari now, I thought I’d share a clip I took today of swans on the Thames at Gravesend foraging for crumbs.
Praise the lack
An unexpected boon of the London Olympics – at least in Greenwich – has been its effect on road traffic. Fears of hellish gridlock, record smogs and wheezing, under-performing athletes seem to have been overblown. Drivers by and large have avoided the capital, the streets have been quiet and the air clean. Well, cleaner than […]
Olympic High Kingdom
Nearly 500 years after Henry VIII’s riverside jousting tournaments, horses have returned to Greenwich for more equestrian pageantry. Where once knights in full armour thundered towards each other intent on breaking their opponent’s wooden lance, yesterday’s dressage was all top hats and tails, highly controlled impulsion and submission. In place of the Tudor tilt yard, viewing […]
Gulliver dismembered
Laid out on the grounds of the Queen’s House yesterday. What a pity the giant elephant has gone! (See 4 April post Giant elephant appearing in Greenwich.) They would have made a lovely pair.
Cryptic connection
Here is another Thames Tunnel picture found in Greenwich Market from another, equally strange perspective (see Underground, Overground peculiar cross section). This plan illustrates nicely the dot-to-dottiness of our chimneys and tunnels walk. The two dots here mark the grand entrance hall and stairwell either side of the river. I like to think of them […]
On the edge
North Greenwich Peninsular in the gloaming yesterday. There to research my next walk: a Rubbish Trip. It’s a soulful place. Derelict, still, away from things. Now on the verge on being redeveloped as a luxury cruise terminal, its transformation has been helped along by a recent spate of vandalism. Bored kids with sticks. An efficient […]
Not so boxy jumper
Leading the charge of international horses to Greenwich for the 2012 Olympics is an unlikely character: Benson The Talking Topiary Horse. His athletic pose is the result of 10 years intensive training at a nursey in Italy. But rather than compete with the equestrian mob in the park stadium, Benson is here on a charitable […]
Silent clatter
On the Greenwich Safari we imagine London teeming with horses in the 1830s. Here is a rare glimpse of horse-drawn cabs, carriages, carts and omnibuses wheeling around the city seventy years on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8viKvXl81J0
Black smoke over the Thames
Unfazed by such landlubbing civilian niceties as the Clean Air Act and London Low Emission Zone, HMS Ocean has been exhaling black smoke constantly since her arrival in Greenwich on 4 May. She is here as part of a major national exercise to test the Armed Forces role in the Olympics security effort. The vast […]
Underground, Overground
Passing through Greenwich Market the other day, I stumbled upon this nineteenth century print of Marc Brunel’s Thames Tunnel (Into the Void). It shows, in charmingly peculiar perspective, the tunnel ‘as it appeared when originally opened for traffic’: a popular destination for well-to-do Victorian pedestrians. That was before it became a dark, dank den of […]