Day 76...

LONDON BABY! 😁 Following a conversation with a good friend last week about how they had driven into London for a walk, and how odd and quiet it was, but how nice it was to walk somewhere different, we decided to do similar this weekend. Our usual method of going into the city is of  course  to drive to Epping, then get the tube, but at the moment public transport in London is still essential travel only, so we needed an alternative. I was also looking for somewhere that I would be able to park midweek too - because I may need to pop back up there in a couple of weeks for what we shall just refer to right now as “a thing” - so we did a bit of research on google maps and settled on the area just south of the Rotherhithe Tunnel. Now I HATE the Rotherhithe with a passion. It’s nasty and narrow, and as a passenger it triggers my claustrophobia quite horribly - I don’t like tunnels much at all, but that one I REALLY don’t like. Gulp.

First mistake was deciding to believe the SatNav might really know a better route than I had planned - thankfully we picked up in time on the fact that it was planning to take us across Tower Bridge. Scenic it might be, but I rarely want to drive across it! anyway, I ignored it for a while, made a few turns of my own back onto my planned route, and got back on track. Surprised myself with the tunnel too - felt very apprehensive driving towards it, but once I got to the half way point I realised I was concentrating to hard on driving in the crazy narrow lanes that I wasn’t much thinking about anything else. I wouldn’t much want to go through on my own, and definitely still wouldn’t want to do it as a passenger, but driving, I can handle it just fine.

Parking was a doddle - plenty of free on street parking in the street I had earmarked, although perhaps not for much longer as it appears it is being converted to residents parking at some stage before too long. For now though, and at weekends even after that, it should do nicely. We walked through to Tower Bridge, then along the embankment to the Tate Modern. Crossed over and back along the opposite side. Fabulous to be back in my home city, and to be walking along the river too! Initial feeling was that it was quite busy, but actually I think that was just that it had been so long since I’d been anywhere with that many others. The city itself was unsurprisingly very quiet indeed - and because of the protests currently going on up towards Vauxhall we decided against going any further along. It was so nice to walk somewhere so completely different though - and the perfect plan for a rainy Sunday afternoon too!

Robyn.