Tick!

Yesterday we ticked off one of our "Ten things to do in London" list. We walked the Thames, all the way from Blackfriars (the city) to Putney (near home). It's about 7.5 miles from our place to the city, but walking the Thames is further. Yesterday we covered just over 10 miles. The weather was absolutely stunning, as you can see from the photos and it took us about 3.5 hours.

It's such an interesting walk though. We started at the touristy (we are one of them of course) Southbank where you have the London Eye, London Aquarium, The Oxo Tower, British Film Institute, County Hall (which was showing an exhibit of Star Wars - I nearly lost Paul), through to the Battersea which boasts one of the most impressive buildings in London, the Battersea Power Station (pic below) and then past the gorgeous Battersea Park which is an absolutely stunning urban park that hosts a variety of events and activities.



Some of the bridges crossing the Thames are gorgeous. We passed 11 bridges on our walk yesterday. With the exception of Tower Bridge, my favourite would have to be Albert Bridge (below). It's the cutest pink, blue and yellow suspension bridge which looks like it should be made of gingerbread and icing. It was also the theme of a science lesson from Paul (see second pic), all about oscillation and resonant frequency and glass shattering and stuff (he articulates it so much better than me).





After Albert Bridge and Battersea Park it was pretty much residential all the way through to Putney. In my opinion, London doesn't do water-front living as well as Sydney and Melbourne yet. The apartments we walked by yesterday, were all very nice but they were just that ... apartments. You can see that they have plans to put some more infrastructure in place such as restaurants and shops etc, but at the moment living there means being pretty isolated. It's still all rather bland ... and in some instances, right next door to a garbage tip. I don't think I could see myself living there.

Our walk ended in Putney through another gorgeous park onto Putney High Street where we plonked our butts in a cafe for lunch. We were absolutely exhausted and straight after lunch we caught the bus home to Southfields for a nana nap.

A fun day - with blisters on my feet to prove it.