Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Your guide to London's culture and transport news and events taking place across the city.
Taking the Boris Bikes to Paris
All going well, when this blog post is automatically published on Saturday morning, I will be half way to Paris on the Eurostar, with Tom as my travelling companion to show the French what a cycle hire scheme should look…
Crossrail photography competition
Just had a note from the company churning up chunks of the West End that they have a photography competition as they would like some nice photos to put on their building site barriers to make them a bit more…
German Cruise ship tests London 2012 preparations
The German Olympic Committee wanted somewhere impressive and suitably German to use as a base during next years Olympics, so a test has been carried out to see if the cruise ship MS Deutschland could be moored in London Docklands.
Within Kew Gardens is one very famous outpost of China, and a couple of smaller, but more intimate outposts from Japan. Although visible from quite a few places around the enclosed gardens, it wasn’t the famous pagoda that I visited…
In photos – the Queen’s Birthday Flypast
Knowing the rough route the flypast was due to take, I wandered over to Shoreditch to photograph the flypast from a more unusual location.
Poyekhali! Yuri Gagarin photo display at the Royal Albert Hall
For the next few months, there will be a modest display of photos from the archive of the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti featuring unseen images of Yuri Gagarin and his life – from his birth (not literally!) until his…
HMS Ark Royal’s Battle Ensign (not) on display in Docklands
Just up the road from where I live is St Anne’s Limehouse, a Hawksmoor Anglican Church that was consecrated in 1730, one of the twelve churches built through the 1711 Act of Parliament. The Church is significant for several reasons,…
Farewell to London Underground’s oldest serving tube trains
*oldest serving deep level tube stock – the Met line trains are older, but are not technically tube trains. — Earlier today just before it was sent to the scrap merchant, one of the last remaining 1967 era tube trains…
A Pre-Dawn Rehearsal for the Royal Wedding, in photos
At 2am this morning, police started sealing off roads around Westminster. At 2:30am, an alarm woke your correspondent from his slumber and he languidly crawls out of bed and out to the Night Bus. At 3:30am, he is in Trafalgar…
Sitting in the driving seat on a DLR train
One of the great joys about the oversized roller-coaster that is the Docklands Light Railway has long been the ability to sit right at the front of the train and “pretend” to be the train driver, or more maturely to…
Photos – the City of London’s 800 year old Guildhall
Last week, the City of London Guildhall hosted the too rarely held London Maze – which is not at all maze like, but is a collection of stalls set up by local history associations around London. It’s the sort of…
If you were by the Tower of London today, your ears might have rung with the Boom Boom Boom Boom of the Queen’s Birthday Salute by the Honourable Artillery Company by the banks of the Thames. 62 Booms in fact…
Photos of the Church of St. Alban the Martyr in Holborn
Wandering around London I tend to keep my eyes either watching the ground for any curious manhole covers or the like – or looking around the tops to see what might catch my attention. Sometimes, one of those things is…
Photos from the top of One New Change
Famously, the French writer, Guy de Maupassant so loathed the Eiffel Tower that on visits to Paris, he would always eat lunch in its restaurant, as it was the only way he could “avoid seeing its otherwise unavoidable profile”. Frankly,…
May 2011 – The Deptford Jack visits Greenwich
If you are in Greenwich this May Day, then you might spy a 10 foot tall tower of garlands and greenery walking slowly around the town while dancers cavort around it. This is the revival of the old Jack in…
Bale of straw to be hung from Tower Bridge
In line with ye olde traditions, if headroom of an arch on a bridge over the Thames is reduced from its usual limits, but remains open to navigation… then a bale of straw must be hung from the arch to…
Video of a Steam Train passing the Olympic Stadium
…or not as it happens. On Saturday morning, I headed over towards Stratford to catch a steam train passing through the area, and hopefully to get some photos or video of the train with the Olympic Stadium in the background.…
Pipes under pavements exposed in all their nakedness
Most people will harbour a mild curiosity about what is under the pavements and roads we walk along, even if such curiosity only emerges blinking into the light of conciousness on the rare occasion that said pavement is dug up…
Photos – Two military hovercraft on the Thames
A dull rumbling sound getting slowly louder is usually a hint that I should get up and look out of the window to see if anything interesting is coming along the river. Usually it’s just a tourist boat being unusually…
HMS Westminster in Canary Wharf
Somewhat irked about this as I only found out yesterday – because my tracking software broke – but the Royal Navy Frigate, HMS Westminster is visiting London for a week, but leaves on Monday morning. Sadly, unlike when its sister…
100 Phantoms to glide through London on Sunday
Specifically, 100 Rolls Royce motor cars will smoothly glide around the posher bits of London on Sunday morning to mark the 100th anniversary of the design of that famous Spirit of Ecstasy mascot that sits on the top of every…
Photos – Reflections in the River Thames
Here is a photo of a comparatively rare sight for the River Thames – can you see what is unusual?
Even More Photos of a Deserted London
Two years ago I cycled around London on Christmas morning taking photos of a city that was, thanks to the lack of public transport and everything being closed – was itself totally deserted of people. I was somewhat surprised at…
