Battersea

Somewhere I know I have a picture of Battersea Power Station before the rebuild, which I wanted to add to this post, but I can't find it on 365 or any of my USBs so it's just pictures I took yesterday, of the new development. About a third of the shops are empty, the lift up the chimney and access to the boiler look like they're still being finished, as does the full promenade past and into London, but it's bright, shiny, massive, and will either do phenomenally well (especially this Christmas) or be a huge white elephant because it's launched at the worst possible time (Brexit/Covid/Energy Crisis/Financial Crash/Current Cabinet imploding). It was incredibly busy, huge queues for food, but I didn't see too many people buying actual stuff. I think many of them, like me, were just there to look. 

and then I went to Battersea Park, where the autumn colour is fantastic right now

Tramping Round London

My Aunt and I completed the third section - our third section - of the London Loop yesterday. As usual it was a few miles longer than the guidebook claimed, but we've learnt to factor that in.

The London Loop is the wider circular walking path around London - the Capital Ring, which we completed early this year, is the smaller - and performs the similar trick of directing you through green spaces and interesting spots where possible.

We began at Kingston, which is a relatively near and very familiar spot (Kingston was the nearest big town when I lived at home in KT11 - KT being the post office abbreviation for Kingston.) crossed the river and walked through Bushy Park and a Japanese garden I never knew existed, along a winding route next to the River Crane, to eventually end up at Hatton Cross, under the flight path of jumbo jets so close you can almost touch them.

Picking it up at Hatton Cross again we walked to Uxbridge, finishing up with a final stretch along the Grand Union Canal, which I did the length of to Birmingham a couple of years ago (It's a fantastic walk, especially Leamington Spa and Berkhamsted and Birmingham itself) and then before that a strangely well manicured IT park which looked futuristic in the 1960s sense - that is to say, more what architects thought the future would look like than what it actually does - and this after quite a lot of mud on land belonging to Heathrow Airport.

This, really, is the notable feature of the Loop. It's extremely varied. Which doesn't explain why I've chosen to illustrate it using two not at all dissimilar pictures, but they're the prettiest I've taken, and they also have the advantage of being spoiler free.

Because the best walks are those you discover for yourself. There's a nice walk I can take after work via Earls Court and Brompton Cemetery for example, which I've mentioned here before, and another which takes in Gloucester Rd, South Ken, Cheyne Walk and Battersea Park (the key to a good walk is not to go the quickest and most boring route). 

It was while walking on Thursday that I discovered for the first time that Battersea Park has a herb garden and veg patch. 

It was quite late when I took these - hence the lights - and dusk by the time I got to Clapham.

And in other news:

I wasn't at Wembley today, but I had to include this anyway. 

We won.