Tufnell and Dartmouth and Waterlow Parks

Out for a afternoon stroll recently, I found myself at the Tufnell Park Station junction. Crossing into Dartmouth Park Hill to take a snap of the Boston Arms looking wonderful against the crisp blue winter sky, I realised I had never walked the full length of that road, so up the hill I ventured...

Dartmouth Park Hill is actually two hills; heading northwards from The Boston, there is one ascent, then a flat bit, then up it goes again all the way to where it meets Highgate Hill opposite Hornsey Road. 

Just past Dartmouth Park Road, on the flat bit, is an old in-wall Royal Mail letter box. I stopped to take a crappy out of focus picture and wondered if the rather impressive chunky post that surrounds it was built especially to hold the red metal or was part of a pair of gateposts, as per the two larger ones near the junction of Lady Margaret Road on nearby Tufnell Park Road. I wonder if it/they could be part of the Earl of Dartmouth's original estate buildings?

I then crossed the road to look at what can be seen of the covered reservoir. There's not much visible from street level just a metal ventilation pipe, some nice sloping grass and a non-slip surface. The two tanks cover rather a large area though despite what this map shows only a small piece of land around the edges is actually parkland.

Opposite the reservoir is a house that looks like a hangover from the 1970s – the bright yellow walls and purple front door look more completely out of place. I am sure it wasn't this colour a few years ago – I may be wrong, but, being so bright I am sure I would have noticed it before.  

Looking down Chester Road I stopped to to admire the spire of St Michael's, Highgate Village, hovering like a beacon above the trees and houses.

I continued up the second hill section, past the old original buildings at the rear of Whittington Hospital and then entered Waterloo Park. 

A gorgeous little dog amused me and others as she ran up trees. She didn't appear to be chasing squirrels, just having fun. She'd get perhaps 3 metres up, turn, jump down and then run up the next one. Lovely.

I then exited the park into Swain's Lane opposite the Highgate Cemetery entrance and was half way up the hill before I realised that I still haven't walked the full length of Dartmouth Park Hill.

Buy a gun for Peace One Day

If you ever fancied buying a decommissioned and customised Colt M-16 assault rifle whilst helping to raise money for a good cause, now's the time to get your credit card out.
Curated by Jake Chapman the M16: Peace One Day project forms part of Bonhams Founded 1793 sale. More information in the online catalogue – I like that adjacent to each work it reads "This work was executed in 2014".

Lower Regent Street, Three Colts Lane, Cockspur Steet.

Cannon Street (all now demolished), Artillery Lane, Beak Street

Grayson Perry: Who are You? at the National Portrait Gallery

There is still plenty of time to follow the free trail around the NPG where you can see fourteen works created by the multi-talented Mr Perry in conjunction with his Channel 4 TV programmes aired last year.

Detailed ceramics, intricate sewn and beaded tapestries, maps, diagrams, portraits and prints – all packed full of ideas and observations. And Grayson's explanations on the info cards next to each piece are so refreshingly informal, caring and well-written.
The man is an inspiration.
Until 15th March 2015.

Previous Grayson Perry posts...

The Walthamstow Tapestry (May 2010)

The Tomb of The Unknown Craftsman (Feb 2012)

The Vanity of Small Differences (July 2012)

This image shows a few things on my mantlepiece including the lovely flyer from Grayson's excellent 2006 show The Charms of Lincolnshire, a bone that looks like a little begging beast, an eroded fragment of crackle-glazed pottery, a twisty shell innard and, just out of view, a postcard of Ulysses and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper.

Are these connected?

On the top deck of a bus going along Piccadilly recently I noticed this building:

So I pondered if it is in some way connected to a similar building in Upper Street, N1, which also features faces within roundels that are extremely similar:

The building also includes a portrait of Hugh Myddleton, the driving force behind The New River. 

Perhaps it was designed by the same architect or, more likely seeing as there are many terracotta buildings across London, it was just a standard style and these portrait reliefs, roundels and and other stick-on details were readily available to buy off-the-shelf from the local architectural mouldings emporium...?

Drink water for free – Find-a-Fountain

I am still bemused as to why people buy water in plastic bottles from the supermarkets and then lug them all the way home. The water that comes out of out the taps in our houses passes strict health and safety tests; the bottled stuff would fail those tests immediately.
Add to that the cost of manufacturing the plastic bottles and I can't understand why many people wasting their money in this way and why they think the bottled stuff is somehow better for them. Check those 'Use By' dates!
How ridiculous! Turn on the tap.

In years gone by drinking fountains could be found in parks and open spaces and on most major junctions. Unfortunately many were vandalised or disconnected in the 1980s by agents working for Perrier, Buxton, Volvic et al (just kiddng!!) and so buying their water in bottles is now often the only option.
However, if you have a collapsible bottle in your pocket like the one made by Aquatina you can top up whenever water is available.
To make this easier, Find-a-Fountain have produced a map showing all the working fountains in Central London. I notice that there none anywhere near the busy shopping area of Oxford Street so if you do know of any just add them to the site yourself. Similary, south of the Thames also looks to be a bit dry, so let's get some more markers on the map.

A relevant aside
Also worth mentioning about whilst I am on this subject is the lack of (free) water fountains at many UK airports. I have found a couple of pathetic squirty things at London Stansted, but if there are any at London Gatwick they are very well-hidden.
Singapore airport is a marvellous example of how airports should be, with groups of water fountains every 100 metres or so (they also have free wifi terminals and lovely gardens too – you could actually live in that airport!). But airports in other countries, especially those in hot countries, are not providing fee water and are instead cashing in on their dehydrated 'customers'/travellers. Here's a tip: when I travel back from Turkey I always take an empty bottle through customs (lid removed) and fill up from the wash basins. Ta da!!

Shown at the top are some London fountains in various states of use (a couple of them were/are not for drinking water): 
Top: Blackfriars, Westminster, Finsbury, Camden
Middle: City, Soho, Hoxton, Westminster
Bottom: Bloomsbury, Kensington, Kentish Town, Holbon
Lots more pics of London drinking fountains here; many of which are still in working order.

'Drawn By Light' and 'Making Life Worth Living' at The Science Museum

Wandering down Exhibition Road, marvelling at how the partial pedestrianistation has been a big success, I noticed that the boards have been removed from the wonderfully elaborate Henry Cole Wing of the V&A to reveal the recent clean up.

I don't think it looks very much different. Was this really necessary? Below are some shots of it a few years ago with a couple of shots on the bottom row showing how it looks today (thanks to Google Streeview):

I was on my way to The Science Museum to see two photography exhibitions.
Make Life Worth Living is a commissioned series of photos by Nick Hedges and illustrates the poor living conditions in major UK cites during the late 1960s. Viewing the images I found it really hard to fathom that people were allowed to live in such damp and basic 'housing' during my lifetime. Free entry.
Drawn By Light charts the early days of photography from as far back as 1820. As well as some amazing photos, there are examples of the type of kit used when a 'portable' camera was the size and weight of a second person. But the results were well worth the effort. Some of the images look really contemporary and truly ahead of their time.
An adult ticket for this exhib is £8 but here's a little tip... you can get half price entry if you pick up and fill in one of the leaflets which can be found there (I found mine on the counter of the cafe opposite the exhibitions on the second floor). The price goes down even further to £3.20 if you decline the donation fee when paying for your ticket.
Both exhibitions are on until 3rd March.

Happy New Year... and a positive resolution

Whoosh!  Is it just me, or did 2014 fly by very quickly indeed?

Happy New Year from some of my favourite ghostsigns

Hovis, Haig, Dunphy, Supper, Brymay, Pring, Dowell's, Harper, Sally, Gillette, Girling and Daren

2014 wasn't that good a year for me for many reasons. And I let myself get irked by too many extraneous things – people on buses, walking blindly out of shops, talking utter rubbish, littering, being rude, insensitive, selfish or self-obsessed etc. Not to mention the phone companies and the banks.

And, as you know if you have read my rants about The Pointy Thing, the Garden Bridge and the Dubaiification of London, I have been becoming very worn down by the huge architectural changes that are happening in London leaving almost no area untouched by an 'iconic' lump of glass.
There are some very rich people with the ability to hold a pen and sign their name who are changing great swathes of London in the sweep of an arm. I don't see the extent of this kind of architectural rape happening in, say, Rome, Madrid or Brussels, and it saddens me.

But I must rise above these ugly towers; I have to stop getting so agitated.
So here is my plan for 2015... 
From now on, I resolve to [try to!] write only about the things that please me. After all, it was the little details that got me started with this blog, and that's what it says on the mast head.
I apologise if a few gripes slip in occasionally, but I will try to make them succinct or witty, or both.

One more thing.... 
People have written to me saying that they are having a problem leaving comments on here. Hence why I get so few.
I have fixed the problem now – please try again – it's nice to know you are out there ;-)

All the best for a positive and prosperous year,
Jane

Bottles and bricks on Battersea beach

Every now and then I get a group of friends together and we go for what I call "A Forage on the Foreshore".
Yesterday the weather was forecast as 6ºC but bright and sunny, so a few of us including Caroline and Malcolm met up under the south side of Battersea Bridge. Having enjoyed it there last time, this time we did the same walk in reverse, continuing westwards almost to the railway bridge and then retraced our steps halfway back again to return to street level via the slipway next to the old church.
The beach at Battersea is mostly shingly and pebbly but there are some interesting old things to be spotted by the eagle-eyed.
As seen under my shadow here, the foreshore is littered with old building bricks, and many of them have names embedded in them. At first, seeing so many with the name RAMSAY on them we thought there must have been a brick-making factory on that site, but moving on we found lots more names, including NETTLE and THISTLE (nice) so I now think these are the remains of some demolished buildings, especially as some of the fancier shaped pieces had numbers on them which, I'd assume, were identification codes for the builders as to where they should be placed. More ideas about this are welcome.

Considering how many Ramsay bricks we saw it's hard to fathom how I didn't capture one. Of the others, Thistle, Nettle, Sneyd, Douglas, Brandon and Stephenson were easy to read but the last three aren't so clear – Cliff(something)–Worth(sonething), Phorpres? and John Steve(ns/son)?

Further along, near four house boats moored parallel to the shore, we found a lot of glass – big chunks with metal bits embedded within, etched fragments, broken and tide-tumbled pieces, little medicine bottles and jars, and one ink bottle with its stopper inside.

Here are some of the finds I brought home including four clay pipe stem fragments that will probably end up in a necklace, and some nice old bits of pottery which I have yet to date.

If you'd like to join us for a forage just contact me via my other site here.

Jane's Connect. What links these pics?

Here's a little quiz for Christmas, though unlike these cards it has got nothing to do with the time of year or Christmas at all.
All of the above are in central London and are linked in some way. Can you identify the link?

12 clues; some quickly identifiable, others a bit tougher (but you only get four clues on Only Connect).

Bring Your Own Christmas in aid of Crisis

I am a bit late posting about this as it is sold out already, but what a great idea.
Grub Club BYOC is aimed at lonely food loving travellers and singletons – take along a dish for four and enjoy a Christmas Day dinner with a difference and, in the process make some new friends. Proceeds go to Crisis.
Read more about the founders here
I might organise something similar myself for next year.
Ding dong merrily

The Victoria Memorial

At the top of the Mall, in the middle of the road directly outside Buckingham Palace is a Grade I listed monument that most Londoners usually ignore or use as a roundabout, and most tourists just sit on to take selfies.

But stop and have a really good look at it next time you are there, for Thomas Brock's Victoria with her marble surround by Sir Aston Webb, is 25 metres tall and covered with wonderful sculptures and friezes relating to justice, truth, peace and victory, as well as nautical references in the form of mermaids and mermen.

The beautifully rendered gauzy outfits and nudity on almost every character (except Victoria herself) ties in really well with a post I wrote last year about all the perky breasts the Victorians liked to depict on their statuary. But, as you can see, the ladies on this magnificent edifice are more realistic. 

These pics have proved to be be very popular within my Flickr photostream. 

It may be because I have included nipples, tit, breast, woman, naked etc in the tags. Ha ha.

Wreaths and round things

A couple of weeks ago I joined a group of blogging friends for one of Flor Unikon's Christmas wreath making classes.
As you can see, my wreath was far from traditional and looked good enough to eat. I gave it to Tom TOLTOL as a housewarming present.

The photographs above were taken with a Samsung Alpha courtesy of Three who organised the evevning. I didn't really get to test out all the phone's capabilities as it was hard to press the keys with sappy fingers. Perhaps I should have made it so messy that they wouldn't have wanted it back. Damn! Opportunity missed there!

A lovely evening. Thanks.

To follow the circular theme, I have put together a group of round things in London that please me...

Black Friday and Small Business Saturday

Today is Black Friday, so named because as the first shopping day after Thanksgiving in the States it marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. The word black here meaning the start of business being in profit, rather than in the red (debt).
So I thought I'd mark the day with another collection of nice black boot scrapers that I have spotted around central London.

To see some of my earlier posts about boot scraper please click here and here and here.

Then next weekend, 6th December, sees Small Business Saturday, a day to promote and buy from small traders and independent shops.
I will be selling my clay pipe creations at markets on both of these days. Today at Camden I will be offering a 20% discount. See my full market list here.

From the Forest to the Sea – Emily Carr in British Columbia

This intriguing exhibition about one of Canada's best-loved artists has just opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Emily Carr spent a great part of her life in British Columbia, in particular Haida Gwaii, documenting the things she found around her such as totem poles, trees and skyscapes.
I was lucky to be able to attend the press launch which started with a traditional welcome by the Haida Hereditary Chief and Master Carver, James Hart, accompanied by some of his people. It was rather strange, standing there in our modern garb, watching people in tribal dress perform songs and dances that were centuries old in surroundings that were also old but completely different in style.

The exhibition shows how Emily's work evolved over time. It highlights especially how her style changed and became bolder after her time spent in Paris where she honed her painting skills. Returning to Canada she continued to develop, and devised mixes of different types of paint which she used on cheap paper so that she could paint with speed outdoors. Sadly that paper has since discoloured, but what the heck, the paintings still look great; white space has just become pale brown space.
The exhibition begins and ends with display cabinets containing relevant tribal artefacts from various museums including two of my favourites, The Horniman and Pitt Rivers.
The exhibition runs until 8th March. More information here.

Ian Dejardin leading our guided tour, some reflected heads, Haida indigenous objects.

Emily Carr self portrait, and some of her totems and trees

Stonecutter Street – AKA Treecutter Street

Earlier this year I was on my way to one of the monthly London Historians get togethers in the Hoop & Grapes on Farringdon Street when I stopped in my tracks at the end of Stonecutter Street.
A whole row of trees, I think there were eight of them, had been hacked down to thigh level in the name of progress.

The stumps ranged in diameter from 8 inches at the Shoe Lane end of the road to about 30 inches at the Farringdon Street end. Thirty inches – that's an OLD tree, that is. So sad. And I very much doubt that the development going up behind the blue hoardings will 'live' to be as old as the some of those bigger trees.
The stumps have probably been removed completely by now.

The area, bordered by Holborn Circus, Fetter Lane, Fleet St and Farringdon Street is full of evocative street names such as Printer Street, Wine Office Court, and, of course Stonecutter Street and Shoe Lane, all hinting at the trades that used to be predominant in those roads. But over the past 20 years or so I have watched as the whole area has changed considerably – it now bears scant resemblance to how I remember it when part of my first job as a junior in an advertising and design company back in the 80s was to deliver packages containing finished artwork to the newspapers and magazines in the vicinity.

A stone cutter's throw away, hidden amongst the modern buildings you can find Dr Johnson's House and Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub where Johnson and Boswell would have enjoyed a few chats, drinks and smokes. I wonder what they would have to say about the rush of change that has happened in the past two decades?

What's the point?

I mean, really, what IS the point?

More manicules here

It's here, it's there, it's every bloody where

I recently went for a walk around the Fenchurch Street area of the City, popping into churches, investigating little streets and alleys and admiring old buildings and their interesting details.
But that bloody Walkie Talkie loomed over me from almost everywhere.
As you are probably well aware from my previous posts, I am not a fan of all this heavy-handed steel and glass architecture (see here and here) that's sprouting up like some kind of instant Dubaiification.
The Pointy Thing at London Bridge is just a greenhouse that tapers towards the top, and conversely, though similarly, 20 Fenchurch Street is just a tower block that flares out at the top but has the added bonus of being able to fry eggs and melt cars.

As viewed from Blackfriars, from Potters Fields near Tower Bridge, from the northern end of London Bridge, and from Rood Lane EC3.

As viewed from Eastcheap/Philpot Lane (x2), and from the eastern end of Fenchurch Street. The last pic shows it at street level illustrating how truly unimaginative this building is – just compare it to the considered old architecture on the corner of Philpot Lane.

I wandered into Mincing Lane and found a relatively new pedestrian street opposite the Disneyland-style castle and prancing ponies of Minster Court (ugh!). 
Plantation Lane forms part of the huge Plantation Place development (but check out Google maps and zoom in to notice that the road name on the street sign has been erased – why?). The street narrows as it goes westwards towards Rood Lane. The only reason I didn't get agitated by being hemmed in by even more bullying glass is because I was distracted and intrigued by the pavement which is natural stone embedded with lines of names, words and phrases linking to London. Great to spot some wonderful old street names there ;-)

The pavement along Plantation Lane. At the Rood Lane end of the street I took the chance to capture some convergence images illustrating the diverse architecture. 

The City of London will never be finished. It is constantly evolving. Yet it seems to me that there has been a greater percentage of building/development per square metre in the last ten years than in the last 500. I appreciate that we live in a different world these days, with different needs and demands, but what I cannot fathom is the extent and size of these things, especially when so many old buildings stand empty and many finished buildings of similar size are not yet anywhere near reaching full occupancy.

Immediate plans for The City

Read more about this here.

David Edward's idea of what's in store for the future

Read more about the future here.

A walk around the Cheynes

Just some pics I took in the little area of Chelsea that borders the Thames.
It's a really interesting area close to the lovely Chelsea Physic Garden. The 18th Century houses of Cheyne Walk have had many famous residents including Rossetti, George Eliot, David Lloyd George and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger to name just a few. See a fuller list here.

A stink pipe, egyptian benches, Thomas More, Hans Sloane

Closed pub, birds and a lady

Metal street sign, lots of pipes, new development, old frontage.

Poppies at The Tower of London – ends 11th November

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red

Just a reminder if you haven't been to see the expanding flood of poppies yet, they will very soon fill the whole moat and subsequently be removed forever.
Tuesday 11th November (Remembrance Day) will be last day to see the poppies in situ. Viewing is free as they can be seen from outside the Tower of London.

I have to admit that none of the pics above are mine. 

Even though I will being going to see them over the next few days myself, I wanted to get this blog post live sooner rather than later. The top row are mostly are pinched from the official site; the rest I have stolen from Maggie Jones and Malcolm Edwards

Post-event the poppies will be available to buy at £25.00+VAT each which I think is great value considering every one is hand made and therefore unique. I know one of the poppy-makers, though she isn't in this film about the making of them. 

Book your tickets for the Tower of London here.

And read more about the installation of the poppies here. 

Islington Faces celebrates 100 interviews

Nicola Baird recently celebrated her 100th post by putting on a staged version at the King's Head Theatre last Saturday. In this one-off chat show called Islington Faces Live our inspirational host chatted to different Islington residents.
We met Theresa Debono, Islington's lovely diminutive Maltese lady mayor, Ethiopian singer Hanisha Soloman and John Walters the Pearly King of Finsbury (now part of the borough of Islington). We also heard from others about the theatre itself, star gazing on Highbury Fields, finding unusual artefacts in the road, learning languages in cafes, and how a 1960s immigrant discovered that the streets of London were not paved with gold after all. But he stayed anyway!

Top row: all in Upper Street

Middle row: Liverpool Road; Nicola with some of her guests outside the Kings Head*

Bottom row: Islington Central Library, Holloway Rd which sports the only sign I have seen using the word 'curtilage' (lovely!); a collection of signs in Essex Rd; one of Nicola's blog intervewees outside Islington Town Hall in Upper Street.

*Back row L-R: Bernita Matondo, stargazer Ernie Jegorovas, poet mechanic Stanley Smart, John Walters, Hanisha Solomon, Nicola Baird and King’s Head Theatre executive director Dominic Haddock. Foreground: Islington’s Mayor, Theresa Debono, with her husband, Tony. Photo by Vicky Ryzhykh. 

A very pleasant way to spent a Saturday afternoon.

All ticket money raised went towards The King's Head Theatre fund. 

Well done Nicola – here's to the next 100 interviews.

Nice numbers

A multi-porticoed terrace Lower Sloane Square.
They aren't short of a bob or two around there are they?
So how come the door numbers are such a mess?
But I like it.

A lovely mix of hand-painted, self-adhesive, profiled, crackled, circled and shadowed numbers

Trinity Buoy Wharf and East India Dock

A few weeks ago I finally found time to visit this once thriving area of London docklands.

We met at East India station and walked down the meridian line to the Thames and along the river's edge to East India Dock. Malcolm's hat was a bit big for him. It was the day of the Tall Ships and the cormorants had also come out to watch them.
The old dock basin looked sad and lonely, like a desolate wasteland with stinky stagnant water. Orchard Place, the road to leading to Trinity Buoy Wharf, is littered with street art including a taxi with a tree 'growing' out of it and a wall made of colourful cable ties. The northern section of Orchard Place which forms a kind of island surrounded by the loop of Bow Creek, was once a district inhabited by people who worked in the area and had barely ventured further than two miles from their homes. The site is now being developed. Images on the hoardings show yet another conglomeration of high rise glass and pre-formed plastic.
But forward into Trinity Buoy Wharf itself...

It's a steam punk's dream environment with art and history and containers as homes thrown into the mix. Read more here on Trinity Buoy Wharf's website.

Also see this wonderful episode of The Lost Valley of London here:

The Proverbs of Hell

Earlier this year I posted about Boris Anrep's mosaics in the National Gallery.
Another major London art gallery also has a fabulous mosaic floor by this artist, within an octagonal room at the back of Tate Britain.

Dating from 1923, Anrep's eight panels illustrate William Blake's 'Proverbs of Hell'.
Some of the statements within it are wonderful. I particularly like "The Cistern contains, the Fountain overflows".
Read more about it here.

Walking through the Rotherhithe Tunnel

Jen had been on about doing this for months. We finally agreed a date and met at Rotherhithe station on Sunday 14th September – a Sunday being chosen because the tunnel would be less trafficated*
There is pedestrian access to the tunnel opposite the station. We walked down the stairs (there is a similar set of stairs further down the soft slope on the opposite side and a similar arrangement at the north side) but then we turned right/south so that we could walk the full length, stopping to admire St Olav's Norwegian church with it's lovely long boat weather vane and the BRUNEL artwork near the mouth of the tunnel by Kevin Boys and Steve Cornish.

And so we set off for our march through the tunnel. I walked on the east side and Jen and Malcolm were on the west side. J+M got to briefly examine the old ornate Victorian access stairs that come up next to the Brunel Museum on the south bank and within King Edward Memorial Park on the north. These now house the extractors and there are signs saying not to loiter due to the fumes. Ugh.
On my side I had the green signs indicating how far there was to go in either direction and I also spotted that there were evenly-spaced rectangular metal handles about six inches wide all the way along at shoulder height. I am guessing that perhaps these were used to tie frightened horses to, or something similar. Answers please.
"Beer" said Malcolm as we exited. Being a Sunday we had to wander the Limehouse streets for a while until the pubs opened at noon. I took them over to York Square Gardens and we investigated a gorgeous little row of Georgian house in Flamborough Walk where front gardens must have been truncated when the railways arrived.

Hurrah. Noon! Beer o'clock!  I'd spotted the The Old Ship on the corner of York Square Gardens when I was in the vicinity a month before – it's got a Mercer's maiden on it.
Lovely pub, lovely people. Good cheap ale and proper hand-made fresh sandwiches. They do cabaret nights, open mic nights, there's a beer garden (not needed really when it's a corner pub with street seating), and the place is festooned with amusing and interesting knick-knacks. I can't recommended this place highly enough. I'd be more than happy to have it my local.

Read Malcolm's account here and be sure to scroll down and see me imitating a breakdown.

Caroline also walked the tunnel in 2013.  

*a word another friend invented which I think should be in common use

Greenwich Foot Tunnel

On Saturday 23rd August I needed to go to the Old Royal Naval College to supplement my stock at the shop and, because I'd arrange that month's forage for later on that day in Wapping, I thought I'd walk there via the foot tunnel and the Thames Path.

I sat with an ice cream near the flower beds of soft grasses and watched the world go by for a while before setting off.

Sir Alexander Binnie's 1217ft foot tunnel was constructed in 1902 so that people living on the south side could get to work in the docks on the north side. It runs 50ft under the Thames and is accessed by a circular staircases around lifts (that's elevators to you guys across the pond!) within distinctive domed shafts.

And it's free.

Considering it was a Saturday and how busy Greenwich was that day (it was tourists a go go!) I'd assumed the tunnel would be rather busy. But as you can see by these pics it was fairly empty. I walked briskly through it, narrowly dodging a lunatic cyclist who either was unable to read all the No Cycling signs or was intent on flaunting the rules.

At the north side I met my friend Jen in Island Gardens and we admired the view as we waited for some other foragers to join us for the walk to Wapping.

The pic below is the view looking back at Greenwich just to the east of Island Gardens at the most southern point of the Isle of Dogs where the Thames Path  restarts along the wall at the river's edge. I've just about managed to get all the key Greenwich landmarks into the shot...

L-R: The Old Royal Naval College, University of Greenwich, Naval College Gardens, the National Maritime Museum (hidden by trees), the entrance to the foot tunnel, The Cutty Sark, Greenwich Park and the Royal Observatory and Planetarium

Coming soon... another way to sub-navigate the Thames on foot...