A boat trip from Greenwich to Westminster

I went to London for the day to meet up with Helena, who is staying there for a few days, and to have a fab lunch with my old friend Ian M.. I also went to Calumet's open day at their store in Drummond Street, near Euston, so we visited the Ravi Shankar vegetarian restaurant in the same street and had a fantastic all-you-can eat buffet for £7.

The weather was wonderfully warm and sunny, so after leaving Ian to return to his sound editing, on the spur of the moment we went on the Docklands Light Railway, a first for me, and crossed the Thames to Greenwich. We arrived at The Cutty Sark hot and bothered and didn't feel like moving around much.  Then Helena had the brilliant idea of taking a boat ride back to central London, which turned out to be half price.

We waited another hour for the boat at 5pm and headed off on the reasonably sized tour boat, the 'Chay Blyth', with countless other mostly foreign tourists. On the open deck we got wonderful views as we headed towards the sun which was getting lower in the sky, so photography was a bit challenging.

I snapped away like mad on the 50 minute journey upstream to Westminster pier. I have added a few of the many views I took in the 'Extra photos' below.

When we passed the ancient dockland area on the north shore called Limehouse, I spotted a range of older buildings some of which were obviously still dwellings. In fact the famous Limehouse pub called the 'The Grapes' lies just to the left of the scene, (and I have shown the full view in the Extras with the edge of the pub at the left).

I'd noticed the golden statue on the decking of one particular house and realised that it was probably the home of an artist, or a collector, given the way the building was presented. Now I've noticed that there was a wooden plinth in the actual river and on it you can just see another life size statue. I have checked and it is called 'Another time', a well known work by the wonderful Sir Anthony Gormley and is one of his series of statues dotted around the coast of Britain. Apparently it was bought by Sir Ian Mackellen and he got permission from the Port of London Authority to place it in the water. At high tide the water reaches the top of the plinth. I am now tempted to visit 'The Grapes' to stand on their verandah and have a closer look. Sir Ian joined with several other local residents to buy the pub in order to preserve it and its atmosphere as a classic local inn. This local blog about the Isle of Dogs also shows other images of the statue. I couldn't resist choosing it as my blip for the day, despite there being many better other images to choose from. (By the way have you noticed the steps down from the house to the 'beach' below!)

It was a really good thing to do to travel down the river and I will definitely do it again. Once we docked at Westminster we both headed off in different directions and I finally got home by train at about 9-30pm very tired but very happy.