City walk

This blog is out of sequence but I had to tell you about the cushion so now a jump back to last week when we joined an U3A walk around Newgate and Smithfield. Not a part of London I knew, I had worked up west. The historical aspects were interesting, we saw the first drinking fountain in London, William Wallace memorial as well as looking around St Barts' Museum, we were fortunate to see the Hogarth paintings. We spent so long going around the museum that by the time we'd had a coffee and Chelsea bun in the café we'd exceeded the time allowed for the break. Certainly the museum warranted far more than the ten minutes allocated in the schedule.

Other new places were Smithfield meat market, closed by midday when we were there, and Postman's Park, I'd heard of it but never visited so was able to view the plaques commemorating Londoners who had given their lives for others. These show local heroes so I can forward the pictures to our local archive in case they don't have them.

The final stage of the walk was a complete contrast from the history of earlier in the morning, we went to One New Change, a new development on the east of St Paul's Cathedral. The shops were nothing special, the best was the lift to the sixth floor roof terrace for brilliant views of the Cathedral and south and west London. All free, we were warned the restaurant and bars at this level are expensive and not particularly great but the views, yes!  A sign of the prosperity of  London is the great number of mobile cranes one could see, I think of London as a separate city state from the rest of the Kingdom, it is so different from the rest of the country that one could be in another country. I love it and especially as it is so much greener, cleaner and pedestrian friendly than when I started work in Town so many years ago.

After such an early start we were ready for lunch, can recommend food and service at Café Rouge on the south side of the Cathedral. On leaving caught a bus direct to Waterloo and made our way home.