I had been looking forward to today as my friend Wendy from the photo club had organised another day up town with an interesting itinerary. This time we were headed to Greenwich which should have been straight forward until I noticed that there was disruption on my usual rate using the DLR. I decided to take another train from London Bridge and during the journey and using the trip ‘WhatsApp’ group, gradually I gathered up fellow members so that by the time we arrived at Greenwich stations there were 5-6 of us!!
Unlike all recent days, it was actually quite cloudy and not the warmest of days. We split off into smaller groups or pottered off on our own. My main aim for the day was to photograph the beautiful ‘Tulip Staircase’ in the Queens House. I’ve never been in the house before and i was really surprised that it was free entry - I just needed to book an entry time. I had to race up the stairs to get to the top of the stats case to come down as there was a one way operating in the house. I was not on my own as a number of others fro the Club had also booked the 12-12.30 slot! The staircase was stunning although it was a challenge to capture the right angle, to avoid the bridge lights and others coming down the stairs!
Afterwards I explored the old naval college before meeting everyone else for lunch in the outside cafe. Some people started to drift off at this point but there were the total eight of us who kept going and managed the steep walk up to the Observatory for the view downing the college and river Thames before walking down and then all the way back up again to Turners View over the river - thanks Lorraine - we were flagging there!!
The light was getting worse at this point and quite dark and grey although we were lucky to avoid the rain. We decided to take the boat back down the river to Westminster so we finished up on a particularly blowy trip but with excellent commentary from the captain with a healthy amount of fictitious (but really funny) history for the tourists.
It was a race to catch the train from Waterloo home but we managed it and at the end of the day I had done well over 17,000 footsteps (which I hoped had offset the delicious rose cake I had with my lunch!).
Final stop of the day was to pick up something for dinner froth newly opened M&S. The sop has been closed for over 2-months for refurbishment and opened this morning (I had no time to visit then). It looks much nicer inside and I think there is more stock although there has not been a massive change inside.
