Thursday 4th July:  Weather: 12°C to 19°C: Beautiful cool sunny day, white fluffy clouds, cold westerly wind

Walking:  17k walk from Tower Bridge to Fulham, plus 7k extra to trains, bank and Thames Path

Time:  8am to 4.15pm 

Accommodation: 14a Wyfold Rd Fulham

Bank of England exchange old ££’s

Highlight for me was getting to the Bank of England to exchange £500 of “old” pounds for “new”, then walking back 17 kilometres from Tower Bridge to Fulham along the Thames Path.  Highlight for Robbie and Ian was watching de Minaur win his match againste Jaime Munar.

We all sleep in til 6.30am this morning.  I make a sandwich and pack a small back pack with coffee and tea and my MSR cooker, while Ian and Robbie have breakfast.  Then I’m off to Parson’s Green to get the tube to Monument, leaving Ian and Robbie to make sandwiches for their day at Court 2 at Wimbledon.  

Parson’s Green is on the District line and soon the train arrives from Wimbledon heading for Upminster.  It’s chocka block and at every station many people get off, but even more get on.  It’s still packed 30 minutes later when I get off at Monument and find my way to the Bank of England in Threadneedle Street.  There’s security guards everywhere as I enter and queue to exchange our “old” Pounds which became obsolete 6 years ago for “new” plastic pounds. I google camping shops and find a Blacks just 450 metres away where I walk to buy a small gas can for when I have my coffee when I’m out and about over the next few days while the boys are at tennis.  Blacks have a 30% off sale and I buy a 100g MSR can.

At Tower Bridge

Tower Bridge and Tower of London 

Southwark Cathedral

St paul’s Cathedral

The golden Hind ship of Drake

Tate Modern

Victoria Embankment

The Big Eye

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Troops must not walk in step

Then I head up to Tower Bridge about 2.5k East and over the other side of the Thames.  The place is teaming with tourists, and I sit in the park to have a coffee cooked on my MSR Pocket Rocket with and MSR gas can - and a biscuit.  I’ve planned to walk about 15k west along the Thames Path back to Fulham and it’s a beautiful cool sunny day.  But in the shade, the westerley wind is quite cold.  

I stroll down admiring all the famous icons - the Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, St Pauls Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral, the golden Hinde in which Drake circumnavigated the world - Tate Modern Art Gallery and Victoria Embankment.  This embankment had an interesting history, as it was developed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in response to the Great Stink of 1858, when, spurred on by hot weather, the waste polluting the Thames (human and otherwise) produced an unbearable stench. Bazalgette also designed the Albert, Victoria and Chelsea embankments, which housed the sewers in central London. as London was being overpowered by sewage.  

After the Victoria Embankment, is the London Big Eye then Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Further West, there’s a lot of development and the Thames Path is constantly diverted around construction sites.  It eventually enters the amazing parklands associated with the Battersea Power Station, a coal-fired power station decommissioned in 1983, located on the south bank of the River Thames in the London Borough of Wandsworth.  It’s now a huge shopping centre complex plus parkland and as I walked through, there was a huge screen showing Wimbledon Tennis. 

I cross to Chelsea on the north side of the Thames, over the Albert Bridge, which has a sign warning troops not to march instep as the cadence could damage the structure of the bridge. Chelsea is an exclusive area with modern apartments which cost millions of pounds.  They are set among beautiful gardens with a walkway between the apartments and the Thames River.  I stroll through then cut across to Fulham, stopping at a large Sainsbury’s supermarket to buy more bread, milk, lettuce, strawberries, and a bottle of Guinness for me.  Carrying my load home, I have to negotiate streams of school kids, as school has just finished for the day.  It’s 4.15pm when I arrive “home” at Wyfield Rd Fulham.

Time to shower, wash a few clothes and have a salad dinner with a small glass of Guinness while watching Wozniacki play Fernandex in Womens singles, waiting for the boys still at the tennis.  Ian rings to say they are on their way home as Court 2, for which they have tickets, has finished for the day, and the remaining outside courts have queues of hundreds.

They buy fish n chips on the way home to have with a Guinness.  We’re watch the tennis on TV  when the election results come through - a landslide win for labour and Keir Starmer is the new Prime Minister.