Met up with Harry opposite Big Ben just outside Westminster tube station. He was 10 minutes late which annoyed me because I had arrived early and had hung around for at least 30 minutes. He is normally early but he blamed London transport for the delay.
I forgave him and we set off. Harry had previously sent me an article about the new London sewer and an extension into the Thames to cover the point where the sewer meets the Fleet river called Bazalgette Embankment. He wanted to see it. The article really played the importance of this new embankment.
We followed the northside of the Thames along to the spot and found it deeply disappointing. I guess they had tried to make an enormous sewer cover somewhat more attractive than just plain concrete, but at the end of the day they couldn’t hide the dullness of the place.
After we had spent 5 minutes exploring this we walked onto Blackfriars Bridge to start one of the Dickensian walks around Fleet Street. For the first time Harry had to use his glasses to read the guide to the walk, apparently he had a cataract operation that hadn’t been completely successful. We wandered on with Harry reading about how Dickens had frequented the area and tried to write for the magazine Punch but his article had been rejected. At 92 Fleet Street he had helped to found a newspaper.
We then arrived at St Bride’s Church (the printers church) dedicated to St Bridgid which has a long tradition connecting it to an Irish Monastery. We descended to th cellar where they have some ancient walls, a very quiet space and quite a few headstones of the old dead. There is also a museum in the crypt which chronicles the years of St Bride’s History going back to Roman and Saxon times.
We tried to follow on with the walk but new construction work printed us from seeing some of the places mentioned in the walk and we then moved onto one of the many legal courtyards that lie behind Fleet Street, all very interesting.
We crossed back over Fleet Street and then up an alley beside the Olde Cheshire Cheese pub. I’ve visited this place before and it has now become a tourist attraction and not a place where you can get a good pint or a decent plate of food. This little detour took us past Dr Johnson’s house and down an alley where Dickens had his first unpaid work published. By now I had become peckish and so we looked for a place to eat.
We walked along chancery lane and Harry spotted a menu on the side walk which he fancied. We entered the Law Society and their restaurant. It’s always eerie to enter a large restaurant where you are the only customer. However the place had good heating and both of us had had enough of the cold outside. We both ordered hamburgers and as Harry had promised to have a dry January we ordered sparkling water. The burger turned out to be very ordinary but they had a nice waiter and so we enjoyed an 1 ½ relaxation in the warmth.
After lunch we lost interest in the rest of the walk, passed through some of the other Inns and made our way back down to the Thames embankment and walked back towards Westminster Bridge.
I left Harry and then took the Jubilee line to Bond Street where I exited and found my way to Farrow & Ball to pick up a couple of pair samples for Maggi to judge whether these suited the change she wanted for the corner of our main room.