Walking Along The Thames
On Tuesday night I took a guided walk along the Thames from Bermondsey station to the Brunel Museum at Rotherhithe. The walk is described here.
These pictures were taken as we walked along the river.
The guide was excellent and the trip was well worth the eight pounds it cost.
From West Ham to Abbey Mills on the Greenway
The Greenway has now been reopened close to West Ham station and it is now possible to walk along it past Abbey Mills Pumping Station and on to Stratford again.
Note the large bridge, which I suspect will be used to take those walking to the Olympic site over Stratford High Street.
It will be good when it is fully open again from Hackney Wick to West Ham and on to Beckton. It will be one of the best walks in London.
Back to the Bow Interchange
I walked along the Greenway and then turned onto the towpath of the westernmost tributary of the River Lee. It was more about exploring than with any purpose, although I did think it would lead to my finding of the new bridge.
In the end I found it led to Bow Road and Bow Interchange, which is perhaps a kilometre from Bromley-by-Bow station.
Along the Bow Back Rivers
I crossed Stratford High Street and then found my way to Pudding Mill Lane station on the DLR. I passed across and along one of the Bow Back Rivers, originally created to channel water power from the River Lee to the flour mills in the area.
At present access is restricted to many of these rivers because of construction of both the Olympic Park and CrossRail. But they will become a major water feature of the Olympics. The City Mill River and the City Mill Lock have recently been restored.
A Walk From Bromley-By-Bow
In some ways London can be confusing to the visitor in that it does tend to reuse place names. For instance tonight I wanted a walk and as there had been reports of a new bridge over the River Lee at Bow, I thought I’d try and find it. So I went not to Bromley but to Bromley-by-Bow station, which is on the District and Metropolitan lines. This is also the destination of the 488 bus, which starts running from Dalston Junction station tomorrow, so I wanted to see if it was worth a visit.
Initial impressions were not good, as I took a rather grim underpass to the other side of a dual carriageway leading to the Blackwall Tunnel and then passed a typical Tescos.
Has any of their supermarkets, ever won an award for atchitecture? This one certainly didn’t deserve one, unless it was for the demolishing the worst building in East London.
My walk had to get better.
A Good Reason For Not Owning A Car
As I walked to get the paper today, someone had broken down in an almost brand-new BMW X-5. The service van had just arrived and the driver of the BMW had that About-Time-To look on his face. As I walked back the service van was leaving.
I suddenly realised that doesn’t happen to me anymore! It must be a good reason to not own a car!
If my bus or train breaks down, it’s not my problem! When a train was an hour late recently, they sent me some vouchers, which I might use for a trip to somewhere exciting like Margate or Brighton. It might actually be Birmingham, as that appears to be hay-fever free at the moment.
A Pedestrian Collision Avoidance System
They are talking on BBC Breakfast about the sort of sound that electric cars should make.
As someone, who for a few months had very limited vision to the left, I can sympathise, but really do we want to negate one of the big advantages of electric cars; the fact that they are silent, which I think makes people drive them slower.
So could we do something better to stop collisions between vulnerable pedestrians and vehicles. And of course between cyclists and vehicles too.
With airliners they have a system called TCAS or Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It works well, as you don’t get too many collisions between airliners.
So could something simpler be used by pedestrians and vehicles that they might not see or hear.
In it’s simplest form a vehicle would emit a coded electronic signal with perhaps a range of say twenty to fifty metres. Pedestrians would perhaps have a wristwatch-sized device that made some sort of sound as the vehicle approached. I would suspect that smart phones could also be developed to be pedestrian devices.
Thinking about this idea, it would have other implications.
- You could just drive up to your garage door and a detector programmed with your vehicle’s code would open the door automatically.
- Systems could be used to make car parks more user-friendly. All you would have to do is drive in and out and the system would bill you automatically.
- Vulnerable pedestrians, such as the blind and deaf, could also carry an emitter, which could be received by vehicles to warn them that the person by the side of the road had limited vision or hearing.
- There could also be an emergency mode, so that say if a pedestrian was feeling unwell or had a probe, they could immediately call help from those near at hand. In fact borrowing from flying rules, you could have two levels of emergency; serious and I just need a little bit of help. The latter might be used by say someone who was blind or a bit confused, who perhaps was lost in a strange town.
- One of my biggest problems is those in scooters, who drive them fast in places like shopping malls and come up behind me. I was nearly run over in Canary Wharf yesterday, by someone going far too fast and only avoided trouble, because the lady driving it, hit a man, who called her a stupid idiot in a very loud voice. A device warning of fast traffic from behind would have avoided that problem.
The possibilities are endless.
I doubt it will happen though.
Careless Driving
It is being reported that the government is thinking about bringing in fixed penalties for careless driving.
As a pedestrian, I’d like to see careless cycling, buggy pushing and obstruction placing dealt with in the same way.
How To Get Lost On the Hills
According to this report, it would appear the best way is to navigate using your iPhone.
What’s wrong with a map and compass?
Let’s suppose that you are walking one of the London canals and you’re aiming to be out for most of the day. By the time you get back, your iPhone will have exhausted its battery, so if you feel like taking a phone, why not take something with a sensible battery life, like a Nokia 6310i.
My New Trainers
I got my new trainers on Friday from Runners Need.
I wore them all day yesterday in Bristol and in the end we had to walk all the way from Ashton Gate to Temple Meads, which took about thirty minutes.
This morning, I have no stiffness or soreness!
I’ve not had any cramps in bed either.
So perhaps everybody should get their trainers properly fitted.
The Anonymous Widower 