When I’m in London for any length of time I usually take at least three walks with walks.com. This time I felt like doing something different. Apart from two ghost walks from other companies I’d planned to take the Sunday morning Bowl of Chalk. The guide, Jonnie, is a nice guy in his upper thirties whose attitude towards guiding is something like “here’s a nice group of people, why don’t we take a walk together and I’ll tell them some stuff”. No set route or rehearsed spiel. Not at all what I’m used to, but this worked. Very well.
We were a group of 15, which according to him was quite a lot. The weather was nice and warm, the views were interesting and the tempo comfortable. We were walking around east London, from Old Street tube station to Spitalfields Market. And we saw art. Real, fantastic art. He talked about other things as well, a cemetery and a church which apparently has gorgeous toilets, but the street art was the highlight, at least for me. When I was walking around on my own afterwards I gazed up at the rooftops for mushrooms, and down at the ground for chewing gum. The paintings on the walls were easier to see – most of the time… 😛
Jonnie, our guide.
By Banksy.
Chewing gum art. Apparently there are hundreds of these on Millennium Bridge.
Mushroof.
Stik. A giant version of a similar figure can be seen when going through Acton Town on the tube to and from Heathrow.
Playground.
London’s oldest coffee cart.
Later at night I had a ticket for “The Play that Goes Wrong” at the Duchess Theatre. I’d read that it was supposed to be very funny, and…wow. First of all, book a ticket! And when you go, get there early. There are lots of shenanigans going on even before it actually starts. Props break or disappear, actors mess up or get knocked out. I was screaming with laughter most of the two hours…:-D (The story itself is practically irrelevant, but it’s a murder mystery.)
