We had such a nice day, on a walk we must have done fifty times but where you always discover something new. I’d been completely laid out this week… not quite sure by what, but there’s nothing like spending 3 days in bed and sleeping for 11 hours a night to put one on the mend. (oh, and watching back to back War and Peace). Anyway at the end of three days I was itching to get out and about.
So we set out in to what was a curiously springlike day. I love coming across random sights like this in London, in a corner of Red Lion Square.
William Morris once lived in the tall Georgian house on the south side of the square.
Wide, spacious, Bedford Row:
I’m in favour of bits like this. Here we are in the heart of legal London, and there’s a lovely shabby run down feel about the place that makes one think we should be in the 70s. That’s Bloomsbury (and why I like living here).
On Chancery Lane, what I think is the back of the Stone Buildings at Lincoln’s Inn. Perfect.
Lawyers wear Hoodies, it seems.
And this must be an ad for local drag queens:
We hit the Strand and found filming going on at the Royal Courts of Justice. All a bit weird. All the actors were dressed for the early 80s.
The Chinese Gentlemen at the Twinings Store opposite watched quizzically:
I’ve never really stopped to look at this incredible bell tower at the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West. 
Reading a little, on the church’s website, it turns out that the clock was installed in 1671 and was the first public clock in London to have a minute hand.
Next door is this lovely facade:
Opposite, the site of the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street. I didn’t know anything about the Mitre Tavern at ALL. There is a wonderfully illuminating website I discovered here…. which reveals that the Mitre was Dr. Johnson’s favourite supper-house in London. Who knew?
Behind is beautiful and serene Mitre Court.
A little further down the street, these crazy gables, 
Next door to the austere deco of the former Daily Telegraph building:
Just across the street, the beautiful vault of St. Brides,
Which turns out to have been largely reconstructed after the war, but beautifully done.
Coming out of the church we caught the corner of the glossy Art Deco Express building, one of my favourite buildings on the street. Still completely modern, in its way.
The back of St. Brides:
And rounding the corner, a few minutes walk up Fleet Street, the serene facade of St. Paul’s, which as you know features from time to time on the blog…
How many people can you fit in a phone box for a selfie?
My friend Francis Terry has written about Wren’s beautiful capitals and the enrichment of the carved moulding, and the depth of the shadows that Wren achieved on the scrolls… 
Tucked around the corner, we found a building I don’t think I’d ever seen before; the Old Deanery. Really perfect.
We were on route to the Tate. That really was the purpose of the whole walk – we were just popping in to see the Calder exhibition (which is brilliant).
It suddenly struck me how dull this view of London is from the Millennium bridge, how low, and flat. Interesting. What’s that all about? Should the skyline campaign start campaigning to do something here. I genuinely felt it needs it.
London is always a sea of cranes, but we felt it very much on this walk. They are beautiful in their way… often more so than what emerges.
Rounding the back of the Tate, the extraordinary emerging extension by Herzog & de Meuron, which is encased in a delicate lace veneer of beautiful scaffolding. Crazy. I don’t think I’d seen anything like it.
Underneath the scaffold you can see the facade of pierced brick. It looks wonderful. My friend Chris Stocks idly wondered the other day – “I’m sure they’ve thought of keeping the pigeons off”…. although it does look like the dream pigeon roost of all time.
And then we caught the 17 bus home and settled into a guinness and pub lunch at the Ottoline, and wandered back to Queen Square in the encroaching grey afternoon of a late January Sunday in London.
