Mini walk - Southwark tube station to London Bridge railway station via the Thames

Fired up by our Meopham walk, Arup and I decided to celebrate his new job with dinner at Dim T near London Bridge. And instead of taking the tube, we decided to walk it. The initial idea was to walk from Charing Cross station but that seemed to be a bit too much of a challenge for an after work walk. For me anyway - Arup continues to be annoyingly fit considering he doesn't get much exercise either.

So we adjusted the plan and decided to take the tube to Southwark, walk up Blackfriars road and walk along the South Bank to Dim T, which is near HMS Belfast and close to London Bridge. Google maps helpfully calculated our route to be about 1.7 miles, which sounded about right for a pre-prandial stroll. Unfortunately, TFL had other plans. When we got to the end of Blackfriars road, we found that due to the station being renovated, there was no way we could actually get to the Jubilee Walkway to walk along the south bank.

Construction work everywhere

We did our best but after several false starts, we decided to cross the bridge, walk along Paul's walk, cross the Millenium bridge and be back on the South Bank that way. Except that having crossed the bridge, we couldn't figure out how to get onto Pauls' walk.

Photo taken at the end of Blackfriars bridge while arguing about where to go!

The whole area is a real mess thanks to the station renovation. We ended up on the Blackfriars underpass, completely stuck. Then we spotted someone jumping the railings between the underpass and Paul's walk, which is after all right next to it. We followed their example and though we got a few odd looks, our walk was back on track.

Paul's walk - post jumping

We walked along Paul's walkway, admired the 'Eat Rubbish' thingy and St. Paul's, then crossed the wobbly bridge to arrive at the end of the Jubilee walkway.

We were so pleased with ourselves, we got ice cream at one of the ridiculously overpriced vans (why are they calld 99s if they cost £3!) and proceeded to try and eat the most disgusting ice cream I have ever tasted. Our fault for behaving like tourists!

A plane and a bird in the background of the Golden Hind

Working in London and living in the suburbs often means station to work and work to station meaning we miss out on what a lovely, vibrant city London is. It was really nice to stroll along, with the Thames on one side and the restaurants and pubs heaving with the after-work office crowd. Arup and I have not worked in London at the same time for years and when we did, his working hours were very different from mine. So it is quite a nice novelty to be able to go for dinner together after work.

HMS Belfast

Hays Galleria

Tower Bridge

Steps to More Place - love the variety of shapes in this photo

Anyway, thanks to the detour, I was getting quite tired towards the end but we got there and stuffed ourselves silly. The mandatory photoshoot afterwards - what a gorgeous location this restaurant has - and then the long train journey home.

Dim T - excellent dim sum

And the view from just ouside the restaurant

Total distance walked: approximately 2.1 miles.