LONDON, ENGLAND June 30th - A lively young voice with a crisp British accent spoke clearly into my ears through my iPod headset.  The voice was laying a pleasant historical foundation for what I was seeing, telling me about this and that building, asking me to pause and look that way as she was describing historical street scenes, and moving me from “Point A” to “Point B” – all the way through the alphabet it seemed – before we finished “London: The City and the Tower” tour.  It is true, there were 24 stops with point-of-interest commentaries over the 3-mile course.   It’s Saturday and the City of London (Financial District) is very quiet. This will be fun!

See:  City-Of-London Walking Tour Map

This self-guided walking tour was an excellent idea.  If you are inclined, you can purchase and download the MP3 format audio tour for London at www.AudioSteps.com and you’ll be remarkably surprised.  The price is equivalent to the cost of a meal, but you can reuse the recordings even copying them to CDs. The narrator, Sally Beaumont, moves the tour along at a quick clip. However, because you have it on your iPod or iPhone, you can easily pause the tour narration and take a break, have lunch, or shop and then come back to the tour later. Want to refresh the details of a previous point of interest? Just re-wind and re-visit the narrative stage you wanted to hear again. Now, onwards….

Paternoster Square, home of the London Stock Exchange, is the first main stop at the beginning of the walking tour.  The Square contains this 23-meter high replica of one of the original columns from the portico of the St. Paul’s which burned in the Great Fire of 1666.  This monument, the largest erected in London in over 100 years, is made of Portland stone and is lit at night by fiber optics.  The prominent dome of the present St. Paul’s Cathedral, designed and built by Christopher Wren, is seen in the background.

I came upon the above sign between Paternoster Square and St. Paul’s Cathedral, looking around I noticed hundreds of men wearing the same black priest’s cassock.  They were actively engaged in filming sequences for the second installment of the National Treasure movie series called “Book of Secrets”.  Between Dan Brown and the Temple, National Treasure’s secret book, some Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes, add a little Jeckle and Hyde, and the Werewolf saga and you’ve got a real explosive mixture here in London!

Extras dressed in black cassocks during filming of "Book of Secrets"

Four cathedrals have stood on this site since the 7th Century.  The third one had a 489-foot spire and was completed in 1283 after a two-hundred year construction cycle – dominating the landscape then, and easily the tallest structure in England if it stood today.  That spire fell down in 1561, which initiated the complete reconstruction and new dome design led by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire left the cathedral in ruin in 1666.  Wren’s legacy included 51 unique churches throughout London and led to his knighthood in 1673. Christopher Wren lies in rest in the Crypt under the Sanctuary of St. Paul’s with this classic epitaph:

LECTOR, SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CIRCUMSPICE "Reader, if you seek his memorial – look around you"

William Blake 1757-1827 "To see a World in a grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an Hour"

The Crypt under St. Pauls' Cathedral

St. Paul's looking up Peters Hill

The College of Arms

Ye Olde Watling, a pub established in 1667 after the Great Fire next to an original 2,000-year old Roman Road to Dover

Captain John Smith, founder of Jamestown Colony in Bow Churchyard

Ironmonger Lane at Cheapside, Mercer's Hall

Thomas Becket (1118 – 29 December 1170), later also known as Thomas à Becket, was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He engaged in conflict with Henry II of England over the rights and privileges of the Church and was assassinated by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral. Soon after the death of Thomas Becket, Pope Alexander canonised him and the murdered priest was elevated to sainthood.

Mansion House, official residence of the Lord Mayor of London

The Royal Exchange, founded in the 1560's as a hub of the City's business life, this building is now a shopping complex dedicated by Queen Victoria

Bank of England and Statue of Wellington

Water well at site dating to the Middle Ages

St. Michael's Alley

Leadenhall Market: built in the Victorian Era on the site of a Middle Ages marketplace where “foreigners” (non-Londoners) were allowed to sell produce and poultry, is named after a 14th Century mansion with an unusual lead roof.

Leadenhall Market

Exhibit on Roman ruins discovered near Leadenhall

Roman building thought to have been on this site near Leadenhall

The Great Fire of London in 1666 changed the face and future of the city.  This fluted Doric column (below) designed by Christopher Wren is the tallest free standing stone column in the world, and is exactly 202 feet high – the same distance from the monument to the source of the historic fire: a bakery on Pudding Lane.  The Monument is open to the public and has a viewing gallery at the top of the 311 steps which encircle the interior.  You can even take away a certificate of your achievement!

The Monument by Sir Christopher Wren to the victims of the Great Fire of 1666

Just after midnight on the 2nd of September 1666, a fire started in Thomas Faryner’s bakehouse on Pudding Lane, and by the evening of the 3rd of September fully one-half of London had been consumed by the flames. Three days later, most of London had been destroyed. 87 churches including St. Paul’s Cathedral and 13,200 houses were decimated by the great fire, though only five people were reported to have died.  That was one bit of bright news to come from the tragedy, another was probably even more dramatic: the fire brought to an end a serious plague which had killed thousands and thousands of Londoners in the months preceding the fire.  It took over six years to rebuild the city, preserving the twisty old medieval street layout which Christopher Wren fought vainly to re-design into a more modern cityscape.

Map of the Great Fire of London 1666

London Gazette Headlines September 10,1666

View from the top of the 311 steps, the Monument affords a 200-foot high vantage point overlooking a modern City

Lloyd's of London

The Tower Bridge

Custom House on the Thames

Detail of wind vane on roof of Custom House

The Tower of London, first established as a military bastion on this Thames-side location by King William I as a symbol of his authority over his newly acquired Empire, later replaced with stone works and the central “White Tower” which was built in the 12th Century of Cairn Stone from Normandy.  The Beefeaters, special guard who are stationed at the Tower, have served the King and guarded the Crown Jewels at this location since the reign of King Henry VIII.

Tower of London Complex

King Henry VIII

Up the street from the Tower of London, next to Tower Hill and the Underground Station of the same name, you’ll find a section of original ancient Roman wall, identifiable by the course of red brick laid in horizontal layers to give the stone wall strength, and a statue depicting a Roman citizen from that era nearly 2,000 years ago.  Layers of millennia through which this metropolis has endured are stacked in thin bands along and above this wall, each layer silently holding onto memories and tales that will never be revealed.  The city hums and buzzes by, hardly noticing the green swale and chiseled stone that mark its beginnings.

End of The City and Tower Tour, next: “The West End”.

I hotfooted it from work to get there for 5.30, dived into the lovely Lamb Tavern, where I saw Gig Mike waiting at the bar. Having strong-armed him into buying me a pint, I settled in front of the stage as the City suits enjoyed a few pints after spending the day crippling the world’s finances and lining their own Italian silk pockets with filthy lucre.

Rod and Amanda took the stage, said hello and started off with Rod singing Gone from his 2004 album Girl From Arkansas, followed by Broke Down from his fine (and recently rereleased) 2001 album Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues. The song was co-written with one of my favourite singer-songwriters, Slaid Cleaves, who grew up with Rod in South Berwick, Maine.

During the song, a confused-looking ‘street person’ holding a red balloon crossed in front of the stage, scowling. He turned to Rod, who was singing away, and slowly raised his middle finger to him. He then wandered off but quickly came back and started yelling garbled extracts from 99 Red Balloons. Rod and Amanda could barely keep a straight face. After the song, Rod said that he’d grown used to dealing with critics…

Then both of them sang Gettin’ To Me from Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues before Amanda sang a lovely version of Angels And Acrobats from Rod’s Stray Dogs album and also also her West Cross Timbers CD. Their manner is easy, though it belies some seriously good talent, with Rod on guitar and Amanda on fiddle. Their voices work well together and Rod’s songs are superficially simple, but there’s a fine artistry at work in constructing such straightforward but effective ballads. And Rod’s voice improved after a kindly audience member bought him a pint.

They romped through the excellent River Runs and Gun Shy Dog before Rod introduced a new song he’d co-written with Slaid, possibly called Some Things You’re Born To. It was good. Alas, at this point I had to leave, but I’d enjoyed Rod and Amanda’s company, the beer and the prospect of listening to some more of their stuff in future.

On a hot September evening in 1666 Samuel Pepys sat in a riverside pub and watched his beloved London burn. He records the scene in his diary: “All over the Thames, with one’s face in the wind, you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops…and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, we saw the fire …It made me weep to see it.” On an overcast evening in June 2010 I led a Metropolitan Walkers evening stroll beginning and ending at the Monument that traced much of the territory destroyed in the Great Fire of London. You’ll be pleased to know that in Stew Lane, Pepys is honoured with a riverside pub named after him – I think he’d have liked that. (A quick google shows another Samuel Pepys in Mayfair, another in Kettering and one in Huntingdon.)

The story of the Great Fire is fairly well known. Not long after midnight on Sunday 2 September a stray spark from the embers of Thomas Farriner’s (or Farynor) bakery fire ignited his house in Pudding Lane. The resulting fire gutted the largely timber built medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It threatened, but did not reach, the aristocratic district of Westminster, the still newly restored Charles II’s palace at Whitehall, and most of the suburban slums. It consumed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and most of the buildings of the City authorities. It is estimated that over 70,000 people were left homeless but the death toll is thought to be small as only 6 deaths were recorded. This reasoning has recently been challenged on the grounds that the deaths of poor and middle-class people were not recorded anywhere, and that the heat of the fire may have cremated many victims, leaving no recognisable remains. In all London was estimated to have a population of 400,000 to 450,000 which was more than England’s next 50 biggest towns and cities combined. It was still haunted by the recent civil war and in the previous year it had been ravaged by the plague which had killed an estimated 70,000 inhabitants. Life in cities in these times was, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, ‘nasty, brutal and short’.

We began (and ended) our walk at the Monument. We walked up Pudding Lane, which is about 200 metres away from the Thames. The bakery probably baked meat pies and the ‘pudding’ from which the lane gets its name is the resulting detritius from animal slaughter which they just left to flow down towards the river. Then we filed through Leadenhall Market – famous these days as the film locations for Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. We briefly headed towards the bottom of Bishopsgate – the eastern boundary of the Fire – and then headed north west journeying up Gresham Street. This street is the home of the Guildhall, the City of London’s present day local government town hall, but back in the 17^th century housed many of the headquarters of the city’s Livery Companies. I tend to view these institutions as quaint anachronisms, the first twelve livery companies are known as the Great Twelve City Livery Companies, but of the 108 many are modern. Ladies and gentlemen I give you the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals (I kid you not).

They are nominally trade associations and almost all are known as the “Worshipful Company of” the relevant trade or profession. The medieval livery companies originally developed as guilds and were responsible for the regulation of their trades, controlling, for instance, wages and labour conditions. Some livery companies continue to have a regulatory role today – the Scriveners – and some have become inoperative except as charitable foundations – the Longbow Makers. Most livery companies, particularly those formed in recent years, are primarily social and charitable organizations. The active livery companies play an important part in social life and networking in the City of London, and have a long history of cultural patronage, and control of the City Corporation which still functions as a Local Authority with extensive local government powers. The Merchant Taylors and the Skinners have always disputed their precedence, so once a year, at Easter, they exchange sixth and seventh place. This is one of the theories for the origin of the phrase “at sixes and sevens”.

Perhaps not as well known is the story of the rebuilding of London following the four days of the Fire. Almost immediately people started congregating in the various open spaces like Moorfields and the piazza of Covent Garden. Tents – reminiscent of today’s refugee camps – began springing up everywhere. They would have looked across a devastated city that would need clearing before building work could start. Almost immediately the great and the good like Sir Christopher Wren submitted their visionary plans. However, over the next 25 years London was rebuilt replicating existing property rights. Legal frameworks – the Fire courts – were established in a matter of days to decide who owned what. The Corporation of London appointed Robert Hooke as a surveyor and he was out on the ground immediately – day 6 – it was cool enough to stand on. Ironically a tax on coal proved to be the main source of income to enable this rebuild.

Although the new city sprang from the roots of the old – it took over a year to just clear the site of St Pauls – it was a different place. There was a new attitude to public and private space and although the sweeping boulevards of Wren never materialised, roads were widened and maps and street names began appearing. Both St Pauls and the Monument are built to full modernity – an homage to science that London would be known for throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Indeed the Monument itself is a functioning zenith telescope. A more topographically coherent city emerges – one that still provides endless walking enjoyment and wonder today.

View this route:

http://www.mapmyrun.com/view_route?r=875127738183642836

Listen to:

Deep Purple – Smoke On The Water

Vice Squad – The Great Fire Of London

Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire

Kasabian – Fire

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Fire

Sparks – Beat The Clock

Ultravox – Monument

Click on image to enlarge

Click here to view B&W Gallery

]]> http://usinukcopy.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/wednesday-lunch/ Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:50:53 +0000 orak100 http://usinukcopy.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/wednesday-lunch/ After a heady class about Open Source Software and the challenges and benefits it produces, I wandered down to the gherkin to meet Mirinda for our mid-week lunch date. This time, I remembered the camera and, although it was a very grey and dull day, I managed a couple of photographs.

Now, given the limitations of my camera and the proximity of other buildings, the gherkin is not the easiest building to photograph up close. For one thing, it’s not just a case of standing at the bottom and pointing the camera up. The fact that it bulges in the middle then tapers at the top, means it’s impossible to get all of it in. For another, St Mary Axe is a narrow street and you just can’t get far enough back. A wide angle lens would do it but I’m not sure glueing one onto the front of my little camera would have the desired effect.

So, I took two. The first one is the view you get the moment you walk into St Mary Axe. Approaching from London Wall, you haven’t seen it and then, suddenly, wham, there it is. And this is what it looks like.

The Gherkin from the corner

The second shot is from the tiled area out the front – I say the front but the building is round and there’s an entrance around the other side too, though I’m sure, this is the official entrance. I really love the angled struts meeting at the bottom, almost like they’re holding it up in some sort of net.

The Gherkin entrance

We went for a bit of a wander as well as lunch today. We visited the Leadenhall Market, a Victorian (built in 1881) covered market. It is fantastic. There’s a nice Wikipedia bit about it (including some great photos) here. The day had drawn decidedly gloomy and the rain was misting about so I couldn’t take any photos, sadly, but we thoroughly enjoyed it…before Mirinda went back to work and I took the Tube and train home

Tiendas del Camden Market

El sábado lo comenzamos con un rápido desayuno en un Starbucks cercano al hotel, para coger el metro hasta Camden. Pasamos un par de horas recorriendo los puestos y las tiendas que hay en Camden Market y alrededores (Fer aprovechó para comprarse unas Vans) y paseando por Camden Lock (la zona del río, con las esclusas, es muy bonita), donde compramos unos regalos para Cristina y para Laura.

Camden Lock (detalle y Fernando en unos asientos muy originales)

El río y detalle de las esclusas (Camden Lock)

Un puesto de Camden Lock (con una vendedora muy peculiar)

Interior de Koenig Books

Desde Camden cogimos el metro hasta Charing Cross (os recomiendo leer 84 Charing Cross Road, de Helene Hanff –y ver la película con Anne Bancroft, que en España se tituló La Carta Final–), ya que quería ver libros en Foyles, Koenig Books (especializada en libros de arte, fotografía y diseño –en el nº 80–) y en otras librerías especializadas que hay en esa calle. Después pasamos por el barrio chino, Regent Street, New Bond Street, etc., y finalmente dimos media vuelta para terminar comiendo en Spaccanapoli, un muy buen italiano que está en Dean St. (lo curioso es que estábamos buscando un Pizza Hut que no acabábamos de encontrar y, cuando ya estábamos sentados en este restaurante, vimos a través del ventanal un cartel que decía “Pizza Hut just around the corner”).

El barrio chino y los musicales son parte fundamental de la imagen del Soho londinense.

Leadenhall Market

Después de comer, paseamos por Oxford Street (fuimos a HMV y a Urban Outfitters) y después cogimos el metro hasta Bank. Ya en la City (totalmente desierta los fines de semana, parecía una ciudad fantasma), vimos el famoso “pepino” o “The Gherkin” (Swiss Re HQ, 30 St Mary Axe) de Foster, el Lloyds of London de Richard Rogers y el precioso Leadenhall Market.

The Gherkin (Foster) y Lloyds of London (Rogers)

Detalle de "The Gherkin" (Norman Foster)

Una calle muy "Ziggy Stardust"

La tarde-noche la pasamos en la zona de Brick Lane, un barrio estilo Lavapiés, pero mucho más “currado”: han reconvertido una antigua fábrica de cerveza, la Old Truman Brewery, en un espacio de ocio y cultura donde hay galerías de arte, tiendas de ropa, cafés, restaurantes como Al Volo, bares, pubs y clubes como The Vibe Bar o Café 1001, tiendas de discos como la de Roughtrade Records (en el Soho, en el 34 de Berwick Street, hay una tienda muy buena que se llama Sister Ray –venden por internet a través de Amazon.co.uk–), un mercado, etc.

Roughtrade Records y el bar Rootmaster, en Old Truman Brewery

Un original collage de la exposición "Young Masters"

Estuvimos en la Cynthia Corbett Gallery viendo la exposición “Young Masters” (obras de artistas jóvenes, inspiradas en trabajos de maestros clásicos), compramos un par de vinilos (Girls y The XX) en Roughtrade y estuvimos haciendo tiempo tomando una cerveza en un pub de Brick Lane (teníamos una reserva para cenar un par de horas después).

Instalación hecha a base de billetes de lotería y vista de la exposición “Young Masters”

Cena, música y espectáculo en The Brickhouse

The Brickhouse

La cena fue en The Brickhouse, un curioso local con tres pisos, mezcla de club, restaurante y cabaret. Cenamos estupendamente y lo pasamos mejor, tanto por el entretenido espectáculo de cabaret como por el ambiente y la fauna que allí había.

Al final, entre la cena (un menú de precio fijo con cinco platos), el vino, la propina y el espectáculo (actuaciones de cabaret que incluían a una contorsionista, a un travesti y a un presentador polifacético), la noche salió un pelín cara, pero mereció la pena.

.

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Kensington Palace

Y llegó el domingo, último día de nuestra visita a Londres (medio día para ser más exactos). Como sólo teníamos la mañana, aprovechamos para pasear por los Kensington Gardens (el Palacio de Kensington, el Round Pond, la Serpentine Gallery, etc.). En la Serpentine Gallery vimos la exposición de Gustav Metzger y el Pabellón de 2009, obra de Kazuyo Sejima y Ryue Nishizawa, de SANAA.

Kensington Gardens

Serpentine Gallery (2009 Pavilion, de SANAA)

Por último, fuimos paseando hasta Harrods (pasamos por el Royal Albert Hall, el Science Museum, el Natural History Museum y el Victoria & Albert Museum) para comprar un par de regalos y un encargo (sí, la dichosa bolsita de Harrods).

Royal Albert Hall y Victoria & Albert Museum

Museo de Historia Natural

En estos tres días y medio de visita a Londres lo hemos pasado estupendamente bien y, además, hemos tenido buen tiempo. Eso sí, nos han quedado un montón de cosas pendientes para la próxima visita. ¿Quién se apunta?

First Staircase

Hunters in the Thames

The Explorers

Giles hopping up and over

The Ladder

Bones

Thames River Path

Pedestrian Subway

Thames River Path

Second Staircase

Teeth

Soon enough, it was time to head back from the water.  But that isn’t to say there were still many more pictures to be had…

The Monument

The Monument

The Monument

Leadenhall Market

Leadenhall Market

Lloyds Building

The Underwriter Pub

St. Helen's

Guildhall

Guildhall

St. Lawrence Jewry

It was a lovely excursion on a quintessential London weather day.  The blustery mist inspired a chicken and vegetable soup craving, which I am satisfying now.  While the soup heated, I cleaned off my treasures.  I skipped snagging any bones (ew) but did manage to find some great broken ceramics and pretty pearly shells:

Thames Treasures

Gotta love free souvenirs!

Woke up and then went down to the “continental” breakfast. I say “continental” because it was pretty piss.
Bread rolls and toast with butter and jam. Selection of four cereals… pretty much it. Which is all well and good I guess- just got a little spoiled in Paris with cheese and fresh fruit, etc etc. Did I mention cheese?

Moving along- basically took off early in the morning and headed back down to Covent Garden and then did a tour of churches and architecture around the downtown core ie. where the business folk dwell.
Somerset House, St. Clement Danes, went to Twinnings tea shop but it was under MAJOR reno :(. Went in and out of *so* many churches. I have a bit of a problem with that. I love, love, love old churches and London happens to be filled with them. We saw Dr Samuel Johnson’s House, St. Paul’s Cathedral, St Mary le Bow, the Bank of England, the Royal Stock Exchange, Leadenhall Market, The Monument for the Great Fire, Tower Hill, the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge. Twelve more churches, the Gherkin, Guildhall for the remains of Roman London’s Amphitheater, the Barbican, Holborn St., the Old Bailey Court House, the Museum of London and the Golden Boy of Pye Corner. I’m sure I’m missing some stuff but that’s the gist.

Here’s some photos:

For the first bit I was really excited about the red telephone booths… I did get over it

All streets should look like this really

This is inside St Clement Danes. The floor of the church is inscribed with the badges of over 800 RAF commands, groups, stations, squadrons and other formations

I like organs too…

Gates outside the Royal Courts of Justice

Royal Courts of Justice

Twinnings – :( closed for reno so sad

Samuel Johnson… he lived there

Hodge is Samuel Johnson’s cat

Really fantastic bar apparently and it’s “historic” -was around prior to the Great Fire of 1666 and rebuilt here soon after. Probably should have stopped for a pint… next time, next time.

This is at St. Bride’s it’s is known as “the journalist” church. There are many memorials throughout for people who have died in that line of work. Had a bit of moment here must say.

St. Paul’s Cathedral

Leadenhall Market- they may have used portions of this for our friend Diagon Alley *glee*

Leadenhall Market X 2

The Monument for the Great Fire

The Tower Bridge from afar

Tower of London

I know, I know… I shouldn’t have. But I love my chai tea lattes, and somehow they tasted better in London.

Gherkin!

Apparently the nickname for this guy is “the cheese grater”

I’m a sucker for stuff like this. Neat!

The Barbican

Barbican again, around here you can see remains of structures that were bombed throughout WWII

2 things here a) Cock Lane (yes I’m 12) b) The Golden Boy of Pye Corner.

Smithfield Market aka where William Wallace was executed.

Bung Hole. For reals. Need I say more?

Around 6:30pm I had made plans with the extremely talented Tom Humberstone to meet at the Angel Pub for drinks and he had picked up some tickets to see comedy at the historic 100 club for that night.

The pub

Tom’s friend (and now my saucy friend too) Julia met us for a drink and later on another friend named Sophie joined us for comedy after Julia parted with us.

Inside the 100 Club

The night of comedy was really fantastic, so you can have a taste too I’m just going to post a single photo from each comedian and then a YouTube clip of something they’ve done.

Our host was Dan Clark:

First up was Angelos Epithemiou:

Then Richard Herring:

Next Freeze! (Tim Key and Tom Basden):

I couldn’t get a clip of Freeze! themselves but here’s Tom Basden-

The main act was Mark Watson:

Mark was my favorite, he’s amazing!

Annnd I’ll give you a hint to how the evening ended:

K

Stay tuned for Day 3!

Amazon.com Widgets

(As mentioned in my last picture, my 17-40L was damaged so I had to switch to the Fish Eye in order to complete the shoot.

This is the same viewpoint as well; my Tripod Head would not go higher than this).

* * * * * * * * * *

Leadenhall Market is a covered market in the City of London, located in Gracechurch Street.

The market dates back to the fourteenth century. It is open from 07:00-16:00 Monday to Friday, and sells fresh food; among the vendors there are cheesemongers, butchers and fishmongers.

The ornate roof structure, painted green, maroon and cream, and cobbled floors of the current building, designed in 1881 by Sir Horace Jones (who was also the architect of Billingsgate and Smithfield Markets), make the building a tourist attraction.

It was used to represent the area of London near The Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley in the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It is also popular among local city workers specifically from the nearby Lloyd’s of London building.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadenhall_Market

I dropped my camera with the 17-40L Lens on day 22 and I thought that the lens had survived the impact.

I was wrong; I have used the lens since day 22 but it really needed a more concentrated light source such as street lights to highlight the damage done to the lens.

The damage is on the right side of the picture and you will notice that the street lights on the right side are flaring badly while the ones on the left are unaffected.

I first noticed this last week but I was shooting wide open at f/4 so I dismissed it. Then I noticed it again on Day 46 when I was shooting at f/16 (the flare has been cropped out).

Well, this image was taken on Day 47 and I had to switch to the Fish Eye lens in order to complete my shooting.

I don’t know if the lens can be repaired; apart from the flare, the image quality is still very good.

If I cannot repair it, then it looks like I shall have to replace it.

(By the way, this is Leadenhall Market in the City of London)