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| Grandma crushing her competition in a ping pong ball match in Victoria Embankment Gardens |
Date: June 22, 2014
Time: About 3:30 p.m.
Weather: Partly cloudy, somewhat sunny
Terrain: City streets, park gravel paths
Difficulty: Easy
Distance: 3.6 miles
Shoes: Nike+ Volmero 8s
Bonus: Stumbling upon Victoria Embankment Gardens
Jet lag can be cured by running. I'm convinced of that. London offers an enhancement for this American - one must quickly adjust to all traffic habits being inverted. Look right when one's instinct says left, and vice-versa. Rewiring your brain while running clears those lagging cobwebs quite quickly.
I arrived in London yesterday via a red-eye flight, with scant chance to sleep. After arriving at the hotel and getting a nap, I ventured out to run through a part of the city I've not spent much time in before: Covent Garden and the Victoria Embarkment area.
My path took me from the Waldorf hotel west, and on a lark I turned towards the Thames after seeing the Strand filled with tourists. It was a good audible - I discovered stairs leading down to the Victoria Embankment and a sidewalk along the river.
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| There, I found Cleopatra's Needle (an obelisk that Khedive (Viceroy) Muhammad Ali gifted to Lord Nelson and Sir Ralph Abercromby in 1819), flanked by a pair of Egyptian sphinxes (one pictured at right). |
Onwards, I passed the eye pleasing pedestrian "Golden Jubilee" pedestrian bridges, similar to another foot bridge I'd walked over many years ago in London (the Millennium bridge).
It is a quick few steps beyond these bridges to Big Ben and the Westminster area. After a quick glance at one of the many handy map stands in the area, I decided to explore Victoria Tower Gardens, just south of the Houses of Parliament.
I'm glad I did. My diversion led me to a quiet park watched over by a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst. Only on my writing of this blog would I learn of her passionate (and occasionally violent) fight for women's suffrage in Britain. One of her quotes captures her spirit quite well,"Window-breaking, when Englishmen do it, is regarded as honest expression of political opinion. Window-breaking, when Englishwomen do it, is treated as a crime." Her struggle would lead to the passage of the Representation of the People Act, in 1928, a few weeks after her passing, which gave electoral equality to men and women over age 21 for the first time in England's history.
The garden area itself is quite calming too. Several families and couples out and about, rich green grass, and a bit of a breeze of the nearby Thames make for a bit of an oasis in downtown London.
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I especially enjoyed the scene of these kids playing amidst a small tower on the grounds. From there, I proceeded through the back trails of the Westminster Abbey area.
This path quickly took me to the St. James Park area, on the Whitehall side. As I was running along the sidewalk waiting for a chance to dart across traffic into the park, I came upon this memorial to those lost in the 2002 Bali bombings. The design is different than the surrounding buildings of Whitehall (government area), but I found the memorial to be thoughtfully done and a solemn reminder of that tragedy.
From this spot, I did find a break in the traffic and ran across the lane into the park proper. The park was filled with tourists and families and others, some lounging, others walking.
The remainder of my run in St. James took me over the bridge pictured below, near Buckingham Palace and under the Admiralty Arch:
On the last leg back I even had a chance find of Sherlock's pub, sadly a football "free" zone:
All-in-all, a tremendous welcome to one of the most engaging and culturally rich cities in this World.
