Monday, November 17, 2008

Tranquility in the Heart of Docklands

For my sins I now spend most of my woken day around E14, aka Docklands. A complete nuisance to reach from West London, involving the Bakerloo and Jubilee Lines, and a ten minute walk at either end. However, my office is a little away from the central complex, around South Quay. This means we have the Millwall Dock to walk round, a large expanse of water which is very peaceful and quiet, and probably a 45 minute walk round the whole basin.


Millwall Dock

The next lunchtime distraction is down the road, less than 10 minutes walk, is Mudchute Farm. Created from the spoil from Millwall Dock, presumably dumped via a "mud chute" over the road, this is now London's biggest inner city farm, and is a marvellous hilly oasis, in which one can lose oneself and enjoy a green view interspersed with sheep, cows and other such countryside paraphernalia.



Of course, the Canary Wharf complex is still there, but somehow it seems so remote. There's more of the farm to explore, I've just enjoyed a sandwich in the bit nearest to my office. More soon...



Random fact: The expression "toe rag" comes from the workers on Millwall Docks who used to process grain coming off the ships. In order to protect their shoes from getting sharp grains inside, they would wrap them in sacks, hence "toe rag".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget to take the very wonderful pedestrian tunnel accross from mudchute under the Thames. Worth taking the lift as well as the stairs - very few attendant-operated lifts in London these days, and even fewer that are wood panneled...