On Friday night and Saturday morning, I walked twenty miles around this great city. And it was hard. Grania had decided to join me a couple of weeks ago, squeezing the charity walk in between the end of the working day and a 6am train to Gatwick on Saturday morning, which was insania but I was glad of the company. At about 7.15pm we left my flat, took the tube to London Bridge and walked over to City Hall, where there was a band playing inspiring tunes to get us in the mood, and we were given our route maps and a free bottle of water and our commemorative T-shirts and our bowler hats. Yes. Our bowler hats.
So. Then we dashed up inside the spiral of City Hall to see the big press room which was fun, and then back down to the starting line for about 20:45. West along the river from Tower Bridge to the Wheel. On the Wheel for an 'exclusive' nightride which was great, could see for miles, tried and failed to ditch our bowlers by swapping them with passers' by, then over Waterloo Bridge, up Victoria Street, left halfway along, across to Channel 4, where we had a tour and learned that Richard Rogers always likes to put phallic symbols in his buildings, and Grania ate a flapjack (later regretted), and then we set off again, wiggling through south Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge Road, over Ebury Bridge, near Google, waved at Simon, correctly following the yellow arrows when the pack ahead of us had turned left, up into Belgravia, south of Harrods, up Beauchamp Place, past lots of drunk people, left onto Brompton Road, past the V&A, right at the Natural History Museum, past the Science Museum, up to the next stop, the Royal Geographical Society, where there was a string quartet playing and we ate biscuits and photographed ourselves standing behind the lectern, and then we went on, along Kensington Gore and then Ken High Street, past many more drunk people, past a queue of Eurotrash waiting to get into a club in the building where Barkers used to be (poss a new entrance to the Roof Gardens?), and we agreed that we'd genuinely rather be spending our Friday night walking twenty miles than queuing to get into that club, and then left opposite Olympia, down past Barons Court, noticing that one of the flats with the huge windows on the Talgarth Road is for sale, and then past where I once weed in the street following massive night out at Lucy and Tina's when I fell off a bed into a wooden clothes drying rack and got a black eye, and then Grania told me about when she once got home to her mum's house after a big party and was sick in the dog bed while the dog was still in it, and then we arrived at the Fulham Palace Road and turned left into Charing Cross Hospital to visit the amazing Maggie's Centre, which is beautiful and so worthwhile and made it all so much more powerful but we couldn't sit down in case we never got up again, so we carried on down Fulham Palace Road, went to Fulham Palace at the south end but turned around and came straight back after posing by a fountain in the courtyard, and then went up the New King's Road, over the hump, past Crazy Larry's and Embargo, and then right near the Chelsea Bun, onto Edith Grove, past where the Stones used to live, left onto the Embankment, along along along, and then right over Battersea Bridge, down past the QVC building to the roundabout with the Shell garage, where Grania bought a toothbrush, and then left onto York Way or whatever it is, past Battersea Dogs' Home, where I was photographed stroking the photograph of a kitten, and then on into Battersea Power Station, the architectural highlight for me, which was moving and incredible and I loved it, and we ate egg mayonnaise sandwiches and drank squash and stretched a bit, and then on to Vauxhall, so close to home, but no, left over Vauxhall Bridge, right onto Millbank, past Labour HQ, past the Commons, over Parliament Square, round the back towards the park, but then onto Horse Guards, and then actually across Horseguards, where they do the Trooping of the Colour (I think, having never been as a grown-up) and the moon was bright, and Grania and I had our photos taken with handsome (it was dark, let us live our dreams) guards wearing full pointy-silver-hat-with-long-white-horsehair-tassel-thing and they squeezed us very tight and we giggled like forty year olds at a Chippendale shows, and then went through the building out onto Whitehall, and then (hilariously) down the exact road where the woman's wee went on my foot, and some other woman tried to talk to us at that point, wanting to bond about the handsome guards, and Grania and I both wanted to bond and be nice, but also it was about 4 in the morning and we had a little further to go and we were tired and smalltalk proved beyond us, and we ploughed on, under Hungerford Bridge, along the Embankment again to the final stop, the Savoy Hotel, where we went up to the third floor in a lift and drank cheap Champagne out of plastic flutes on the balcony and then I sat on my own in the big, loudly-carpeted room while Grania went to the loo, and I listened to the band, and when she came back she said I looked like the loser guest at a bad wedding, sitting there in my walking boots, and then we went down the stairs and briefly got embroiled in another conversation with the same woman, but then she overtook us when she became confident of the route, and we carried on east along the river, past Somerset House and Blackfriars, up to the Millennium Bridge and then left up the stairs towards St. Paul's, and then right and right again, back onto the river, and we could see Tower Bridge, our goal, but it wasn't getting any closer, and then the route took us north of the river about a block, along Upper Thames Street and then Lower Thames Street, and then to the Tower, round it and right, over Tower Bridge and finally down the stairs to the finish line, where we were given medals and free muesli and then we had to race to find a cab so that Grania could get back to my flat, pick up her luggage and head back to Victoria for the Gatwick Express. I had a bath and went to bed, and then woke up three hours later because my legs were aching so much. I took two Nurofen and went back to sleep. Then at 11am my downstairs neighbours started playing loud, bad R'n'B. I lay on my sofa, then went to my parents', fell asleep after a delicious dinner at about 9pm and went to bed. Maggie's Centres are £550 richer as a result. Excellent.
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