Walking to Wembley

Well, I spoke too soon. Just as I complained about the weather in yesterday's post, we had a relatively sunny day! Still a little chilly for my taste, but at least not damp and drizzly.

I decided to celebrate by taking a nice long walk out to Wembley Stadium. I'd never been out that way, and I wanted to check out the neighborhoods on the way and take some photos.

The stadium itself is a 90,000-seat behemoth that hovers over surrounding neighborhoods like a UFO. It's a very distinctive structure, with a huge metal arch that I'd previously seen only faintly from the London Eye, about eight miles away. I didn't realize it's only about five years old -- according to the always-trusty Wikipedia, this incarnation of Wembley opened in 2007, following the demolition of the previous stadium, which had stood since 1923.

Here's a map of my walk, which came to about 6.7 miles. I did get lots of interesting photos -- primarily storefronts in the heavily immigrant neighborhoods along the way. I'm sure I'll share some of those in future posts, or you can find them on my Flickr in a week or two. (It takes me a while to catch up -- I have a perpetual backlog of photos. I try to only add about ten a day so as not to overwhelm.)

I didn't walk back home again. I took the tube!