Wapping to Canary Wharf

Remember how I said I was feeling stir-crazy? Well, yesterday I decided to walk another segment of the Thames Path. The weather wasn't looking great but I was determined not to be duped by another forecast of rain that didn't pan out. So I went anyway.

Unfortunately, this forecast turned out to be correct. It was the wettest walk I've ever taken!

I wasn't the only crazy person out, though. You can see the towers of Canary Wharf rising behind that determined jogger in the picture above.

I first took the tube and overground to Wapping. A woman sitting across from me on the train was wearing oversized false eyelashes and a pair of sweatpants that said "Essentials: Fear of God." Whatever that means.

Once I'd started walking, I soon passed the Prospect of Whitby pub, which according to my route map was a "favorite vantage point for Whistler and Turner, who painted some of their most famous riverside scenes from here; it was also a regular drinking place for Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys." That narrow alley to the right of the pub leads to steps that go right down to the water.

I passed some curious graffiti...

...some of it a little scary.

(But I suppose it's true that nobody gets out alive, ultimately!)

Here's Jane Ackroyd's bronze sculpture of a Herring Gull near Limehouse. It's standing on a coil of rope, and indeed this park is known as Ropemaker's Fields, named for a historic industry of the area.

The Thames Path itself didn't always follow the river shore; sometimes it was broken by developments and I had to walk on the nearest streets until I found the river again. But at a few points I could walk right down onto the pebbly shore. Here, Lady Luck was tempting me to take a chance on something but I didn't follow through.

Finally, I got to the gleaming skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and since I was pretty wet by that time, I called it a day. I'd hoped to walk all the way around the Isle of Dogs but that will have to wait for another outing.

I bought some peanut butter, soup and fresh flowers on the way home and spent the rest of the afternoon snuggled inside on the couch with the dog while Dave graded student assignments in his recliner.

My evening movie was "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," with Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft, which I hadn't seen in many years. It was much better than I remembered, and still pertinent even though it came out in 1975. The travails of its neurotic main character, a middle-aged man who's laid off and becomes obsessed with the idea that the world is plotting against him, sure sounded a lot like Q-Anon. And that was before the Internet!