Greenland Pier to Greenwich

Having determined that I need to be more vigilant about exercising, I decided to walk another section of the Thames Path yesterday. I began where I stopped in late June, at Greenland Pier near Surrey Quays, and walked the riverfront about 3 miles past Greenwich.

The mural above, featuring wild birds of all sorts, was in Surrey Quays on the way to the starting point.

The path followed the river for a while. I watched some guys in a boat out on the water doing something involving hoisting a huge tank on a chain. They were wearing high-viz vests and blasting the Arctic Monkeys song "Fluorescent Adolescent," which I could hear clearly from shore. (Side note: The video for that song is the craziest thing I have ever seen.)

The path briefly cut inland at Deptford, where it crossed through several parks, including one named for Samuel Pepys who apparently lived there. I checked out the butterfly and wildlife garden, but didn't see much activity.

The path also passed a shuttered old pub, the Princess of Wales, which appears to be flats now. The building is for sale, if you're interested.

In Sayes Court Park, another green space, there's a fenced-off old mulberry tree that was allegedly planted by Russian Czar Peter the Great in 1698. Peter apparently visited London and stayed on the property, then the home of John Evelyn, a "great writer and herbalist" (according to my walking map). In fact, Evelyn complained that Peter and his entourage trashed the house, like a bunch of '70s rockers in a hotel room.

The fact that Peter wrecked the house makes it unlikely, in my mind, that he also planted a tree, but who am I to say?

There's also an elaborate monument to Peter the Great on the riverfront in Deptford. Apparently Vladimir Putin himself visited it back in 2003, three years after it was erected. A year ago some unidentified metal thieves attacked it with an angle grinder and damaged it, which is why half of it is now encased in green plywood. (The part beneath the wood is a figure of a court dwarf, which seems like it might be problematic from a sensitivity standpoint anyway.)

Here's the backside, so you can see what I mean.

From there, the path continued past lots of large apartment blocks to the Greenwich waterfront, with views of Canary Wharf across the river.

In Greenwich I diverged from the route so I could check out some antique shops, including the self-proclaimed junk shop where I bought a bunch of old photographic slides last fall. There were no more slides but I did spend quite a bit of time looking through a box of old (and not-so-old) photographs, including some that appeared to depict the same people who were in some of those slides. I bet I looked at 500 pictures, but I only bought a few -- most of them were boring, nondescript shots of blurry beaches, blurry hills, blurry castles.

Then it was back to the Thames, where I passed the flag-draped Trafalgar Tavern, which I'd photographed from the other side of the river in January.

I concluded my walk at the riverfront in Greenwich near this big dead heart. I'm hoping to keep walking more, so I'll be back on the trail continuing eastward soon enough!