I had to go to That London last week for an event which meant me getting up stupidly early to get to "The City" for a 9.30 start.
There's something to be said for Thameslink which meant that I could get a train a 7.30am (inhuman), change at Haywards Heath and arrive at City Thameslink at 9.15am, just a 10minute walk from the venue. Doing this meant swerving the Tube on what promised to be a very warm day.
Since I'd had to shell out stupid money to get myself there it seemed a bit of a waste not to make the most of being in London so I'd suggested to the Boy that if he fancied the trip at a slightly more civilised (ie cheaper) time of day, we could meet up. Alternatively, I could head home.
He took the former option and we said we'd meet at Blackfriars station and maybe wander to Tate Modern with a Lomo camera to do a bit of film photography, and take in what was on there.
When I emerged from the event which had been really hot and stuffy I did so into this square with loads of public seating entirely surrounded by ridiculously tall glass buildings. It was gloriously cool so I perched and caught up with stuff whilst I recovered from standing for an hour in the event.
After that, I had an hour or so to kill so I thought I'd stroll down to the embankment via Temple Church for a bit of an architectural gawp. I passed Samuel Johnson's house and down to Fleet Street whilst getting hotter. I thought there'd be a chance of a bench under a tree near the church but several hundred (well, about a dozen) people also had that idea and no seating in the shade was available. So I walked down to the river but building works prevented walking alongside and the cool gardens that appeared to be available were very much "Public Keep Out". Oh, yeah I'd forgotten places like that!
So I plodded on remembering that there used to be a long row of public benches outside the Blackfriar pub...but no, building works have absorbed that space too.
There were chairs and table outside the pub but I assume they were for Patrons and, as much as I love the building I didn't really fancy beer (and definitely not Nicholsons Ordinary) at the time. Nevermind, a bit of shady perching space opened up outside the station so I waited there. It's right next to the road and sound of irritable driving was intense.
Turns out, it may have been better to cross the bridge since the station has two exits...anyhow, we met up and wandered across together.
The south side of the river was also largely subsumed by building work - it looked like it was around my old company's disaster recovery side in what had been old bank building from the 70's.
We fought through pedestrians winding their way and eventually landed at Tate Modern. I needed to eat but there wasn't any shade so we perched on a beautiful black stone bench which had managed to absorb all the sun it wanted and was, as a result, a bit of a bum burner!
I absolutely love the space alongside this bit of London but we needed to get some shade so we went inside. My favourite exhibition bits was a Cuban artist's invocation of their home countryin sound, picutre and sculpture. His favourite was some small metal sculptures. When I leave a gallery not having seen it all, I sometimes feel like I'm doing it wrong...but we'd enjoyed most of what we'd seen, we took some Lomo pictures and we wanted to move on.
We headed toward Borough Market.
The first place we came across was The Rake. As ever it's a wonderful pub/place with good beer on offer and not all of it at really Londony prices. We relaxed and had a couple and I recovered from the heat and the walking (and the standing).
We thought it would be wrong not to go somewhere else, so we decided the Market Porter would be just the place. It was crowded outside but looked cool and welcoming inside. Except, the beer...there were 4 or 5 casks on but all of it was mainstream. It couldn't possibly match up to what we'd just been drinking so, knowing there were 2 or 3 other really good pubs nearby we struck out again revisit pubs we'd enjoyed in the past. We landed at the Old King's Head - a GBG stalwart with u21 football on the TV. All they had was Tribute and not in good condition, either...though it was cheap in happy hour. We watched some of the football but could only get halfway through the beer. We wanted to stay within striking distance of London Bridge station for the journey home so we thought either the Royal Oak in Tabbard Street or back to the Rake.
To be honest, if we didn't live in Sussex we would probably have opted for Harveys Pub...but I wasn't in the mood and it was a bit hot for their beers. Back to the Rake then, for another brilliant beer (Circle who had a takeover) before getting back on the train.
We reflected on the way home how disappointed we were at the changes in pubs we used to know and love but also now Borough Market is a very different sort of destination. Where once were little independent restaurants etc, there are now mainly chains and maybe that's influencing the availability of a variety of different beer. We'd literally seen nowhere we fancied eating and so we'd got an earlier train than otherwise would have been case, and made some pasta back at home.
I did also look on "Real Ale Finder" to see what beer might be available and only The Harp had an entry and none of what was on the list would have been enough to take me back over that way. Looking on the What Pub app just listed a plethora of Fullers (at best) and similar places.
The shame of it is that a lot of the pubs would be lovely to be in but without matching beer, I'm not going in.
If we have to do this again, I'll probably be looking at taprooms and the like which is a shame because whilst the beer might be superb...they're not proper London pubs, are they?
