Walking the Circle Line: Temple to Embankment
I am continuing my walk above London Underground’s 27-stop 14-mile long Circle Line. Trying to stay as directly above the line as I can manage, along the way I’ve been taking large format photographs with a primitive pinhole camera.
Previous installments: Barbican to Moorgate, Moorgate to Tower Hill, Tower Hill to Blackfriars, Blackfriars to Temple.
In this installment, I walked the short distance from Temple to Embankment.
Above, the historic Queen Mary II, now a ‘floating restaurant’ (read: lads party boat) is in the foreground, Somerset House on the right, and London Eye in the distance. You can even see Big Ben if you look closely.
Somerset House below has been home to noblemen and royalty since the 1500s. These days, its home to Inland Revenue (the UK’s tax collectors) and a rather good museum. In winter this area becomes an ice rink.
One of the strangest monuments in London is Cleopatra’s Needle on The Embankment. An Egyptian monolith, the Needle stood in Egypt for 1600 years before it was moved to Alexandria in 12BC. Fast forward another 1800 years and this needle was declared a spoil of war by the British and began its long journey to London. For 3000 years it had sat next to another almost identical needle, and this eventually made its way to New York (it still stands next to Central Park). There are some rather crazy pictures of the needle making its trek here.
On each side of the needle are faux-Egyptian sphinxes. They still bare gashes and gouges from the World Wars as you can see in the foreground of the following photo.
