Jubilee Greenway: Waterloo to Little Venice

This walk is pretty much tourist heaven as it goes past site after site, including:

• Nelson Mandela statue
• London Eye (above)
• Westminster Bridge
• Boudica statue
• Big Ben
• Houses of Parliament
• Churchill statue
• St. James's Park (below)
• Buckingham Palace
• Green Park
• Wellington Arch
• Hyde Park
• Serpentine
• Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery
• Serpentine Gallery
• Kensington Palace
• Paddington Bear Station
• Little Venice

So you won't be short of things to see and photograph.

There'll also be no shortage of places to stop for an ice cream, which was jolly useful given the day I walked it (a few weeks ago) was the hottest day of the year so far.

There was lots of opportunities to think about statues and the current debate about suitability. One that caught my eye in Hyde Park was celebrating the Cavalry of the Empire. This might have had meaning in Victorian London but now sounds deeply anachronistic.

High spot was the latest Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery. This is a structure that is put up in the same place but each year with a different architect. In this case there was also a soothing soundscape called "In a Garden" from Brian Eno - plus shade and ice creams, which were a very tempting combination.

There was a bit of hacking the backstreets from Hyde Park to Paddington and a rapid drop in social status from smart and elegant Embassies to a mess of betting shops and kebab restaurants.

Here I picked up the spur of the Regent's Canal for the final push to Little Venice:

I then back-tracked to Paddington tube via a newly opened entrance by the canal.

Why no picture of Paddington Bear, you might ask? Well the statue has been moved from the station itself to canal side where it was well and truly covered by various children.

So instead here's another tourist favourite:

As I took this photo I overheard a boy ask his mum "Where's the Queen?"

"She's busy, inside" he was told.

He wasn't satisfied.

"Could you ring her up and ask her to come outside?" he asked.

Alas it wasn't to be his lucky day.

For me it was a two ice cream day, which is good enough for me: