Ireland day 1466. Friday 03 October 2025- London 2

Today’s summary	Met up with friends for lunch at “Lemonia” restaurant at Primrose Hill. Afterwards Val went Bristol on the train to meet up with relatives. I had a quiet evening taking a short riverside walk and watching travel videos on YouTube
Today’s weather	Overcast and wet much of the day. Moderate south westerly wind. Appx 18c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Blackfriars loop walk

Commentary

Today was our second day in London and we had quite a relaxing day – well I did at least, though Val had a slightly more packed agenda.

We had a relaxing morning enjoying cups of tea and coffee with our toast before heading up the Northern Line to Chalk Farm for our first engagement of the day. We had arranged to meet up with friends for lunch at the nearby “Lemonia” restaurant in Primrose Hill, and it turned out to be a really good get together. We hadn’t seen them since September last year, when they came over to stay with us in Ireland. So there was lots to discuss and the time seemed to fly.

Eventually at about 3pm it was time to say goodbyes and head off our own separate ways. I was very glad to have been able to catch up with them, as I sometimes worry that our old friends in the UK might have started to forget about us now that we’re living on the other side of the Irish Sea. Fortunately that doesn’t seem to be happening yet, but we need to keep working at it.

After our lunch, I went with Val to Paddington station. She caught a 4:30pm train to Bristol, where she’s meeting up with some of her family and staying for a couple of days. I had intended walking back across London to Covent Garden but it was raining quite hard by this stage, so I took the tube instead.

Later on, I took a short walk along the Thames to Blackfriars and then spent the rest of the evening watching travel videos about hiking in Sweden. Fantastic!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Two views of Paddington Station. This is the mainline station (one of Brunel’s finest), from where trains to Wales and the west of England depart..	..and this is the Circle Line underground station (though it isn’t very underground at this stage!)

Looking downstream from Waterloo Bridge	St Paul’s from the South Bank. London at its best



Val being launched towards Bristol