Thursday, 22 February 2024

A Spin on the London Eye

Saturday 30 November 2002. There's some sort of event on in Wembley on Sunday 1 December so Fran and I are staying in a Premier Inn at Wembley for the weekend. I can't quite remember what it was advertised as, but there was a large record fair and a particular draw was that both actresses Caroline Munro and Ingrid Pitt were to be there. We had met them both some five years previously and thought it would be fun to meet up again.

9:30am Saturday morning we head for Waterloo Station on the Underground. We had decided to try to get on the London Eye. At this time of morning there were no queues. We got tickets and walked straight on.

Whilst we were near the bottom it was interesting watching the pods discharge and take on passengers!

There's a fabulous view all the way around and it's easy to spot landmarks such as St Paul's and Big Ben.

There were few enough people in each pod to be able to get to a window to allow a good viewpoint.

It wasn't what you would call the sunniest of mornings - the view must be even better when it's sunny. But given that we are on the last day of November, we can't really expect sunny skies and weather fit for t-shirts and shorts.

At the top of the wheel with the next pod on the same level. The pod looks very space age!

Starting to come down. The whole trip takes half an hour. A great view of the Houses of Parliament, or the Palace of Westminster whichever floats your boat. Though if you're going to be picky then your boat is the one turning sideways further up the river past Vauxhall Bridge...

After passengers leave a pod it is scanned with metal detectors before anyone else can enter. This is done quite quickly so that the wheel isn't forced to stop to long each time a pod unloads and loads.

As we walk away to wonder what to do next we notice a piece of blue string fastened to a lamp post - obviously the lamp post too was trying to remember something...

Return to London and Wembley Record Fair Index

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