MLeonard goes to London!!!

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Don't go to London - its expensive, depressing and the food is really bad.

Have you ever met a Londoner? Not friendly.

To cap it off, the beer is warm and flat. Dreadful.

I think you may have left out a few cliches.

[MikeH]

Don't go to London it's full of f*cking Australians whinging about how much they hate it.

[Starchild]

He was probably too busy polishing his boomerang to type them all.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Don't go to London - its expensive, depressing and the food is really bad.

Have you ever met a Londoner? Not friendly.

To cap it off, the beer is warm and flat. Dreadful.

Hush, you're just jealous

So any plans to put faces to names?

[Alexander's Horse]

Did I mention the weather is really awful and the Thames smells like a sewer?

[Provost Harrison]

Tastes like one too. Plus by the time it reaches me, it has almost past through the whole of London

[Alexander's Horse]

Its the only river in the world you can walk across.

[Clear Skies]

Half the time the Thames is a sewer. When the water table can't cope the sewers just get emptied into the river in lieu.

I agree, the Thames is disgusting, but no-one's making you swim in it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Its the only river in the world you can walk across.

Still not fulfilling your quota of cliches.


" The Thames cleans up its act


While a piranha was being fished out of the Thames in east London last month, another non-native was basking on the river's shores.

Looking out of the office window, staff at Fothergill & Co were not shocked to see a seal's head bobbing in the water, oblivious to the passing traffic near Richmond Bridge.

Structural engineer Richard Philips, who caught the Richmond seal on film, said it indicated the change he has seen in the Thames over the past 30 years.

"Occasionally after you have heavy rain, some less than pleasant stuff gets washed in," he said.

"There's a bit of flotsam and jetsam on the surface, but apart from that it's remarkable.

"I have been rowing since the mid-70s and back then there were times when you would go and be ploughing through oil slicks - none of that is there now."

But he appears to be in the minority. Those monitoring the river find that while it is well-regarded internationally - its success comes as a surprise closer to home.

"[The Thames] is actually an environmental success story but it's not well known in this country," said Steve Colclough, a fisheries specialist at the Environment Agency

"People see a few bits of floating plastic which are unsightly and they assume it's pollution.

"We have had a recovery but the public does not realise it."

To the untrained eye it might appear to be a moving mud bath, but the water has improved enough to sustain 121 species of fish.

In 1960, a 20-year project began to extend London's major sewage treatment works and improve river quality. Now the Thames is one of the cleanest metropolitan estuaries in the world.

It is a sea change from 1957, when the Natural History Museum declared it "biologically dead" or incapable of supporting life.


The red-bellied piranha which landed on a "Thames Bubbler"

Now teeming with life - including large nurseries of Dover Sole, Sea Bass, oysters, cockle fisheries and some salmon - it reportedly supports the most diverse ecosystem of all Europe's metropolitan estuaries.

From the estuarine prawn at Battersea, the perch in Putney eastwards to Woolwich's thick-lipped mullet and the five-bearded rockling at Erith, the river is crawling with creatures.

Seals have been spotted as far up as Waterloo Bridge while dolphins and porpoises surface in the late summer and autumn.

And the burrowing Chinese Mitten Crab, which runs "like a spider" across the river bed, has been wreaking havoc on the banks of the Thames for some time. " "


You might try a dip in the Ganges, or a bit of skinny dipping in one of those delightful industrially polluted rivers that caught fire, before castigating Old Father Thames.

[Alexander's Horse]

good news indeed - do people fish off the bank? I'll bring my rod...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
good news indeed - do people fish off the bank? I'll bring my rod...

Only for the corpses of complaining Australians.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
good news indeed - do people fish off the bank? I'll bring my rod...

Yeah, I've seen a few people in the past fishing off the wharf at Erith so there must be something in the river...still I wouldn't fancy a swim in it...

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

It's easy to spot the Australians in London. They're the bar staff.

[Provost Harrison]

So true...although quite a few of the analysts where I work are Australian, Kiwi or South African...

[pchang]

We expect trip reports starting tomorrow.