The London Walker

If you creep along Eastcheap beneath the great steel glass towers of commerce, pressed up against the walls by the suited noisy indulgent crowds who serve these buildings, you find yourself looking for the first point of escape. A few streets down from the famous Pudding Lane where the Great Fire began in 1666 you come across a narrow cobbled street called Lovat Lane. It descends steeply down towards the Thames and the old market building of Billingsgate. The street is ancient, dating right back into the early medieval period, although the buildings surrounding it are modern: it still retains that feel of agelessness. If you notice, unusual for modern streets in London, the gutters and drains are in the middle of the lane, as they would have been back in the middle ages. And at the bottom you get a really grand view of the Shard across the river.