In May, when I first conceived of the notion of travelling the whole of London by bike, taking photos to compile a portrait of the city at this troubling time in its history (caught between the Olympics and its role as a harbour for the global rich on the one hand, and on the other subjected to the Tories’ ruinous and ideologically malignant “age of austerity”), the first places I visited were Greenwich and Deptford (or see here), down the hill from my home in Brockley, in south east London.

Greenwich, of course, is internationally renowned, and deservedly so, as it is the home of the Royal Observatory (and the location of the prime meridian), and is also the home of the recently renovated Cutty Sark tea clipper, and the splendid Royal Naval College.

Deptford, in contrast, Greenwich’s westerly neighbour and the site of the former Royal Dockyard, is unknown to many Londoners, and has few obvious attractions beyond its two historically significant churches — the Church of St. Nicholas on Deptford Green, where the playwright Christopher Marlowe is buried, and the Church of St. Paul, located off Deptford High Street. Read the rest of this entry »

These photos are the last in a series of photos from Friday August 31, 2012, when, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled through central London and back to my home in Brockley, in south east London, after attending a protest in Triton Square, just off Euston Road, outside the offices of Atos Healthcare, the multinational company that is running the government’s vile review process for disabled people, which is designed to find them fit for work when they are not. See the Flickr set here.

After the protest, I cycled through Fitzrovia to Oxford Street, and then on to Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross and the Southbank Centre. The previous Flickr sets are here, here and here. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday August 31, 2012, I attended a protest in Triton Square, just north of Euston Road, outside the offices of Atos Healthcare, the multinational company that is running the government’s vile review process for disabled people, which is designed to find them fit for work when they are not. See the Flickr set here.

Afterwards, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I took the opportunity to take photographs as I travelled through Fitzrovia to Oxford Street, where I met my wife and my son for a visit to HMV in search of DVDs and CDs, and then, afterwards, to take photos of Oxford Street, and then to visit Trafalgar Square, where a screen had been set up for the Paralympic Games. I then crossed the river on the Hungerford Bridge, taking photos from the elevated walkway beside Charing Cross station, and on to the Southbank Centre. The previous Flickr sets are here and here. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began in May — and which I still don’t have an official title for, or any funding — I have been making almost daily bike trips around London, accumulating several thousand photos that I haven’t yet been able to post, in addition to those already published on Flickr. I intend to post a set a day for the foreseeable future.

Initially I started cycling around with a camera to get fit, and to devote time to photography, a love of mine that has been overshadowed for the last six years by my dedication to exposing the US crimes at Guantánamo and elsewhere in the “war on terror,” but I soon became enthralled by my city, the one that I have lived in for 27 years, but which, it turned out, was quite unknown to me, beyond familiar areas. Cycling is a perfect way of getting to know a place, and since May I have covered extensive sections of south east London, and also ventured into north and east London, south west London, the West End and the City. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 31, 2012, after I took part in a demonstration against the involvement of the multinational corporation Atos Healthcare in the government’s disgraceful disability reviews, designed to find disabled people for work when they are not, I cycled from Triton Square, where the protest had taken place — a small but highly corporate private development on the northern side of the Euston Road — through Fitzrovia — the area south of Euston Road, and north of Oxford Street, bounded by Gower Street to the east and Great Portland Street to the west — to Oxford Street, and then on to Trafalgar Square, across the river to Waterloo and back to my home in Brockley through Bermondsey.

I still have many hundreds of photos to post of trips I made in July and early August (before my family holiday in Italy) as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, but in an effort to try and keep up with the trips I have made since returning from Italy, I’m making a concerted effort to post the most recent photos first, beginning with these. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike (or see here), I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the last of the four, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames,  Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich and Lost Glories: Photos of a Thames Journey from Woolwich to Thamesmead (also see here, here and here). In those, I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky; the second stage, through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs; and the third, through the housing developments in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, and then on to Thamesmead. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames Barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh Prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the third, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames and Industry and Decay: Photos of a Journey Along the Thames from Greenwich to Woolwich (also see here and here) in which I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky, and then through New Charlton, past the Thames Barrier and into Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I cycled east from Greenwich, intending to travel to the Thames barrier, on the border of Charlton and Woolwich, but then carrying on, through Woolwich to Thamesmead, the satellite town originally built in the 1960s, and used as the setting for Stanley Kubrick’s notorious film “A Clockwork Orange,” and back via Belmarsh prison and Plumstead, before rejoining the Thames Path once more for the journey back west, and home.

I’m posting these photos in four sets, and this is the second, following Chasing Clouds in Greenwich: Photos of a Journey East Along the Thames (or see here), in which I recorded the first stage of the journey, through Greenwich under a brooding, rain-filled sky. In this second set, as the rain fell, I passed some of the surviving industrial sites alongside the river, in east Greenwich and Charlton — or, to be strictly accurate, New Charlton — and on past the Thames Barrier to Woolwich, through industrial estates, and with a diversion to an evocative set of river stairs. The rain had passed by the time I reached Woolwich, and the sun was shining once more, but the weather was so restless that there were wonderful lively skies, as captured in the next photo set, which I’ll be posting tomorrow. Read the rest of this entry »

On July 11, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, I decided to revisit a journey I had made last year, when my wife’s sister visited from Scotland and we went cycling along the Thames Path from Greenwich to the Thames Barrier, out to the east on the border of Greenwich and Woolwich. On that occasion, I had been delighted to borrow my wife’s camera to take photos, and it undoubtedly provided a spur for me to get back into photography, a passion since adolescence, which I had neglected since becoming a full-time writer and researcher on Guantánamo six and a half years ago. My wife then made it a reality by buying me a camera last Christmas.

It then took a while for me to come up with a project that enabled me to make the most of my awakened interest in photography, but in May, after I had begun cycling around my neighbourhood with my son over the preceding months, regularly taking in not just Brockley, but also Nunhead, Forest Hill, Greenwich and Deptford, and after we had the rainiest spring in living memory, I found that I couldn’t stay in the house on the first sunny days in what seemed like an eternity, and, as a result, I took to my bike, repeating those trips with my camera, and then travelling further afield. Very swiftly, I decided that it was so good for my body, my mind and my spirit to cycle regularly, to explore the city that has been my home for the last 27 years, to get to know it and to feel it and to understand it, and to photograph the aspects of it that were of interest to me, that I would embark on a project to cycle the whole of London and to photograph it. Read the rest of this entry »

These photos are the latest contributions to my ongoing project, on Flickr, to photograph the whole of London by bike — the sixteenth instalment in what will eventually comprise many hundreds of photos sets. I currently have 60 sets to post, mostly taken in a very busy month before my summer holiday in Italy, so please bear with me. I have also been adding the photos to an interactive map, which can be found here, and I am also engaged in bringing the photos together in collections, for which maps also exist, which I hope help to contextualise the photos. Tags may also be a good way of seeking out photos, and tags are available here.

The project is my way of getting to understand London, the city that has been my home for the last 27 years, and came about because I needed — for reasons involving my health and what I think can accurately be described as my spiritual existence — to combine exercise, exploration and my neglected love of photography. Read the rest of this entry »