London Book Bench Hunting Part 2: The Riverside Trail

[nanila]

[Clarice Bean!]

Humuhumu and I continued our hunt for the Books about Town last Saturday. We headed out early for Tower Gateway and the south bank of the Thames.

As you can see from the first photo with the Clarice Bean bench, her enthusiasm for this project seems only to grow stronger. The first four benches are clustered near to one another.


She loved the checkerboard pattern on the Through the Looking Glass bench.


A more sedate pose allows the viewer to see the rest of the detail.


How to Train Your Dragon was also an enormous hit with my little fire dragon.


However, she flatly refused to sit on the Dr Seuss bench. She very recently underwent a large cognitive leap, which seems to have sparked a much greater sensitivity to her surroundings. I asked her three times if she would sit on this bench and every time I was answered quite firmly by a "No".


She was less wary of the Discworld bench, but she wouldn't sit on this one either. It was set away from the main riverside walkway.


The Axel Scheffler and Julia Donaldson book bench, however, was met with unqualified enthusiasm. She isn't so familiar with the Gruffalo yet, but she does know the style of the artwork from the simpler books that are aimed at younger children.


Having a little word with the Big Bad Mouse. This bench has been placed rather awkwardly facing a railing. It's quite difficult to get a good shot of it from the front if you're not using a wide-angle lens.


We had to walk a fair distance to reach the Great Expectations bench.


She spotted the bench's companion piece in the square...


Paddington Bear.


We had to do a little check to make sure that pot of marmalade wasn't genuine.


The Shakespeare bench is, appropriately, in front of the Globe Theatre, setting it quite far from all the other benches on this trail. We reached it around 10:45 AM, when the riverside path was beginning to get quite busy. We selected our moment on the bench during a lull in the crowds, but just as we got ourselves set up for our quick photo shoot, an enormous group of tourists approached. I was about to take her away, but they begged me to leave her near the bench. So I did, hovering nervously - and unnecessarily, as she is entirely comfortable having a battery of lenses pointed at her!

Once again, we missed out on a couple of the benches in the area: War Horse and The World's Biggest Flipbook. But as we're not pushing ourselves to be completist (she is still under two and her energy for long walks is limited), I think we're doing pretty well. Two more trails to go...

Comments

[weaverbird]

It's so much fun following your book bench quest! Humuhumu's glee is infectious, and your pictures are wonderful.

[nanila]

Aw, thank you! I'm trying to work out how we're going to get down there to do the other two trails. It'll probably require two weekends, and there aren't many weekends left before the benches go to auction on 15 September.