silent city

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home alone

early this christmas morning i scoffed a mince pie for breakfast, grabbed my bike and headed out into a completely deserted london.

for one morning a year you can see london minus it’s inhabitants. nothing is open and there are no tubes, cars, buses, planes, commuters, pollution, tourists or floating yodas in sight. the roads are perfectly clear for zipping around on your bike and i decided to visit some famous landmarks and see them in a completely new light:

with no one around, millennium bridge paints an unbroken ribbon of steel from the tate modern to st pauls. further up the river, i crossed the railings and got up close to the graffiti at the undercroft of the southbank centre. 

heading into the city, the adverts at piccadilly circus were still on a loop just for me and i was joined at the once-bustling centre of covent garden by a pair of mice admiring the christmas disco ball.

as the morning wore on, the light increased and i did occasionally bump into a jogger or a confused tourist but otherwise i had some parts of the city to myself. the silence really got to me – you don’t realise how much noise is bombarding you on a regular day. it’s a very weird experience but i’m glad i got to see and hear a different side of the city. 

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all photos shot on iPhone 6s. edited in VSCO

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