20 January 2006

Whale Watching in London


A bizarre event captivated London today, and your roving reporter was on hand to capture the fun, albeit with his clapped-out Sony digital camera with a battery life of about 5 minutes in the cold.

Anyhow, for those not in the UK (just about everybody here has had continuous news coverage of this event for 5-6 hours), a bottle-nosed whale about 5m (17') in length has swum up the Thames, as far as Albert Bridge near Battersea, where currently I believe it has evaded all the boats trying to look after it. It almost beached itself a couple of times, but with a bit of encouragement seemed to get going again (see photo here with the fin between boat and man).

Sorry about the poor photos - time for a new camera I think. But at least it was an excuse to get a photo of my favourite bridge - Albert - at dusk with lots of people standing on it watching for the whale.

The other amusing aspect to this story for those that know me is to picture my state trying to photograph the whale. I had just returned from the gym, shorts on, grabbed my camera, and set off, no gloves of course. I could barely move my fingers!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a shot of the Albert bridge! Definitely one of the highlights from when Caitlin and I came to visit. In fact, that may be one of my favorite bridges as well...

Too bad things didn't work out so well for the whale, though. Sad ending to an otherwise -unbelievable- story.

Take care Ian!