Senate House, from he BT Tower

Today was a strange one. I’ve been invited to three Christmas ‘do’s in the last couple of weeks, but BT trumped them all but holding its one at the top of the BT Tower.

I’ve been up before (see here for a description of the inside of the tower from my last visit), but as it’s not open to the general public, the chance of a repeat visit isn’t something you turn down. Plus it’s so close to the office that if it ever fell down the top of it would land on my desk.

So I wandered down around lunchtime and rode London’s fastest lifts to the 34th floor (1400 feet per minute, with sounds to match) where everything had been coated in fake snow, Christmas carols were tinkling gently, and a dozen serving types were wandering around with mince pies and turkey. All quite surreal with the sun shining brightly on London almost 600ft below.

Anyhow, Will and I duly walked a complete circuit around the tower’s top floor, asking the necessary questions and scribbling notes, and then gave in to the fantastic views through the windows. It really does give you the best possible view of London - far better than you get from the top of the London Eye.

Regent’s Park looks beautiful, and it’s clearly so close to Hyde Park that you have to ask yourself why you never realised just how green London is. In the opposite direction is the city, and beyond it Docklands, and it’s clear how all of London’s tallest buildings have been corralled in the east, in much the same way that the Parisians have put all of their tallest buildings to the furthest west of the city in La Defense. The only exception is the sore-thumb Montparnasse Tower, which clearly sprung up rampant bramble-like when they weren’t looking.

Dotted here and there on all sides are the arch over the new Wembley Stadium, the revamped Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, the British Museum and Senate House, Battersea Power Station, the Houses of Parliament and a healthy cluster of masts, towers and television antennae.

Sadly they don’t give you a certificate to prove you’ve been up there any longer, or the chocolate BT Tower they gave us last time I went up (although from memory that was quite nasty, so it’s perhaps not a bad thing), but it is still the best thing you could ever hope to do in London.

Although most people can’t do it at all.

Centre Point and the London Eye

Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 10:03 pm and is filed under London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.