Lockdown London during covid19 – a photo essay

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As I write this (May 2020), we are still in the ‘new normal’ that the coronavirus pandemic has thrust upon us and life within the ‘bubble’ continues, socially distancing as we go. Like many backpackers and travellers, our travel plans for the next few months have been curtailed – sayonara South East Asia, ciao for now Italia – and we are increasingly using this time to discover more of our local area, as part our daily exercise routine during the covid19 crisis.

We live in north east London so we can easily cycle along the canal ways all the way to the Thames River / Central London and have been doing this more often as part our recommended daily exercise. It feels REALLY weird not to have used the bus or underground these last few weeks – what used to seem so mundane and routine now feels like a distant dream – we never thought we’d crave to get back on the tube…

As we adapt, so too has our CK Travels blog and we’ve temporarily started to write more about our local area and other London spots we’d visited before lockdown but hadn’t got around to publishing. These pictures are a result of an early morning cycle into central London on the VE Day Friday bank holiday, just as some of the London lockdown measures were about to be loosened.

Whilst weirdly busy in some areas like Tower Bridge (like lockdown didn’t exist), it was so strange to have usually heaving parts of London (like Leicester Square) all to yourself – eerily empty streets especially in the city were the norm. It is just you, the occasional red London double decker bus and a stream of cyclists. It was also surreal to be in the middle of Southwark Bridge with no cars passing, usually one of the busiest bridges in central London.

We’d never seen the capital like this before (other than in a zombie or apocalypse movie) and probably never will again – this time of uncertainty will pass and London life will resume, be it for better or worse (and paying £5 for a coffee or pint of beer in a pub won’t seem so bad – probably – after all…)