In a vain attempt to find some redemption for the Millennium Dome I managed to persuade Dave to take a walk around the Greenwich Peninsular. It was a fantastically sunny day, so we felt that we had to do something "out", and I thought that it might be nice to see what they had done with the area around the Dome. Not such a good idea as it turned out. The Dome itself seems to have done absolutely nothing to contribute towards the regeneration of the area - if anything it is worse now, and it still stinks - literally. So bad you almost want to retch.
Walking along the Thames footpath around the outer circumference of the Dome is a pretty bleak, depressing and uninspiring experience. The Dome was intended to be an outwardly expressive, iconic "building", but the outside is mostly fenced-off. All you see when you walk around the perimeter are rubbish bins, vans, loading bays, crates, sheds, portaloos, stacks of various gear, general rubbish, and all sorts of other service paraphernalia. It is really sad and depressing that what what was originally a nice riverside general circulation area now resembles a trashed back alley. Even the former meridian plaza area, which I recall was quite nicely done for the original 2000 exhibition, is now just a trailer park for the cast and crew of the semi-permanent Afrika! show in it's tacky plastic tent alongside. Shame on you O2for allowing the Dome and its public spaces (both of which were paid for from public funds) to be so appalingly treated. I thought that the inside was pretty awful when we visited it last year (
Blog: New tack and old chic), but this was worse.
Continuing our walk down the west side of the Greenwich Peninsular we were at least expecting to see some evidence of physical or economic regeneration - the "knock-on effect" that was the main point of building the Dome in the first place. But nothing. Just the same old decrepit and derelict industrial riverside that it was when I first walked along here 20 years ago.And some of those factories really stink. It is difficult, I know, as these places are presumably productive and provide employment, but there seems little prospect of renewal and regeneration while they continue to operate. And the millions of pounds of public money pumped into the Dome have clearly had no effect whatsoever.
It was with some relief that on contnuing on towards Greenwich proper we arrived at one of our favourite pubs (and one of Greenwich's better kept secrets) - The Cutty Sark - for a very welcome pint.
Ven (or Hven in Danish and old Swedish) is a small island in the middle of the Öresund strait between Sweden and Denmark. We decided to go there for a day trip on our visit to Copenhagen, and had a lovely time.
