Great Britain: Poplar Station Walkway

In this photo I'm standing at the north end of Canary Wharf looking toward the ancient hamlet of Poplar. The steeple of the early 19th century All Saints Poplar church can be seen in the background.

This bridge reminds me of one of The Happy Pontist's 'copycat coils.' It's a high level walkway to a light rail station over a highway.  There are a variety of elements (white staircases, a grey tower with cable-stays, a greenish tube) that don't seem to be very happy together.

Note the ornate ramp and bridge (in shadow) on the left side of the photo and the neo-Georgean buildings. This mixture of styles (similar to the different elements on the bridge) are hard on the eyes. Perhaps the walkway will get along better with it's neighbors over time, but its hard for me to imaging it being around that long.

Great Britain: Poplar Station Walkway by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Great Britain: West India Quay Footbridge (2)

Another look at the West India Quay Footbridge. It's hard to imagine this area when it was mostly ships and warehouses for the distribution of sugar and rum from the West Indies (a chain of Caribbean Islands that includes earthquake-ravaged Haiti). Columbus thought he had found a new route to Southeast Asia and so they called the region the West Indies after they realized his mistake.

The Happy Pontist correctly stated that the bridge pontoons are anchored to the channel bottom. This area is affected by tidal currents so the anchorage must keep the bridge from lifting off the quays during high tide.  He also correctly named this bridge. I was originally reluctant to give the proper name because I didn't know if I would be able to continue to do so for all the bridges around Canary Wharf.

Great Britain: West India Quay Footbridge (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.