Ambling around London pt 1 - southbank of the River Thames

Start out at the newly re-opened and beautifully honey-coloured Southwark Cathedral (look out in particular for the moving memorial to the Marchioness victims) and, at the weekend, pop into Borough Market for a browse and a spot of breakfast or lunch.

Head towards the Thames via the Clink Prison Museum (Madame-Tussauds-cum-horror-chamber) - bankside was formerly home to licensed prostitutes, bear-baiters and cockfighters whom the Clink housed on and off - and next door look for the remaining rose window of the bishopric of Winchester. Then there's a replica Golden Hind for children, leading onto the river itself.

Past Vinopolis (a pricy museum dedicated to worldwide wine) stop at the impressive red-brick, tall-chimneyed Tate Modern, renovated from power-station into gallery with free exhibitions of modern art - the top-floor cafe is a cheap place for a coffee and rest (plus a good view).

Wanamaker's open-air Globe Theatre has re-opened to rave reviews and gives an authentic experience, as well as the attached museum giving a regular Shakespearean history lesson.

Further along, closer to the National Theatre, is a weekend open-air second-hand book market. If you're lucky, you may see a heron or cormorant dipping into the Thames for his own breakfast.

Eventually, you'll reach the Millennium Wheel (the Eye - with long queues in the Summer) and London Aquarium in the glorious crescent of the County Hall building (search out coffee bars and restaurants in the plaza behind for a rest).

Quick Tips:

Summer only, you can see a play at the Globe from £5 if you're prepared to stand in the round (which includes not sitting down - you'll be poked in the back by security or possibly trampled by an actor making an entrance through the standing audience if you do) - sometimes it doesn't close even for bad weather so watch the forecast if you plan to be open to the elements. Prices at the NT are a bit higher and often require pre-booking.

Best Way To Get Around:

Buses run to and from these suggested start points and you can access the southbank by crossing the Millennium Bridge (or "bouncy bridge" as locals now call it) from St Paul's Cathedral (which is obviously well worth a visit but merits an entire entry of its own - see mine!) on the north side across to the Tate Modern.

Part of a chain (lots of other branches in London - Poland Street, Whiteleys, Farringdon, Selfridges, Harvey Nicks, Finchley Road, Camden, off Tottenham Court Road), this is a classic example of conveyor-belt sushi made on the premises.

Prices - differentiated by plate colour - are not cheap if you're hungry, varying between £2.00 and £4.00. The miso soup is usually particularly good (£1.50) and the beers and sake are not too pricy. Still and sparkling water are on tap at a standard £1. Prices range from £2.00 for 4 small vegetarian make rolls, £2.50 for 2 good-sized California rolls, £3.50 for salmon nigiri and £4.00 for a lobster and avocado handroll (the handroll nori is always good and freshly toasted).

Other dishes (yakitori, gyoza etc) are made to order. Obviously no reservations required and the restaurants are spacious enough to rarely have a queue to sit at the bar. Some branches (including Poland Street) also have a Yo! Below with more formal seating.

Should you need it, they also do takeaway and delivery. It can be quiet outside lunchtimes and sometimes a few sad plates go round and round. But overall things move quite quickly and it's good and fresh.

London's newest gallery, the Tate Modern (so called to distinguish it from the Tate Britain across and west at Millbank -- along the river Thames towards Pimlico and Chelsea, which houses traditional and classical art) opened on Bankside in May 2000. It's in a majestic position, virtually right opposite to St Paul's Cathedral and to the Millennium ("bouncy") Footbridge. Even if modern art is not your thing, the museum itself is still worth dropping into for its extraordinary architecture and because there is normally an interesting exhibition in the main foyer, formerly the turbine room.

With that introduction, it won't surprise you to hear that the museum is housed in what was previously called the Bankside Power Station, originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (also the architect of the Battersea Power Station - you will have seen its four chimneys from the London Eye), the Liverpool Anglican cathedral, University libraries in Oxford and Cambridge, Waterloo Bridge, and the famous British red telephone box (sadly fewer of those to spot these days)).

The power station itself was a brick-clad steel structure of c4.2m bricks and its central chimney stands at 99m (325ft), apparently to ensure that it didn't top the dome of St Paul's; it replaced a coal-fired power station in 1952 and expanded in 1963 but, by 1981, oil prices had risen such that the power station was uneconomic compared to other forms of electricity generation. It stood unwanted until 1994, when the Tate Gallery realised its collection had outgrown its Millbank home and took an option on the site. It took until 2000 for the Thameside megalith to be converted, forming part of the Southbank regeneration which included the Globe Theatre, Vinopolis, the Clink ghoul-show and restaurants near the NT.

Most striking is the turbine room, which operates as a "covered street" (3,300 sq m - 35,520 sq ft) to show works of art -- often one enormous piece, which could not be accommodated elsewhere, fills the entire expanse. The whole museum (on 6 floors) has a total internal floor area of 34,500 sq m (371,350 sq ft) and numerous modern art exhibitions (some permanent and some travelling) which span paintings, cinema, interactive art, and sculpture to satisfy the most inventive and contemporary of tastes in art. (If your taste runs to the more traditional, also try the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square or the Tate Britain (as above -- both free).

Open Sun-Thurs: 10am-6pm; Fri-Sat: 10am-10pm (save 24-26 December). Admission free - donations encouraged. Obviously a nice route is along the South Bank on foot, but on a fine day, also try a boat trip -- the Tate to Tate runs every 40 minutes along the Thames between Tate Britain (Millbank -- see above), London Eye, and Tate Modern.

Walking is thirsty work - if you want to take a rest, there are a couple of traditional English pubs en route to "wet your whistle" with fine old English ale. The nicest is probably the Anchor (just re-opened after some - generally unobtrusive - modernisation).

It featured in the closing sequence of "Mission Impossible" - maybe Tom Cruise had a pint of beer here too? - but, in keeping with the general style of the locale, dates from the early 1700s. It also boasts having hosted Shakespeare and Pepys (of diary fame - he is supposed to have witnessed the awesome destruction of the Great Fire of London in 1666 from here, describing the dreadful heat and "fire drops" falling on him whilst in a boat on the river and how he sought refuge in "a little alehouse on bankside .....and there watched the fire grow").

Having come through narrow streets past medieval ruins and now facing the Elizabethan timbers of the Globe, you get a real impression of the atmosphere of the southbank as it must have been when the beer flowed into flagons (and worse flowed through the streets into the Thames).

The Anchor was however rebuilt in 1676 after another fire (not the Great Fire which was on the northbank) devastated the area, and the original structure has been added to over several centuries, creating a maze of odd little rooms featuring old brick fireplaces, oak beams and worn, creaking floorboards. As well as Shakespeare and Pepys, another of the interesting little niches contains a bar named after Dr Johnson, lexicographer and writer, who drank here regularly and a copy of his dictionary is on display.

The (quite expensive) main dining room has some wonderful views across the Thames to the City. On the same floor, the Shakespeare Room (used exclusively for functions but you can poke your nose round the door) has beautiful 18th century pine panelling.

The Museum is on the site of the original Clink Prison (enshrined in the term "to be thrown in the clink").

The southbank was a grim place in the middle ages - prostitution was rife and legal, and bare-knucklefighting, gambling, bear-baiting and cockfighting commonplace entertainment and the Bishops of Winchester were the guardians of medieval morals and behaviour. There were still debts to be paid and standards maintained and so the Bishops established a prison next to the Episcopal Palace (whose rose window can still be admired next to the museum entrance on Clink Street) for debtors, thieves, heretics and general ne-er-do-wells to work out their time and, more importantly, pay off their debts.

Not altogether surprisingly, history (and the incarcarated) record it as having been a thoroughly nasty place, although the strains of a stay there were generally alleviated by bribing the guards for food, blankets, clean water, the services of a "friendly" visitor...On top of which, prisoners had actually to pay for their board and lodging in the Clink so the Bishop made a tidy sum in running the place.

Earliest records show that it held prisoners from around 1151 until it was closed down in 1780 and various local luminaries are allegedly to have stayed or frequented the place including Shakespeare who visited an old schoolfriend.

The tour takes you through poky little cells and displays of original and reproduction "restraining and torturing devices" and lists of transportation victims and the like and, whilst the dingy, stinking hole that it must once have been isn't entirely replicated (thank goodness), the place goes some considerable way to giving a feeling of the confinement and misery that inmates talk of in letters and diaries during imprisonment. As usual, the guided tour is heavy on the statistics of gore and torture and the Tussauds' style waxworks have been done before, but it's quite evocative and the dressed-up guides throw themselves into it with a well-judged blend of humour and enjoyably grisly detail.

Mention "William Shakespeare" and many people groan, so a trip to the recreation of his famous Globe Theatre by the Thames may not be on your own list of "must see" sights.

Do think again - this isn't dry unintelligible irrelevance but history lesson and culture trip combined - part of England's literary and dramatic heritage in living colour, set against a funny and evocative backdrop of exuberant Elizabethan life (both high born and low, where Will himself started out). It comprehensively explores how actors, musicians and writers went about their business on the southbank where Londoners lived and died, worked and played.

American actor/director, Sam Wanamaker, came on the idea of replicating the Globe and then went on an extensive fund-raising crusade before the first bricks and timbers were laid. Sadly he died before the Globe was inaugurated but his daughter, British actress Zoe, dedicated the theatre to him.

The aim of the excellent museum exhibitions is to introduce you to theatre as it was in Shakespeare's own day - theatre for the common people, rather than just reluctant schoolkids and moneyed theatre-buffs. The exhibition hall, called the UnderGlobe, houses permanent and temporary exhibitions, including those focussing on Tudor and early Jacobean clothing and costumes, how special effects were made in Shakespeare's time (waves crashing, thunder booming, fairies flying and the like), music and performances ("Hey nonny non" and all that), printing and record-keeping (which makes you marvel that any original manuscripts survive at all), and a dedicated section on Wanamaker's trials and determination in the authentic recreation of the Globe and the extraordinary level of detail which craftsmen and historians have displayed in ensuring that this most famous of theatres is just as it was in the 1600s.

The backstage theatre tour - showing how the theatre operates today - plus a trip around the exhibition takes about 90 mins.

Top it off by going to a performance in the Globe by the theatre company - this is reserved for the (supposedly more clement) summer months since the Globe recreates the open-air of the original. Seats are quite pricey but, if you can queue on the day or stand in the "pit", you can get in for £5 ($8) and rub shoulders with the players who often make entrances and exits through the audience.