Patch talked me into it. Was I nervous? YES.

I picked Patch up at Liverpool street and we went for a recce in the car. Both potential targets for the night were very close to one of the throbbing veins of the city and even closer to the boys in blue. We parked the car round the corner from Middlesex Street and went for a pint in the hope it might bestow some Dutch Courrage. It wasn’t enough.

We checked out the cameras and stood waiting at some scaffolding. Patch went first. A sudden burst of people had me stood their waiting. Pretending to be fiddling with my tripod and taking an uninteresting photo by night, I waited until they were gone. I passed up the tripod and the i was up too.

We were on a platform on the level of the first floor. There was no way further into the building but more scaff and a noisy metal stair case took us a few floors up. Each was as useless as the one before and meant we had to make more noise, potentially alerting residents int he flats across the road to our presence.

Fail. Top of the stairs and no way in. Back down them now. Tiptoe past bright lit windows and down a letter into the main complex. Across a court yard and against a board. Some nails in the wood provide very basic foot holds. Patch goes over first. Tripod. And then it was my turn. Up I went… Rip went my jeans. “Bollocks”!

Over I went. The suggestion box was a great foot hold. We were in, but we were looking on the security office and there we both were on the black and white screens. We moved and then we were gone.

We were in and up the stairs. All the stairs. They kept going and going and going. And then there was a breeze. We were close to the top. A small ladder was at the top and I juggled tripod and camera bag to climb to the roof.

It was a cold night with a sharp breeze and a penetrating drizzle. The view was spectacular. To our left was the crane that was being used in the construction and further away Canary Warf. To our right the gherkin and Heron Tower, lit up like Christmas Trees in the dark London night.

We took our photos and walked back down the stairs. Slight confusion around the 5th flood about our entry level as we needed to change stair case but once we reached the ground floor, we let ourselves out of the site’s front door and slipped away into the night.

Post Script

The plan had been to take on Heron Tower on the same night but for my first high place in London, one was enough for me. Patch and I recced a few other London sites for other nights later in the year and then I dropped patch back to Heron. I headed home and he had a succesful entry and exit.