Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

Quite tall and unloved. No, not me, the marble arch mound, which you may have read or seen has been dismantled.

This very sad tourist attraction was an 82-foot-tall scaffolding mountain

that had been placed at Marble Arch just outside the tube station in the middle of a quite big roundabout.

The idea was that it was going to bring people back to the centre of London.

Not sure it did particularly well, if you believe the figures from the Westminster City Council,

which spent six million pounds on it, then 250,000 people went along, which represents £24 for each of them.

And I actually went along three times.

And actually my last visit, which was with the very last group of people allowed to the top.

It was night time, it was very exciting and I thoroughly enjoyed it,

which made me think I should devote a podcast to high places in London where you can get

great views for free. The Marble Arch Mound was originally going to be charging money but then they

realised that nobody would go at all so they opened it for free and that's why I am

walking through Greenwich Park at the moment more on that very shortly but first

well the London Bridge that I think has by far the best view

isn't London Bridge at all. In second place for that competition, it's Blackfriars railway station.

Bizarrely, this fantastic idea for building a railway station over the thames has superb views from

platform one out over the river towards st paul's and the city of london quite dazzling but top place

has to be waterloo bridge walking south it doesn't matter whether you're on the downstream or the upstream side. You are going to get superb views and it will remind you what a great city London is. Now if you're walking south across Waterloo Bridge, you're quite quickly going to get to Waterloo Station,

busiest transport terminal in Europe or so it used to be.

And the good thing about it is that on the Waterloo Road exit, there is a building which

used to be an old telecoms building, but it is now topped by Bar Elba.

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