Rotherhithe

There are vast patches of London which remain secret for years because you spend most of your life travelling along on a thin line between home and work.

Frances and I live on the eastern fringe of 'zone 1' i.e. the central inner London underground zone. We also work in the same zone, Frances in South Kensington and me right off Oxford Street. All the major institutions of state, shopping and culture - Big Ben, the British Museum, Selfridges, the Tate Modern - lie within this central zone which is roughly 34 kilometres in diameter.

That sounds a lot, but to put it into context, this is only the same area covered in Auckland by a circle which starts at the downtown wharves, heads out to Point Chevalier in the west, runs along Mt Albert road in the south, and loops around One Tree Hill up through Remuera to Orakei and back across Tamaki Drive to the ferry terminal.

Anyway, meeting Matt close to his flat near London Bridge, we thought we'd walk along the Thames toward the unfashionable east, and this took us through Rotherhithe, one of those hidden stretches I refer to.

There's no particular reason to go to Rotherhithe. But it's a magical place. An ancient port, it's filled with quiet old dockland warehouses now converted into apartments. The Rotherhithe waterfront looks out onto amazing vistas - the Thames seems particularly wide here - and, almost unique in London, you can see the weather coming. One the day we walked, it was a proper crimson sunset, shaded grey, blue and purple.

And yet, cut off from the main roads and sights, Rotherhithe is somewhat forgotten and forlorn. On a Sunday, it feels even more so, and the only people on the streets seemed to be local dogwalkers.

Beautiful, secret, and slightly desolate: a perfect Sunday afternoon.