Monopoly challenge

Just over 11 hours ago I left home to complete the "Monopoly challenge", that is, to take photos of all the locations on the Monopoly board.

When I left home, I was undecided whether I would try to photograph everything (including "Go", "Jail", "Chance", "Super Tax") or just the properties. I decided on just the properties, partly because I thought the chance of finding a "Free Parking" sign in London was pretty minimal and partly because is was enough effort just doing the properties. Oh, and the rain. I picked a great day for this outing, true London weather. Perfect. Today I was very happy that the shoes I bought before I left Australia were the Gore-Tex lined ones. My feet stayed nice and dry while the rest of me was getting quite damp.

I am happy to report that I did manage to photograph all 28 properties. I didn't do them exactly in order though. That would have meant a lot of backtracking, mainly due to the locations of the stations. I did do each of the groups together though, but the properties were not necessarily in the right order within the group. This approach meant only some backtracking. I didn't do it all on foot either, but made good use of London's excellent public transport.

The trickiest properties were Waterworks, because what exactly is this anyway, and Mayfair, which unlike all the other coloured properties, which are streets, is a whole suburb, so which bit to photograph?

Wikipedia helped me solve the Waterworks issue. I started with a Google seach for the Thames Water head office, but this turned out to be in Reading. I did discover that Thames Water used to be the Metropolitan Water Board, whose HQ was in London, and Wikipedia not only had a picture of the building (which is now residential) it told me where it was.

As for Mayfair, I didn't realise what a problem it would be until I got there. I decided I would have to take a few pictures of some "typical" bits of Mayfair. I got some help from a police office patrolling in front of the Saudi Embassy, who suggested that the Curzon theatre and Berkley Square epitomised Mayfair.

At some point I will publish the photos of the Monopoly locations on the web, but this may not happen until after I get back to Australia. With my limited time left in London, there are more important things to do!