Where's your go-to place for peace and reflection in London? The fragrant rose gardens of Hyde Park? Sun-up over Primrose Hill?
Or maybe it's a grungy railway sidings near Victoria station. Ebury Bridge spans the spaghetti of 19 tracks heading in and out of the country's fifth-busiest station, with a slope falling away from its southern side that offers an unparalleled vantage point of the trains shunting in and out.
While this probably isn't the best spot for full-time anoraked train spotters (especially since the Orient Expresses heading out of Victoria for Folkestone and the continent beyond were axed due to Brexit red tape) there is something altogether therapeutic about watching the endless Southern and Southeastern services — and the occasional fire engine red of a Gatwick Express — meander in and out, with the chimneys of Battersea Power Station rising in the distance.
With well over 1,000 services using Victoria each day, this is a complex operation — trains constantly pausing to let others through, while now and then, another train tentatively pulls of out the sheds on Peabody Avenue, to join the masses.
We've all been on that frustrating Victoria-bound train which stops dead for seven minutes on the final approach. But up here on Ebury Bridge everything is shrunk down to Hornby scale, and London is turned into a model train set. If you ever need to put things into perspective, this is the place to come.
