Superbloom at the Tower of London

 Well this morning was my second time slot I'd booked for the Superbloom flowers in the moat at the Tower.

Social media has been full of people moaning about how few flowers there were recently - hardly surprising, given the intense heat and no rain since I last went.  But, despite temperatures forecast to be 35 or so (later on today admittedly)  I headed for London.  I left early so I could get there before my time slot as I knew they'd let me in early.

I took as many heat saving precautions, hat , sunglasses, factor 50 suncream... as i could and a flask of cold water in my bag.  

on first entering the moat you could already see the impact of the hot weather...

lots of cosmos though

the slide was operating - although the girl handing out the sacks to slide down in said it would be closed as soon as it heated up much more as it makes it go too fast and would be too hot to the touch.

I had my go though!  

I'm not sure what these reddish ones are, but they'd grown very tall!  

the girl at the slide said that the sunflowers were gorgeous - she was right,  and they were drifted throughout the planting

some of these left from my first visit too

I took a few on the phone to put on FB but the sun on the screen makes it so hard to see if they're any good at the time!

next 8 or so are back to front, thanks blogger.

I like the pop of the dark orange against the Tower walls

lots of these left still too

and a few cornflowers

and it's reversing them again... sorry, but it's too hot to faff about

so many different colours of sunflowers

good job I love seedheads 

great to see these surviving the heat they're so pretty

can't remember if this was on my right or my left as I walked through... but still lots of colour as you can see - think the pink is probably clover

oh blogger... this is further along....

but more cornflower here as you see, it was closer to the wall maybe that made a difference

such pretty cosmos in the sun (high 20's by now)

another huge drift of sunflowers

white cosmos

lots of bees too

the birds have been busy eating the sunflowers 

the wicker structure was looking good, with a mass of sunflowers seen through the uprights

the verbena has totally gone to seed

I was quite surprised to find myself at the end already, last time I spent twice as long getting here, with the volume of flowers then

these gorgeous deagonflies  looked better I think 

because they were mingling more with the flowers

I was talking to one of the volunteers about how (hot) lovely the moat is even in seed form and what a shame so many people were moaning about it - (although to be fair, if I'd not been a member and got a free timeslot booking early, I'd have been abit miffed to have paid for a visit - well I may have paid £5 I've forgotten)

couple of photos of Tower Bridge at the end of the moat

as I came out onto the path alongside the river, I noticed a crowd looking at the river -  the bridge was open,  which means a tall ship of some kind needs access

I grabbed my shorter length lens quickly..

luckily the vessel was moving slowly so I had time

as soon as it clears the bridge span, they start to lower it again to allow the traffic to resume over the bridge

nearly closed again

and it sails on it's way up river

I found a seat in the shade (there was still some!)

and ate my bun I'd brought and drank some more of my water

before the obligatory shots of the Tower

I decided it was too hot already to go inside (I had planned to)  

and headed back past the moat on my way back to the station

you can't see very much from this level you do need to be in amongst it to appreciate the colours

I was lucky with trains so was home by 12 noon!!  

Thanks for looking,  

if you want a reminder of the July trip it's here (or go back down the list of posts)