The early hours of Christmas Day, 2010.
There's been a lot of talk about The Shard lately - it's getting well on towards being topped out and rumour has it that the only time there won't be 24/7 work ongoing is tonight. I'm driving through London towards the building so many of us had been watching for so long and I'm getting pretty damn excited about it.
Arriving at London Bridge, I grabbed my stuff and headed towards the footbridge. I was going to be meeting two or three others but I equally knew lots of people had been waiting for the opportunity to get up there. We'd held off doing it for as long as possible so as not to hot the site up too early, but now it was time.
Considering how high profile it was, I really shouldn't have been surprised to see about ten faces I recognised milling around the area - getting so many people in was going to be fun. Some sort of semi-coherent plan was formed and we waited for the right moment. Two-by-two, we climbed outside the bridge and down into the site. No point in stealth now - it was all about getting to the reasonable cover of the stairwell as quickly as possible. Now for the hard part: it was a damn long way to the top.
Fuelled by adrenaline, we climbed the stairwell for what seemed like hours. Eventually, at about floor 80 (iirc), the relative ease of the stairwell was replaced with builder's ladders between floors. We were nearly there - just a few more floors to go and we'd be on top of what was already the tallest building in the UK.
After seemingly endless ladders, I looked up and saw sky! I emerged from a hatch to find myself on the roof, but surrounded by hoarding.
After catching my breath for a couple of minutes, I followed the others up onto the crane sticking up the middle of the building. The view was utterly breathtaking.
It took me a few minutes and cues from others to remember that I'd brought a camera! I snapped a few shots but in reality I was far more engrossed in looking around and taking in the magnitude of the view around me.
I was standing on the crane, on top of the highest building in the country, but one overriding thought kept going through my head:
"F*ck, it's cold!"
SM
Eventually we couldn't take the windchill any longer and one-by-one climbed back down into the hoarded-calm of the roof. The hoarding was pretty serious and took away the sensation of being so high. It was damn obvious the workers didn't want anything falling off and through the roof of London Bridge Station, a thousand feet below!
My dad called, as he generally does on early on Christmas morning - the conversation went along the lines of
"Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas! Are you out clubbing?"
"Oh, no - not tonight"
"Where are you?"
"London."
"What are you doing?"
"Eh, well...I'm standing on top of The Shard."
"You're...you're what?"
"I climbed The Shard...I'm up on the roof."
"Oh...ok. Don't get arrested."
"I'll try not to."
Relative Shelter
After chatting with the others for an hour or so, everyone on a high, it was time to head back down. I much preferred going down, apart from the bit where one of the guys poked his head through a door on one of the lower floors and was almost face-to-face with a worker with his feet up on a table asleep. We walked backwards in almost cartoon unison, silently shut the door and tiptoed down the next few flights - apparently the building wasn't completely deserted!
A mad sprint and scramble back out the way we came and everyone quickly said their goodbyes and split. Time to get out of London and try not to sleep through Christmas Day - the turkey won't eat itself!
The soon-to-be Shard of Glass
There's been a lot of talk about The Shard lately - it's getting well on towards being topped out and rumour has it that the only time there won't be 24/7 work ongoing is tonight. I'm driving through London towards the building so many of us had been watching for so long and I'm getting pretty damn excited about it.
Arriving at London Bridge, I grabbed my stuff and headed towards the footbridge. I was going to be meeting two or three others but I equally knew lots of people had been waiting for the opportunity to get up there. We'd held off doing it for as long as possible so as not to hot the site up too early, but now it was time.
Considering how high profile it was, I really shouldn't have been surprised to see about ten faces I recognised milling around the area - getting so many people in was going to be fun. Some sort of semi-coherent plan was formed and we waited for the right moment. Two-by-two, we climbed outside the bridge and down into the site. No point in stealth now - it was all about getting to the reasonable cover of the stairwell as quickly as possible. Now for the hard part: it was a damn long way to the top.
Fuelled by adrenaline, we climbed the stairwell for what seemed like hours. Eventually, at about floor 80 (iirc), the relative ease of the stairwell was replaced with builder's ladders between floors. We were nearly there - just a few more floors to go and we'd be on top of what was already the tallest building in the UK.
After seemingly endless ladders, I looked up and saw sky! I emerged from a hatch to find myself on the roof, but surrounded by hoarding.
After catching my breath for a couple of minutes, I followed the others up onto the crane sticking up the middle of the building. The view was utterly breathtaking.
It took me a few minutes and cues from others to remember that I'd brought a camera! I snapped a few shots but in reality I was far more engrossed in looking around and taking in the magnitude of the view around me.
I was standing on the crane, on top of the highest building in the country, but one overriding thought kept going through my head:
"F*ck, it's cold!"
SM
Eventually we couldn't take the windchill any longer and one-by-one climbed back down into the hoarded-calm of the roof. The hoarding was pretty serious and took away the sensation of being so high. It was damn obvious the workers didn't want anything falling off and through the roof of London Bridge Station, a thousand feet below!
My dad called, as he generally does on early on Christmas morning - the conversation went along the lines of
"Merry Christmas!"
"Merry Christmas! Are you out clubbing?"
"Oh, no - not tonight"
"Where are you?"
"London."
"What are you doing?"
"Eh, well...I'm standing on top of The Shard."
"You're...you're what?"
"I climbed The Shard...I'm up on the roof."
"Oh...ok. Don't get arrested."
"I'll try not to."
Relative Shelter
After chatting with the others for an hour or so, everyone on a high, it was time to head back down. I much preferred going down, apart from the bit where one of the guys poked his head through a door on one of the lower floors and was almost face-to-face with a worker with his feet up on a table asleep. We walked backwards in almost cartoon unison, silently shut the door and tiptoed down the next few flights - apparently the building wasn't completely deserted!
A mad sprint and scramble back out the way we came and everyone quickly said their goodbyes and split. Time to get out of London and try not to sleep through Christmas Day - the turkey won't eat itself!
The soon-to-be Shard of Glass
: Did you get any pics of the inside?
How things have changed!
