Hello, I’m Hilary and you’re listening to an Adept English podcast, designed to help
you learn to speak English fluently. I love the English language, and I help hundreds
of thousands of listeners speak English every month. Listen to this podcast today and see
how your fluency improves.
Hi there and welcome to this podcast from Adept English.
So if you like variety in your podcasts and you prefer listening to something which is
an interesting topic, rather than an English lesson, then you’ll like today’s podcast.
It’s another account of a visit to a major tourist attraction in the UK – and somewhere
you might want to visit yourself if you come to the UK. And if you want more variety to
listen to in our podcasts, then why not visit our podcast download page on our website at
adeptenglish.com, where for a small fee, you can download 100s of our podcasts. And these
are ones that are no longer available online! What a bargain – and what a way to ensure
that your English language just keeps on improving.
Anyway, today’s podcast? Well, I’m continuing my ‘staycation’ and in effect part of
my time has been spent relaxing, and some of my time has been spent on Adept English
– and for other parts of this 10 day holiday, I’ve been effectively ‘the tourist in
my own country’. It’s quite a common phenomenon that you might live in or near an interesting
city, like London – or many other cities of the world – but you don’t often take
the time to visit the tourist attractions yourself. Or you only go there, when you’ve
got visitors that you’re showing around. So this week has been an opportunity for me
to do some of that. I told you about Woburn Safari Park. So where else have we been?
Well, we visited the London Eye. This is the big structure near Waterloo Station on the
south bank of the River Thames, which you can see for miles around. It’s ‘a big
wheel’ – the sort that you might encounter in a theme park. The London Eye is a huge,
round structure which stands 135 metres or 433 feet tall. It’s the largest one of its
type in Europe and there are no fewer than 3 million visitors every year. It was built
in the year 2000, so it’s just had its twentieth birthday. It was originally a temporary structure
– that means ‘not permanent, not here to stay’. And it was put there to mark the
Millennium – or the year 2000 – that’s MILLENNIUM. But it proved so popular that
it became a permanent feature. The London Eye is the 2nd highest point that you can
observe London from. It’s been overtaken by the viewing platform at the top of The
Shard, that’s SHARD – and the name of that building comes from the English word
for a sharp piece of broken glass or pottery. And indeed The Shard does look very sharp,
poking up above London’s skyline. The Shard is 309 metres tall, or 1,016 feet high. However,
they’re cheating a little – the highest part that you can actually stand on is on
the 72nd floor at 244 metres or 801 feet. But that’s pretty high and I’m told that
it’s not for people who fear heights or have vertigo!
So back to the London Eye. What’s also different about it, is that you travel round in a ‘capsule’.
These are glass and shaped like an oval – and they take normally around 25 people per capsule.
A ‘capsule’, CAPSULE in English usually refers to those things medicines or pills
that you swallow with water – that’s what the medicine is inside - a ‘gel capsule’.
So things like a paracetamol or Vitamin. They’re ‘capsules’ – but it’s also a word
associated with ‘space travel’, so a bit ‘futuristic’ perhaps. Anyway, there are
32 capsules and they’re numbered 1-33, missing out the number 13. That’s ‘superstitious’
– meaning that they’ve missed out the number 13, because of the superstitious belief
that the number 13 is ‘unlucky’. And you don’t want ‘bad luck’ when you’re
suspended 433 feet up, I guess! The word ‘superstition’ in English is the noun – and it means ‘a
belief, usually that bad things will happen, and the belief isn’t based on fact’. So
missing out the number 13 on the capsules is ‘superstitious’ – that’s the adjective
to go with ‘superstition’. The capsules are air conditioned, in case it’s a sunny
day – and it takes about 30 minutes, half an hour to go all the way round. You’re
moving at a speed of 10 inches per second – and the wheel doesn’t stop for people
getting on and off. You get in and out of the capsule while it’s moving! You’d think
that that was perhaps only for the sprightly – but actually, it’s quite slow moving,
so it’s not difficult.
What can you see from the London Eye? Well, the River Thames is very prominent – and
it’s the major landmark throughout London anyway. A ‘landmark’, LANDMARK is a compound
word – and it means a ‘way of marking the land’ – a feature of the landscape
which you might use to navigate, to find your way. We talk about the South Bank, meaning
the ‘south side of the Thames’ – and people talk about being ‘south or north
of the river’. And of course, from the London Eye, you can see the big structures along
the London skyline, like The Shard and the Walkie Talkie and The Gherkin – and One
Canada Square in east London too, where I work for part of the week. They can all be
seen from the London Eye. And of course, if you go up one of the other buildings, you
can easily pick out the London Eye too – these buildings look back at one another! And way
down below, you can see the Palace of Westminster, the British parliament building and Big Ben
– the clock tower alongside. ‘Big Ben’ is actually the bell, but the tower is often
referred to as ‘Big Ben’. I did a podcast a long while ago – about on of the most
photographed views across a bridge in the UK – that’s the view across Westminster
Bridge. Well if you’re on the London Eye, you can see that from on high! Big Ben is
currently covered in scaffolding. ‘Scaffolding’ is the structure alongside a building, which
enables work to be carried out to the building. And Big Ben and its tower are having a lot
of work done. It seems to be taking a long time, anyway. The scaffolding is still there.
If you’re looking for ‘Old London’ rather than modern London buildings, there is plenty
to see too. You can see St Paul’s Cathedral. The construction of St Paul’s began in 1666,
just after The Great Fire of London – and this church is famous for its dome and for
being where Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer.
Even older, you can see the Tower of London, over to the east, next to the river. This
is where we visited on a different day of this week. And this building – or at least
the part of the Tower called ‘The White Tower’ – well, if you’re looking for
‘old’, this is it. The construction of this building was started by William the Conqueror,
the French Norman King, after his conquest of the English at the Battle of Hastings in
1066. Or it was a little after 1066 that he started to build it. Good building technique,
given that The White Tower is still standing sturdy a thousand years later! That’s perhaps
another podcast – the Tower of London.
You can also see Waterloo Station, which is one of London’s main railway stations, serving
the area south west of London. And you’ll notice just how green much of London is. There
are many parks, from the Palace Gardens behind Buckingham Palace to St James's Park and Green
Park through to Hyde Park and onwards to Kensington Gardens. Again, I’m like a tourism ambassador
for London sometimes in these podcasts, aren’t I? I’ve talked about London’s parks in
a podcast earlier this year.
So if you go do to London, then I imagine one of the things on your list of thing you
want to do, would be the London Eye. It’s great for photographs of course, but better
if the weather is nice! It was a little bit grey when we were there. Never mind!
Anyway, enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
That’s the end of this podcast – I hope you enjoyed it. You can listen to hundreds
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