Regent's Canal, west of Islington Tunnel, 27th February 2011

Another waterbound blue, the other side of the tunnel, about the same distance from the exit as the previous was from the entrance (the way we were headed anyway). You can't walk through the tunnel - perhaps it was literally strewn with blue balloons and I saw just the outliers.

Regent's Canal, east of Islington Tunnel, 27th February 2011

Another Sunday, another stroll, another balloon floating in a waterway... this was adorned with white 5s so I guess some child of 2006 enjoyed it in its pomp. Trapped between barge and quay and matching the former with flair, I enjoyed it too.

River Thames, from Thames Path near Charlton, 20th February 2011

A fittingly grey scene for the last of the eastward mosey. We were headed for the Thames Barrier, which spans the river between silvered pods that looked futuristic in the 80s just to the right of this shot. No angle for inclusion presented itself, though, so the drab block on the other bank has to suffice.

Four in one day is pretty rare, but I don't often venture to this side of town, so perhaps it's not too unusual round here. The prevailing wind would certainly dump the city's free balloons this way, as would the ebbing tide. That could explain the glut, or it could just have been pure chance. Next time I come this way I'll have a better idea.

River Thames, from Thames Path near Greenwich, 20th February 2011

It's all true. The marketing people at Gap took one look at the site visits for this blog, then drove a truckload of money up to my flat, with the balloon. "Put it where you want, just make sure you can see the logo", they said, scooping great wads of £50 notes into a sack on my doorstep.

Not really, they'll never know or care. Anyway, it's either an old or a very new balloon: they changed their logo at great expense over the new year, but hadn't realised that so many people loved the old one (or hated the new), and reverted back to this at doubtless substantial cost a week later. I imagine balloons printed with the short-lived replacement logo will fetch a tidy sum from short-lived logo balloon collectors in a few years.

River Thames, by Greenwich Pier, 20th February 2011

And there's the next easternmost. I've never known pea green be the colour of lovers, apart from the Owl & The Pussycat, so unlike the last I suspect this is a random. It was a very grey day and even this small splash of colour was a rare treat, so I waited a short while to see if it would drift any closer to complement the algae-stained walls. Alas it remained obstinately distant while my friends got more distant themselves, so I contented myself with a wide shot of the monumental buildings of the Royal Naval College (which, I found while looking up what they are, is apparently a UNESCO World Heritage Site - my my).

Borthwick Street, 20th February 2011

There's usually something of a glut around Valentine's Day, but this year I thought had passed without a sighting. And then these. I was on a long, grey and industrial walk eastwards along the Thames, unfamiliar territory, and these fitted the scene perfectly. Quite how the white survived the metal gate being closed on top of it I don't know, I can only imagine its deflation left it flexible enough to yield rather than resist. The decorated red was bound by ribbon to its pinned companion, and could go nowhere with the white so secured.

It had been a barren couple of weeks since the last, and I was delighted to see these, my most eastward in the UK at the time. I wasn't expecting the eastmost record to be broken three times in the next two hours.