New Year's Eve celebrations in London

London’s New Year’s Eve countdown is a popular event that gets televised around the world. As the clock strikes 12:00 and Big Ben chimes away, London revellers welcome the new year in such party spirits, making you envious that you’re not there.

Each year, after we’ve ushered in our Sydney New Year, it’s enjoyable watching New Year’s Day countdown happening around the world and of course London is one of the major centres covered by the telecasts.

I’ve always thought that it would be fun being part of New Year’s Eve celebrations in a different country,  it doesn’t matter where, so this year we’ve extended our stay in London so that we can be part of London’s famous New Year’s Day countdown.

The Big Scrum to Get to the Fireworks

Having been through one New Year’s countdown in London, I must say that I’ve now got it out of my system. As people made their way to the Embankment to watch the fireworks displays at the London Eye, the police would progressively close off areas and re-direct people elsewhere. You follow their instructions and then half way along the route, they’d close off that access as well and re-direct you somewhere else. This happened a few times and towards the end the situation got quite rough and there was almost a stampede.

As the police put up new barricades there was confusion and people were jostled about. It became quite dangerous, so Tony decided that we should retreat to our hotel.

The crowd control was particularly bad and it was as though the police did not anticipate the large number of people to show up or had no orderly plans to manage the situation.

It was disappointing that lots of tourists had particularly come to London to be part of the New Year’s countdown celebrations but missed the event.

p.s. – Poor Tony, the last time I dragged him through a New Year’s eve celebration in Bangkok, he got pick-pocketed.

Helen