It’s a Saturday and the weather is friendly in St John’s Wood today which means that plenty of people are walking in the footsteps of The Beatles at the Abbey Road zebra crossing, the most popular pedestrian road crossing in the world. It was raining a couple of days ago so there weren’t that many but when the sun is out – here it comes, little darling – the tourists gather together in groups before walking across, often four at a time, lingering in the in the middle, their hands outstretched, while a friend or relation takes their picture, just as photographer Iain Macmillan did on August 8, 1969, as John, Ringo, Paul and George – in that order – crossed over from west to east at 11.35am in the morning.
Since 2010 we’ve been able to watch them, and every so often, when I’m a tad bored, I click on to the website to watch them. “The Beatles crossed the road several times,” reports Mark Lewisohn is his Beatles Chronicle, “while [Macmillan] took several shots, a friendly policeman obligingly holding up traffic. Paul chose the best of the six later that day.”
A glance at the website tells me that since 2010, when the EarthCam was installed just north of the crossing, almost adjacent to the entrance gate to the studios, 53 million viewers have observed what I was watching a few moments ago. There’s no tally of the number of Beatle tourists who’ve crossed over, of course, but this YouTube link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwXKJHgRM50 – reveals that among them fairly recently was Paul himself. Dressed in black trousers and a white shirt, his jacket carried casually over his right shoulder, he arrived from the Grove End Road side, failed to observe his kerb drill and paused midway across the oblige someone with a camera. When he reached the other side, his presence had been noted and by the time he reached the Abbey Road studio gate a decent sized crowd was in pursuit, rather like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, all of them cheering him – and a few screaming – as he made his way into his place of business.
The fortuitously located traffic island at the end of Grove End Road offers the perfect spot for those with mobile phones to snap their friends following in the Beatles footsteps. I find it quite addictive to watch it and here’s the link: https://www.earthcam.com/world/england/london/abbeyroad/?cam=abbeyroad_uk
Maybe you will too.
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