"The Mall" is not "Pall Mall", despite what people who have played the London version of Monopoly (but have never visited London itself) may think. They are two different roads. "The Mall" (without Pall) is the road leading from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace and is often the scene of ceremonial military parades. It was the road that we started down, but not the road that I wanted to go down.

This was a plain and simple error of navigation. It was after 16:00, we did not have a lot of time remaining for our exploration of the city that day, and I was having problems with my left leg. (After my return to Australia my doctor advised that it was a pinched nerve and that I needed to lose some weight. Now tell me something that I don't know.)

In any case, it was my intention to go to the Houses of Parliament and the Thames River through Whitehall. To do that, I should have gone about 80° to the left. But it is entirely possible that I was distracted by the Admiralty arch, a most photogenic building as we shall see shortly.