At last the snow has cleared (although the cold has not yet relented) so as London returned to normal operations, I took the camera to a work meeting and used the opportunity of my location at Charing Cross to film afterwards.

Charing Cross is next to Trafalgar Square and the Strand, and just over the river from the Millennium Wheel.

Wikipedia notes that Charing Cross is named after a long demolished monument religious cross. The name originates from the Eleanor cross erected between the former hamlet of Charing and the entrance to the Royal Mewsf the Palace of Whitehall in 1291-4 by King Edward I as a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile. The cross was the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon. Originally built in wood, it was quickly replaced with a stone and marble monument. The name of the hamlet is derived from the old english word cierring, referring to the large bend in the River Thames nearby.

When you view Charing Cross today it's impossible to think that this place was once a little village (or hamlet) in the countryside!

Today Charing Cross is best known for its railway station terminus and underground station. At the front of the station is the Charing Cross hotel, an upmarket place to stay in this most busy part of central London.

ALSO: This episode includes a 10-second promo for "Norway in HD" http://norwayinhd.com a very similarly-styled podcast to LLTV, showing off the very best of a very beautiful country.

On February 2nd 2009, a snowstorm brought transport chaos to London, keeping buses in their depots and causing upset to the London tube train system.

I couldn't get to the office (I work outside London) so instead I worked from home and at lunchtime jumped on a working, if disrupted, Northern Line tube train ride to the Thames and filmed the snow scenes in the centre of London.

You can enjoy the scenes without feeling the bitter north-easterly wind and the -5C (23F) temperature....!

Hello and welcome to the first episode of LLTV for 2009! As a bitterly cold January came to an end, I was determined to get some footage of London before the month was out. I had planned more filming in January but the poor weather conditions just kept ruling it out. There's only so much freezing cold and mist a video camera can take! However, on the last day of the month, the sun shone weakly through the freezing mists and lifted them enough to persuade me to jump on my bike and cycle to Primrose Hill, an up-market district surrounding the north-east corner of Regents Park. As the episode opens we catch two Sunday League Football (soccer) teams playng in the freezing haze with the BT Tower in the background. We then progress through Primrose Hill itself taking in some park life, the beautiful architecture and the village shops. I say 'village' but of course Primrose Hill is now as much a suburb of London's great sprawl as anywhere else. It is a very pleasant self-contained community of shops and well worth visiting. So welcome to London in 2009 - the LLTV filming schedule is now underway.