Burnside’s Bridge
Dave and Wendy Laing located Burnside's favourite place to mope.

Prisoner fans make pilgrimages to the gorgeous Portmeirion Village Hotel in North Wales. Making a Sandbaggers pilgrimage has been rather more difficult, unless you possessed an unusual affinity for the frozen wilds of the Kola Peninsula, the cheap flats of Sofia, or the tarmac at Istanbul International Airport. Now, thanks to the legwork of Dave and Wendy Laing, it’s easy to pay your respects to The Sandbaggers on your next trip to London.

At the end of Special Relationship, Neil Burnside is seen standing on a bridge overlooking the Thames. He is mourning the death of Laura Dickens. His eyes well up, a mournful bit of incidental music plays, and the episode ends.

Burnside is seen at that bridge again at the beginning of the very next episode, At All Costs—which of course takes place exactly one year later. In Episode 11, A Question of Loyalty, Burnside returns to his bridge—this time on a foggy day—and Karen Milner, having shadowed him, chats him up.

So where is this bridge? It can’t be too far from the Houses of Parliament, as the zooming-in sequence from At All Costs on your DVD demonstrates.

Wendy and Dave Laing tracked down ‘Burnside’s Bridge’ on a trip to London in 2001 while on a trip from Australia.

‘The exact location is Lambeth Bridge, the first one south of Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament on a London map,’ Wendy said. ‘We found it in two days of walk, walk, walk. I think I’m at least one inch shorter!’

‘The trees seen at the back beyond the gate, on the other side of the road that crosses the bridge are in Victoria Tower Gardens, which run along the banks of the Thames but which were closed to the public when we walked past on Millbank Road,’ Wendy added.

If you make a pilgrimage to Burnside’s Bridge or any other Sandbaggers locations, and would like to have a photo of your visit featured on the Ops Room, send it to us.