This Setlock report is a lot less detailed and slightly less exciting than my last one and on the first night it was pitch black where we were standing and I couldn't get any decent photos using my crappy Blackberry, but here goes...

Saturday 24th August
I wasn't even intending to go to another one after Wednesday 21st. I was supposed to be attending a friend's BBQ on Saturday night in Brighton, but seeing as it had been raining all day, the event got cancelled. So...my Setlock buddy and I, who I'd been hanging out with most of the day on Wednesday, found out the location and decided to go and investigate.

It was taking place at Heron Tower on Bishopsgate, a very tall block of offices with a posh sushi restaurant and bar attached to it. We arrived at around 7pm and there were a group of about 20 Setlockians situated opposite the building, huddled together and just about sheltered from the rain. We watched Moffat and Sue arrive. They got out of their car and walked round the side of the building.

My friend and I realised there were several entrances – two directly in front of us, and one right round the other side. So, we began to walk round the block repeatedly, and quite slowly, just chatting and occasionally stopping to sit on a nearby bench or linger by a pillar. It was on one of these lingers by a pillar that Martin Freeman walked right past us. It happened so quick we both did a massive double take. He was in his Parka coat. He looked quite adorable. They took him inside the main entrance and he spent a good thirty seconds ogling the massive fish tank that's in the reception before being taken up in the lift.

We continued circling the building, knowing that Benedict would have to arrive soon and that we'd no doubt see him if we did the same thing. Little did we know, they had already snuck Benedict in through some kind of underground secret entrance and literally none of us saw him arrive. It was only later when the security guard told us that he'd been inside for some time did we realise.

We were also told they'd be filming inside all night and that we wouldn't see anything. By this time it was 9pm and still raining. Quite a few people left. My friend and I were given a tip about the location of tomorrow's filming, so we decided to go off and investigate. It wasn't as if we would be missing anything.

We went on this epic trip to the Southbank, via St Barts where we stopped on the bench to reflect for ten minutes and catch up on our feels. Then we went down on the “beach” where they discovered the body in Great Game and fooled around taking daft photographs and writing “I Believe In Sherlock” in the sand. Finally we located tomorrow's base and confirmed our information had been correct. We gave each other a massive high five and hung around for a bit peering through the fencing.

My pal had to be home for 11pm so I walked her to Waterloo and she got the bus. I checked the setlock tag at this point and discovered that I had actually missed something! Apparently Benedict and Martin had been in a lift going up and down from the ground floor to the 32nd floor, either staring at each other intensely, or staring straight ahead and not talking. They'd done various different shots like this, again and again. People had been able to see it from out on the street because the walls of the lift were see through. It was pretty annoying to have missed it but eh, these things happen, and I'd had a good time anyway.

On the back of this, however, I decided to go back to Setlock and spend the night, in case anything else of excitement occurred. I have to say, it didn't. Apart from meeting a nice bunch of people and having a really great time hanging out in the rain until 5am, we didn't actually get to see all that much. At one point, Martin left, with his Parka hood pulled right down over his face. None of us realised it was him until he'd walked right past, then we waved at him as he was getting in the car and he waved back. It was only after the car had driven away did the security guard laugh and tell us that it wasn't Martin at all, it was his double. So his double had basically been trolling us. Kind of amusing. That was when we found out there was a second unit filming scenes across town using Sherlock and John's doubles. They were apparently just long distance shots with no dialogue of them walking around and so on.

Things started getting exciting again at about 4:15am, when all the crew started packing away their stuff and heading off for the night. We were all standing by the side entrance. Martin came out the entrance further up and straight into his car, thereby managing to avoid us altogether, although he did give us a thumbs up as he drove away.

We thought that Benedict would probably come out the same way so we were all starting to walk up to that second entrance when he came out right where we were standing and walked right in front of us. We all kind of froze. He was with Sue Vertue. The two of them looked at us. Sue gave us quite a shocked look that we were all still there. Benedict smiled and said “hey” giving us a little wave. We all said “hey” in complete unison, then watched as they got into the car and drove away.

By this point, it was 4:45am, I was completely drenched and a little cold, but it was totally all worth it for that single moment. Strange, but true.

I got a late night bus back to my hotel and fell asleep watching Jeremy Brett.


Sunday 25th August
Having already planned that we were definitely attending Setlock today, I was checking the tag on Twitter from the moment I got up at 11am. We'd been given a tip off that filming was starting at 3:30pm but we didn't know anything apart from that, and the base.

I met up with a couple of friends at midday for a picnic in Regent's Park, then left them at 1:45pm to go and meet my Setlock buddy at Waterloo station. We walked to the base together, getting there for around 2:15pm. We found a setlock cat that was inside the gates of the base!



There was a small group of people already there – around 10-20 – and it stayed roughly that size in number throughout the whole day with most people keeping quiet about the location and not broadcasting it on Twitter and Tumblr although there were a few hints floating around that people could have followed up on if they had wanted to (eg. “Southbank”). Sounds quite vague but I'm sure they could have found the set pretty easily if they'd looked.

In the end, it didn't really matter too much anyway, because today's filming was happening literally all over London. Martin and Benedict got into a taxi, which was attached on top of a low loader truck all kitted out with cameras and driven round the city. That's how they get those moving cab shots. It was really interesting to learn that actually, and to see them drive out on the back of this massive truck with two police escorts on motorbike.






The first time it happened, me and my setlock pal decided we would try and anticipate where the truck was going to and attempt to catch up with it. Obviously they had quite a good head start being on wheels and we had watched it drive to the end of the road and turn the corner before we decided on action. But instead of following the truck directly, we thought we'd take short cuts and use our “mind palace map” like in Study In Pink.




So, we knew they would have to cross the bridge to get over to the city. The nearest bridge was Waterloo but we decided to go for Blackfriars, so that we could try and cut them off half way as they turned right and we turned left. We didn't particularly have a plan for what we'd do if we actually did catch up with them, probably just stand there really pleased with ourselves. It was more for the thrill of the chase than anything.

We took a sharp right and ran down a ramp into an underground car park, headed straight for the fire escape and up a large set of stairs that eventually led us right onto the Southbank itself. Then we turned right again and started running towards Blackfriars Bridge. It was really busy by this point and I was weaving in and out of the crowds occasionally saying “excuse me” to people – more John than Sherlock on that aspect, Sherlock would have just gone “move” or “out the way”.

We took the stairs then a left to race across Blackfriars. St Paul's was in sight so we turned right and took a backstreet route towards St Barts. I'd literally never been to it that way before and at one point we ended up in a dead end and had to jump over a wall to get down on the other side. It was nuts. When we finally got to St Barts we collapsed onto the benches to get our breath back. There were two Sherlockian tourists there, Germans, taking photos of the phonebox. They looked at us a little strangely, then I asked them whether they'd seen a truck with a taxi on coming this way. They said they hadn't. We explained that Sherlock were filming all over town today and that was why we'd been running. They asked if they could come with us. We said yes and then we got a lead through about their location. It was like when Sherlock gets something through from his Homeless Network, except this was the Fandom Network, via the Setlock tag on Twitter. They'd been spotted in Trafalgar Square.

Suddenly it was all go. We were quite a way from Trafalgar, but it was doable. We ran off from St Barts and headed to Fleet Street, ran all the way down Fleet Street, all the way down the Strand. We stopped a couple of times to get our breath back and at one point I turned to these two German girls who were all knackered and exhausted from all the running and said, “Welcome to London.” They thought it was hilarious and started calling me Sherlock. We ran into a newsagents to get bottles of water all round. It was like being a marathon runner and just pausing for a quick pit stop. But then we pressed on again and raced towards Trafalgar Square. It had been five minutes since we heard the report that they were there, but we were already too late. They'd gone.

I grabbed the nearest person and demanded to know if they had seen a truck with a taxi on top. They were initially surprised by my enthusiasm but responded that they'd seen it heading up the Mall towards Horse Guards Parade. Barely having time to thank them, we rushed off again on the new lead. But once again we were always that little bit behind them and I got a tweet to say they had been seen arriving back at the base. We crossed over the water again at Hungerford Bridge, backtracked along the Southbank and returned to the group of Sherlockians who had just been stood waiting there the whole time. We were panting and sweaty and collapsed into a heap under a tree to recover for the next five minutes. Although the run had been essentially a waste of time, it had been so much fun I definitely didn't regret it. And we were back just in time to see Sue Vertue leave.



The taxi got ready to go again. We didn't bother chasing after them this time, even though we knew that they were going to Trafalgar again. Apparently they had been mobbed by fans and had been forced to drive away slightly earlier than they had planned and we didn't want to be part of any kind of group that was a disruption to filming. If we had caught up with them, realistically, we just would have watched from a distance and been pleased with ourselves.




We waited until they returned half an hour later and it was worth doing because I got a nice shot of Benedict's profile when they were about to reverse back into the base. And Martin waved at me. Like...it was definitely at me because there was no one else behind us or next to us at that point. skadjgkljsdklj



We'd heard that they were going to go on a third run, but apparently they didn't need to and were satisfied they'd got all the shots they needed. About an hour after their return, we saw Martin leave looking exceptionally dapper in pink chinos and a white jacket. I was so distracted by what he was wearing and basically ogling at him as he walked to his car that I completely forgot to take any pictures. My phone was just frozen in my hand, ready to take the shots, but my eyes weren't moving off of Martin. > < . He gave the crowd a wave as he drove away.

Clearly Benedict doesn't quite have the same effect on me as I was able to get plenty of shots of him through the fence as he left wardrobe in his normal clothes and walked towards his car. He gave everyone a decent wave too and was driven off.






We also saw the Cumberdouble lingering around! But we weren't sure what he was doing there...



And then, that was it. The crew all started packing down and another setlock was over. In fact, no more setlock in London till Series 4, so probably another two years or more. It was quite a sad moment but I didn't really reflect on that, just thinking about the whole amazing time I'd had over the past week and already planning a trip to Cardiff for the final week of filming.

I went round to my friend's house where her mum cooked us an amazing curry, then got the 11:30pm bus back to Manchester. Fell asleep and had a dream about Martin.