Tag: Regent’s Canal

Two Bloggers Take a London Stroll

It’s always fun to spend time with a fellow-blogger, and a bit of a coup to be in London at a time when Sarah, of Travel with Me fame is actually not travelling! We’d met before, both in London and in Yorkshire. But we wanted to link up again, cameras in our hands.

Sarah had suggested a short stroll from Camden Town, along the Regents Canal, to Camley Street Natural Park and Coal Drops Yard. Come along with us.

Camden Town has changed a bit since I last visited. It’s Tourist Central. I heard more Italian than English, and Spanish school students seemed to be everywhere. No wonder Sarah and I didn’t at first spot one another. Here are a few shots I took whilst we were still hunting each other down.

Those 3D reliefs on the front of almost every shop seem to be a feature. Once Sarah and I found each other, we retired instantly for a relaxing canal-side coffee – in the open air!

Next – our stroll along the canal. Plenty to see. A Banksy? No, apparently not.

I don’t know how I cut off the left hand edge …

Walking under a bridge, we spotted reflections …

…. then graffiti …

… and a group of people chatting, and echoing the bright colours of the graffiti behind them.

We popped into St. Pancras Old Church and its churchyard. It’s the burial place of the writer Mary Wollstonecraft who way back in the 18th century was a passionate advocate for educational and social equality for women. Her tomb has acquired a dusting of small tributes fom those who come to pay their respects to her memory. There’s a Thomas Hardy connection here too, AND one to architect Sir John Soane. Sarah’s account of our walk together tells the tales, so you can read all about them here.

Coins and trinkets left on top of Mary Wollstonecraft’s tomb.

We had an agreeable saunter round the Camley Street Natural Park. It’s a tiny oasis of wildness bang up against a busy part of London. You’d never know that Kings Cross, traffic, shops, offices were only a couple of minutes walk away. I was so carried away by the peace of it all, I clean forgot to take a single photo.

Back to civilisation, Coal Drops Yard and Granary Square. Lunch was the plan, but before that, time for a wander. An exhibition (beauty products?) was just being dismantled, but the copper-effect display structures still stood, presenting an opportunity for selfies.

Sarah’s already taken a photo or two, but here I am, still seeking that perfect shot.

Granary Square is full of places to find interesting food. Sarah had experience on her side, and picked a good ‘un, Caravan. We’re not on Instagram here, so no artful shots of our lunch. We were too busy talking anyway.

A few more photo ops afterwards, from an unhurried little corner dedicated to Everyday Mental Maintenance where people could sit for a few quiet moments, resting, chatting, or simply reading one of the poems forming a backdrop.

We wondered if this was a long-distance friendship. Texting each other as an alternative to chatting? Probably not. They almost certainly had no idea that anyone else was sharing the space.
So they did!

But that was our time together over. Sarah had a journey back to her corner of London, and I was on Post School Duty back with the family. So we went our separate ways, promising that we’d try to meet again in the summer, when Sarah hopes to be once again in Yorkshire. Thanks, Sarah, for a day well spent!

For Jo’s Monday Walk

London Gasholders

I was in London yesterday, but due to travel back to Yorkshire from King’s Cross when Judith’s blog Beyond the Window Box tumbled into my in-box. She’d been exploring the area round the station, just alongside Regent’s Canal, and found some gasholders…..

As a child, these fascinated me.  Those circular cast iron skeletons, housing storage cylinders which telescoped up and down depending on how much gas they contained were a source of wonder to me.  Though assertively industrial, they were graceful too, rising above the narrow terraced houses and the factories and trades which grew up alongside them. But ‘Gasworks Street’ was nobody’s idea of a smart address.

The King’s Cross gasholders in their workaday world.

How things change.  Gasholders London is a site transformed from its dirty, workaday past into a smart desirable residential quarter.  All but one of the gasholders now contain not gas cylinders, but luxury apartments.  The remaining one has become a small  park with a gleaming reflective canopy with grass beneath.

Nobody seems to want to hide the area’s busy industrial past.  The über-smart shopping quarter, just being developed on the site of the cobbled streets and railway sidings where coal from the North of England was received and sorted is called Coal Drops Yard.

Gasholders London, seen from the Regent’s Canal.

Round here, if you need to know the price, you can’t afford it.  A hundred and fifty years of dramatic social change.

Canal boats and houseboats are part of the local scene.
Day to day life goes on. Here’s a bike park round the corner from Gasholders London. It’s next to the local primary school.

Click on any image for a closer view.