Regents Canal Walk

 

What a day out yesterday!

This was the invite.....

"I have had a good response to walking The Regents Canal on Thursday 1st July which is fab! Some of you are catching a train from Shenfield (£12.80 return) , some are catching the Central Line tube from Epping and others are driving to Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford (£8) . Shall we meet at Limehouse Tube Station at 12pm?.  
We really enjoyed walking this in Feb 2020.  It's full of surprises along the way like St Pancras Lovers Meeting statue, Camden Lock, London Zoo, Little Venice, a couple of tunnels and of course walking alongside a peaceful canal is great for our well being. We promise regular stops for coffee, photos and history.
Options to stay in London afterwards or make your own way back to Stratford (Central Line)  via the Bakerloo line from Edgeware or Paddington. 

A rough outline of the day:
12pm meet outside Limehouse Tube Station
View the River Thames, Limehouse Basin and the start of the Lee Valley Walk (my favourite walk ever!).
Enjoy walking the Regents Canal and seeing the 12 Locks, parks, houseboats and generally the hustle and bustle of London while we walk calmly.
2.30pm We will stop, after 6 miles, for a substantial coffee/cake/sandwich/wine stop around the St Pancras, Kings Cross area. There is plenty of outside seating at The Granary square if you want to eat your sandwich here. There are lots of eating establishments around here.  There are 1000 choreographed fountains here!
3.15pm Continue our walk to see Gas Holder Park , tunnels, Camden Town, London Zoo and Little Venice.
4.30pm Arrive at Paddington Basin, walk to see the lifting bridges (see link below…The Fan Bridge and The Rolling Bridge)  http://merchantsquare.co.uk/bridges/ Your option to eat a meal in this area. We ate at the Lockhouse before .
https://www.lockhouselondon.com/"

In all, 9 of us met at Limehouse as planned. This was our route.

 

Here are just a few of my photos. We started by touring the Limehouse Basin and its entrance from the River Thames.

As promised, we saw lots of history along the way. One of the several informative panels around the basin explained that this Grade II listed structure is an accumulator tower. It was used between 1869 and the 1920s to regulate the hydraulic pressure in the system to power the cranes, lock gates, capstans and swing bridges in the dock at a massive pressure of 48bar.  You can read more about it here and here.

Then it was onto the Regents Canal itself, and the last of the twelve locks (we were walking the canal from its end to its start), the Commercial Road lock (although if you count the lock from Limehouse basin into the Thames there are 13).

We saw plenty of birdlife along the way, including these Egyptian geese and their goslings and lots of coots.

The scenery along the canal was fascinating and there were some lovely trees.

At Old Ford Lock, lock number 8, just after crossing the Hertford Union canal, we saw a cormorant drying its wings

We left the canal here for our lunch stop in Victoria Park with refreshments from the Lakeside Pavilion Café and seating by the lake.

As well as 12 locks, we encountered some 60+ bridges on over the canal, some with colourful decorations. And what is it on the other side of this Queensbridge Rd bridge, number 48?

A bargeful of sharks? That's a new collective noun.  The proper collective noun for sharks, by the way, as described here, is a shiver. Whatever, the Hoxton Docks sharks were planned to sing, blow bubbles and smoke before Hackney council was granted the injunction for their removal in November last year - read about it here.

After passing Haggerston  we got to Islington City Road basin and arrived at the 880m long Islington tunnel, Here we had to leave the canal and cross Islington  High Street and the A1, before walking through the vibrant Chapel Market.

By St. Silas church, there was a funeral cortege parked, including this beautiful white horse-drawn hearse.

Back on the canal once more we entered the Kings Cross section. We got a view of Kings Cross and St. Pancras stations shortly before...

...Granary Square steps, where we found a crowd watching Wimbledon on a big screen.

Here we said goodbye to Helen, who had travelled with me by train from Bury St. Edmunds and while Joyce went to visit St. Pancras Station to see the statues...

...Julian and I visited The Lighterman for a beer - his a Five Points Pale Ale and mine a Brick Brewery Peckham Pale Ale.

Alas our beer was rather on the warm side. But never mind. We got to see the fountains start playing before it was time to move on.

At Gasholder Park I tried photographing everyone looking up reflected in the holey sculpted metal canopy above us.

Soon we reached the Camden Locks section, which was buzzing with activity.

The selection of street food looked inviting.

There were some people on the canal as well. Here are some paddle-boarders....

...and this punt had a singer with guitar serenading the passengers.

The canal took us along the edge of Regents Park passing between the park and Primrose Hill. As we passed London Zoo, Roland spotted a warthog. Can you see it?

There are some pretty swanky houses here along the Outer Circle

Now we had another bit of street walking as the canal passed through the 249m Maida Hill tunnel. We got a nice view of it coming back to join it.

Not far along here we arrived at Little Venice passing a puppet theatre barge just past the official start of the Regents canal, where it meets the Grand Union canal.

According to some, Lord Byron first used the phrase 'Little Venice' in the early 1800s. However other historians claim the poet Robert Browning, who lived in this area from 1862 to 1887, coined the name now used for this historic location. Read more about the debate here.

Beside Warwick Avenue is this statue "Two Doves" in memory of Robet Browning, symbolising Peace, Love and Learning.

We were now in Paddington....

...and soon came to Merchants Square and the Fan Bridge, the official end of our walk.

And here we are.

That was a lovely walk with so much to see it was hard to take everything in. Thank-you Joyce for leading us along and to the others for their company.

You can see more details of our route here on MapMyWalk and see many more photos here on Flickr, including some from beor and after the walk itself.