London meanderings.

I've done many, many of these over the years; sometimes to do with a writing idea, or sketching but often just curiosity over how my native city changes constantly. 

Usually I find a room at the once incredibly cheap, St Atan's, hotel in Bloomsbury but even that modest place has become unaffordable. This time I found a generously low-priced Air B and B room on the boarders of Islington and booked it immediately, partly as the owner said it could share the secret of how to make white Marmite.

Taking a place in North London - more my childhood area rather than Eastwards which has been the case for several years due to for writing scenarios - I was excited to find a whole vast area I had forgotten, or possibly never visited in any depth. Canonbury was as I had imagined - full of elegant Georgian houses, little gated parks and rows of boutiques, but I'd never heard of the New River Walkway, something I noted in the flat's very excellent 'off the beaten track' London guide books. What an oasis of calm and biodiversity within London's sprawl - willow trees and a wandering path following a man-made river originally fabricated to provide drinking water to the area.   

    

                                                            Early morning, Canonbury

                                                               The new river walkway

Madness of Camden - but not as mad as Oxford St

a Hampstead back lane, and pub

I walked for hours with no plan, as I do, through the West End, on to Regents park with its joggers, dog walkers and groups of well-dressed Sunday strollers; and up to Camden - a mad tapestry of colour and sound, busier than I had ever seen it - and onto Hampstead, an epicentre of chique and spare cash. I did all the charity shops which were incredible! window shopped, drank tea when the cold became too intense and finished off a perfect day with a concert of experimental jazz in a church before returning to my lovely B and B room - which the kindly guy had upgraded to the whole flat as he was away, the only downside being that I never did get to learn of the white Marmite. Next time.