London’s ‘other river’—the Grand Union and Regent’s canals that cross the city, now carries mainly pleasure boaters and people living aboard their narrowboats, but walking along the canal towpaths shows many remnants of the days when the canals were London’s lifeline to the Midlands and to an endless supply of coal.
But that’s less obvious at the beginning of this stretch of my walk, starting from where the Regent’s Canal, having left the Grand Union behind at Little Venice, emerges from the Maida Hill Tunnel into the stretch headed toward Regent’s Park, named for the same regent, later George IV, who was persuaded that London needed a canal that crossed the entire city, not just one that stopped at the western edge.
Before reaching the park, the canal passes old and new features of London’s industry and utilities, and a substantial anchorage in a wide basin that was once meant for unloading cargoes. Passing under a bridge that carries a rail line, we come to Regents Park, welcomed by an elegant goose.
When the Park was first conceived in the early 1800s, it was meant not just as a public amenity but as a buffer that would provide green surroundings for—dare we say it?—elegant homes for the wealthy. While the Prince Regent gave the land, part of the Crown Estate, a private developer, John Burton, paid for development and ringed the outer reaches with elegant villas.
But the mansion above isn’t one of them. A strip of land between the canal, where it crosses the park, and the Outer Circle road inside the park, was left undeveloped at the time. In 1987, the Crown Estate commissioned six villas in Georgian styles for the spot, and this is one. Several are now occupied by foreign diplomats. They’ve sold for as much as £9 million.
The other occupant of the northern part of Regent’s Park, between the canal and the outer boundary, is the London Zoo, whose mesh-walled aviary sticks out over the towpath. At the far edge of the Zoo, just before the canal takes a right turn, is the Feng Shang floating restaurant, a well-known place for ‘authentic’ Chinese cuisine.
Just past the bright red boat, the canal takes a sharp left turn, under a graffiti-walled bridge and emerges in a neighborhood of solid apartments and canal-side houses, not to mention plenty of land-side canal boats.
Numbers of the houses along this stretch are built directly at the canal edge and have moorings of their own.
Another pair of rail and road bridges and we’re heading toward the Pirate Castle and then Camden Locks.
The Pirate Castle is a boating and outdoor activities charity that started in 1966 on a narrowboat, and took the name ‘Pirates’ as they requested donations from passing boats to raise funds. By 1977, they were able to move into their permanent home, which despite its appearance is a 1970s new-build, designed by Richard Seifert, an architect responsible for numbers of London’s iconic skyscrapers.
If I may step aside from this narrative for a moment: I need to introduce the founder of the Pirates. The easy name to remember is Viscount St Davids, but he was christened Jestyn Reginald Austine Plantagenet Phillips. Enough said.
Past the Pirate Castle lies Camden Locks, an area perhaps best known these days as the center and namesake of a lively London street market. In the canal’s busy industrial days, this was an important point for transferring cargoes between canal barges, roadways and railways. The colorfully-painted Interchange Building allowed canal boats to pass under the humped bridge and then under the building where cranes would lift cargo to the rail line that passed above.
This bridge, with its ramps in opposite directions, was built to allow horses pulling barges along the canal to shift to the opposite towpath, a maneuver that became unnecessary as small steam and then diesel engines took over the chore of powering canal traffic.
At Camden Locks, a colorful end-of-the-workday collection of nearly any kind of prepared food you could imagine, as well as crafts of various sorts. A few steps above, Camden Road crosses the canal; it’s an area well-known for trendy shops, music venues and more.
The inescapable accompaniment to any place even remotely trendy or romantic…
Past Camden Road and the locks, the canal enters a more built-up area as it approaches busy London rail hubs, and the end of my route for the day. New apartment buildings occupy much of the canal bank in this area, along with some shops and offices.
The Canal and River Trust, the organization responsible for Britain’s waterways network, is planting floating reedbeds like this in a number of areas; as the reeds grow, they provide valuable habitat for wildlife and play an important role in enhancing the biodiversity of the area.
This office offers a great view of the canal—but I’m not sure I’d be happy about being so visible in the view from the canal!
The first serious workboat seen since the first stretch of the walk, back on the Grand Union canal.
By the middle of the 19th century, much of the coal arriving in London by canal wasn’t being burned directly as home and industrial fuel, but being converted into coal gas for heat and lighting. Here, just north of Kings Cross and St Pancras stations, it was stored in huge gas holders—some of the older among us remember similar structures in New York and other cities. Here, in Gasholder Park, one frame has been left, while two others have been filled with apartment houses.
A ship of puns near the gas holders…
A memory of the past: the British Waterways Board managed the UK’s canals and rivers from 1962 to 2012 as a government-owned corporation. the Canal and River Trust, a charity, replaced it.
A last mooring of narrowboats behind Kings Cross, and a glimpse of past and present as a Eurostar train, bound for Paris, passes a row of houseboats as it leaves St Pancras.
A previous article covered a walk along the Grand Union canal from Westbourne Park to Little Venice; an earlier article looked at modern traffic at the far end of the Regent’s Canal where it meets the Thames at the Limehouse Cut
