Walking the pathways along London’s Regent’s Canal sometimes feels like a journey into a secret world, hidden from the skyscraper skyline, the monuments and the residential neighborhoods of the sprawling city, but it’s really not. The canal is ‘right there’ in many parts of the city, including right behind Kings Cross and St Pancras, two of the busiest stations.
But just around the corner, it’s suddenly different, with dense patches of green, a variety of buildings and bridges, and, most significantly, one of London’s most extended neighborhoods, the 3,000 or so boats that are permanent home to their owners.
The number has doubled in the past ten years, and another couple of thousand boats are on hand without having a permanent mooring. Of course, it’s not really a single neighborhood; there are different clusters along the almost nine miles of the canal, but they share many interests, including maintenance of the canal and their tax status.
While most stick to the standard dimensions of Britain’s canal narrowboats, their appearance varies widely, and whimsical decorations are common. Some go beyond that…
And some even veer into the bizarre…
My late spring walk on this section, from Kings Cross to Limehouse, gave me a chance for a different view of the floating reedbeds that have been created along the canal, partly to protect the banks at critical areas and partly to support biodiversity. Last October’s hopeful sprouts were now in full flower.
The section I walked this time is punctuated by several locks; at some of them, open spaces have created an opportunity for cafes. There’s also a major interruption to walking at one point: The Islington Tunnel, too narrow to support a walkway. When originally built, boatmen lay on their backs on boats and ‘legged’ against the tunnel wall and roof.
Plenty of bridges, and plenty of graffiti; some of the paths are so narrow I had to stoop or bend… and I’m not tall! I still haven’t found an answer to what is carried in the large bowed tube just below.
Houseboats are not the only craft on the canal… although, the cruise ship lifeboat is an outlier.
Speaking outliers… sharks and gorillas are not your usual London canal residents. They ended up here after a 2020 art competition that stirred up issues in Hackney. Not the sharks, per se: the art competition ignored planning regulations.
Life on the water is not always idyllic…
I spotted several boats with solar panels, though only a few with this big an array. Seems like an obvious solution.
Aside from formal cafes at locks and street crossings, there are a few other ways, it seems, to enjoy an afternoon in a quiet spot and watch the boats and birds…
A quiet shady spot, and a couple of unforgettable name choices…
And, finally, three miles from Kings Cross and approaching the Limehouse Basin where the canal ends. When it was still a freight artery, it went directly into the Thames at its end, but now terminates, after one more lock, in a marina.
For some Regent’s Canal birds …
The two previous parts of my Regent’s Canal walks
