London’s River Thames is known to all, and for many centuries was home to one of the world’s great seaports. Less known is London’s connection to Britain’s vast canal system, which carried the city’s trade between the port and the Midlands, and brought coal from the north to feed the city’s furnaces and boilers.
Crossing London from the west was the Grand Junction, later Grand Union canal that connected by canal and river to the cities of the north; it brought boats to the Paddington Basin, near today’s Paddington Station. When it opened in 1801, Paddington was a village at the western edge of the city.
Before it reaches Paddington, an arm branches off to cross London, all the way north of London as it was, to meet the Thames at Limehouse, near the main ocean docks. That ‘missing link’ was built in the 1820s, under the name Regents Canal.
Today, commercial traffic is limited on the canals, but they’ve been preserved, largely for recreation but also, along the way, as floating residential neighborhoods.
Last October, I was staying in an apartment near Westbourne Park, with a back window on the canal. On a whim one morning I turned away from the Underground station, and walked across the city to Kings Cross, following the canal towpath.
Like many more conventional neighborhoods, the canal walk has its highlights and issues; some parts seem almost idyllic, as in the title photo; elsewhere there’s evidence of a patchwork life, or even bits of decay.
Through the canal’s commercial years, it was run by a succession of private companies; they were nationalized after World War II under the British Transport Commission and then the British Waterways Board.
As traffic dropped and commercial use declined, volunteer groups took over, and eventually the Canal & River Trust in 2012. The trust maintains the works, and collects rents for mooring rights along the canals as well as lock fees.
There’s a lot of greenery aboard boats as well as along the towpath
Plenty of other ‘sight-able’ sights on the boats, as well as an idyllic lunch while the weather was warm enough.
Most of the boats moored along the canal and plying its waters are narrowboats, whose size was fixed 170 or so years ago: narrow enough (7 feet) to fit two side by side in standard locks and 67 to 70 feet in length, again sized to fit the locks. Wide-beam boats are up to 14.5 feet wide. Standard sizes allowed boats access to hundreds of miles of British canals.
There are also double-width boats, and some that look as if they could double for Noah’s Ark.
Occasionally, a boat or barge serving as a restaurant or floating club…
The canal is spanned by dozens of bridges of various designs, some with barely room for the towpath either side. Early canal boats were pulled by horses on the path before small steam engines became common. Today, walkers don’t have to watch out for horses; instead the danger is not-very-courteous cyclists.
Business barges of various sorts here and there; the one below runs a regular tourist route from Little Venice, the basin below where the canal divides, to Camden Lock, home of chi-chi shops, tourist shops and a lively street market.
At Little Venice, it was time for me to stop for coffee and a snack in a bistro on a boat.
Continuing on, I chose the path to the left of the willow for the Regents Canal; to the right, the Grand Union canal continues to Paddington Basin. Along the way, pigeons, geese and gulls sharing a bankside bounty; the duck declined the invitation.
Shortly after Little Venice, an interruption in the towpath walk; a stretch along Bloomfield Road is private moorings and visitors aren’t welcome. From the road, I followed the canal toward the Maida Hill Tunnel.
Under the restaurant, which faces Edgeware Road, is the portal of the 817-foot tunnel. You’ll notice there’s no towpath; boats were moved through by “leggers,” men lying on their backs on the boats, pushing against the tunnel walls with their legs.
Making my way through a variety of local streets to reach the other end of the tunnel and continue my walk, I reached Lisson Grove where the canal continues toward central London, and where I’ll pick up this story in two weeks.
In the meantime, for a look at modern traffic at the far end of the canal at Limehouse, click HERE
