Walking through London

I love walking, I love London and I really love walking through London. I have gone for exploratory walks wherever I have worked and there are parts of London that I know well because of this.

One of my favourite places for walking is around the CGI/Logica office in Kings Place which sits on the Regent's Canal just north of Kings Cross. For the last couple of years I have been mostly banished to distant parts (e.g. Cardiff and Retford) and have missed my regular walks. A carefully planned day in London to see a friend in the evening and the lucky happen stance of it being a gorgeous day meant that I was out and about again.

The Regent's Canal next to Kings Place was somewhat green and very still. The birds did not seem to mind so nor did I and the change of colour made a familiar view look unusual.

Heading west I soon got to St Pancras Lock. This is a small lock, though not the smallest that I have seen, yet despite its smallness there are a lots of parts to it, such as this cascade of water. I presume that's there to aerate the water but that is just my guess.

Whatever the purpose of the various parts, together they make a machine that is pretty to watch and restful to listen to.

A little further along I came to St Parncras Old Church in its pretty shaded garden. I've taken many pictures of the garden over the yeas so I thought that I would have one of the church for a change.

I am not a great fan of churches, hence the lack of previous photos, but, considered just as a work of art, the scale, colour and design of this one suit its surroundings perfectly.

Nearby Camley Street Natural Park sat green wild and natural while the area around it was being ripped up as part of the largest building scheme in the country (it's so large that a new postcode region, N1C, has been created for it). It takes but a few minutes to walk all around the park and these are refreshing and rejuvenating minutes.

Exiting from the park brought me in to direct contact with the regeneration work. The old industrial buildings had been marked with a silver flash that grew to cover the whole of the Central Saint Martins campus.

I quite like the silver flash but the green artificial turf on the steps down to the canal looked too artificial without being interesting enough to justify this. 

The work there was continuing at a hectic pace and there will be a lot more to see the next time that I get there.

In the evening I walked down to London Bridge to meet a friend for a few pints on the river. Crossing London Bridge gave me this largely uninterrupted view of the Shard. It is not my favourite modern building in London, that is still Lloyds of London, but then there is nothing wrong with it either.