Walking around Kings Cross with a camera

I will soon be leaving CGI and that means that I will soon stop working at Kings Place. I'll miss the Kings Cross area far more than I will miss CGI and I took advantage of a sunny lunch break to walk around some of the interesting places that have excited me many times in recent years.

These are all within a few hundred metres of my office in Kings Place. Several are part of the massive redevelopment that is still going on just north of Kings Cross while others are historical and there is even a patch that has escaped all attempts at industrialisation.

This is Lewis Cubitt Square, one of the new spaces on the Central St Martin campus. It is on the quiet north-west corner and has building works on one side so it is not very busy at the moment but I am sure that its time will come.

The graveyard and gardens next to the old St Pancras Church are somewhat unremarkable except for the one remarkable monument. Even more remarkably, it is a sundial.

Camley Street Natural Park is an oasis of natural calm amidst all the construction and usual city bustle. There is a loop walk around the edge of the small park which makes it an ideal place to take in during a walk.

The newest addition to the area is the Gas Holder Park which is based on the rebuilt and relocated Gas Holder No. 8. The steelwork is rendered almost invisible by the circle of mirrors that make walking around there slightly discomforting.

There is a little basin between the lock and the railway line that is home to a few colourful boats.

St Pancras Lock is small and I have never seen a boat go through it in all the many times that I have passed it while walking along the towpath. The trees at the top are in Camley Street Natural Park.

Just off Copenhagen Road, which parallels the Regent's Canal as it flows east from Kings Place, is Edward Square and by the entrance is the Tolpuddle Martyrs Mural on what was the wall of a pub. This is only a small section of it.

Granary Square is the centre piece of the area's regeneration and the fountains there are its main feature. There are four grids of fountains and each one if programmed to make interesting patterns. The square is always swarming with kids when it is hot, as it should be - public squares are for the public.

Jeff Lowe: Object Lessons at Pangolin London

Pangolin London is one of the two galleries at Kings Place and is the one that I pass every time that I go in or out of the building. It has a prominent position at the front of the building and with its large windows it gives me a nice shot of art as I go past.

Of course I go in sometimes too and this tends to be during the day when events at work make a more intense shot of art a welcome boost. I visit the larger Piano Nobile Kings Place gallery on the lower ground floor for the same reason but their exhibitions are on for longer and so going there repeatedly gives diminishing returns.

And that is why I was in Pangolin London on this Friday afternoon. It was a bad day in the office and I had already decided that this shot of art would need to be followed by further shots of coffee and cake from Green & Fortune Cafe.

The current exhibition Jeff Lowe: Object Lessons had a mix of objects that could be broadly categorised as lines, blocks or lines and blocks.

The big pieces, like the one below, were all about lines and the joins between them. This piece looks like a pile of bent tubing that was found somewhere and welded together almost randomly whereas the similar sized piece on the floor next to it looked more like a large wire basket with thinner pieces of metal and everything in parallel straight lines.

There were several smaller pieces made of layers of metal welded together to make rectangular blocks which could have been models for modern buildings. But it was the large block piece that demanded attention as it filled most of the wall at the far end.

This single piece consisted of 36 cast iron plates arranged in a 3 x 12 grid that measured approximately 1m by 5m.

The designs on each plate reminded me of hieroglyphics but that was probably because I was going to see Akhnaten that evening. A closer inspection of the shapes suggests that at least some of them represent countries or territories, if you look at them upside down then the one in the middle appears to be North America and the one diagonally up and left from it is Africa.

This was my favourite piece because of the visual impact that it had from a distance and the images on the individual plates that drew me towards it.

The lines and blocks came together with a series of woodblocks. The structural lines from the metal work were repeated and the colouring of the spaces between them repeated the blocks.

I liked these too because I almost always like modern art that consists of simple shapes and a few colours.

Pangolin London is quite a small gallery which makes it ideal for a quick visit and there is always enough interesting stuff in there to make it a rewarding visit.

Thomas Newbolt: Drama Painting - A Modern Baroque at Kings Place Gallery

Working in a building that houses two galleries is one of the reasons that I pull myself into Kings Place when I could just as easily work at home. They are both conveniently bite-sized and can be consumed as part of a lunch break or an afternoon tea break. They also provide emergency relief when work is going badly.

The main gallery, which now appears to be called Piano Nobile Kings Place, is mostly spread across the level below the entrance and cafe area. There is little on that floor other than the gallery and a large hole in the middle which is the atrium space for the concert hall level below. The gallery flows down to that level to occupy a corner of that space too.

The combination of the atrium and the high ceilings creates a space that can do justice to large works and the exhibitions generally take advantage of this.

The exhibitions also tend to be somewhat quirky and modern in a way that appeals to me greatly.

The latest exhibition is Thomas Newbolt: Drama Painting – A Modern Baroque, which runs until 13 May.

They are all pictures of women, or perhaps it is just one woman, dressed and posed as if going to the opera.

They are interpretive rather than figurative and it is the presence of the woman that matters, not the details of her figure. The focus is kept on the woman by keeping the background dark and featureless.

The simple backgrounds, the plain dresses and the lack of any movement make the pictures as much about the colours as the woman. As is often the case, I appreciated the abstract nature of the art, i.e. the way the colours interact and the visual impact that makes, as much, if not more, that what those colours represent.

Similarly, I appreciated them more from a distance where their scale could be appreciated and full impact of the colours could be felt. Moving closer and the details started to intrude until eventually it was the brush strokes that I saw and the "big picture" was lost. Of course for some works of art the details and the brush work are worth exploring but I felt much happier exploring Thomas Newbolt's at a distance.

This exhibition was not completely to my taste but it was close enough to it to encourage me to go downstairs to see it a few more times before it closes.

Merete Rasmussen exhibition at Pangolin London

The Pangolin London gallery is by the entrance on the ground floor of Kings Place, which also happens to be the building that my office is in so I walk past in four times a day.

The large windows along the pavement (York Way) mean that I can see the exhibitions without having to go in. This is my (lame) excuse for not going in more often which is my error as I like art galleries even if sculpture is not my favourite forms.

I went in this time for less than artistic reasons. I was having a bad day at work, I do not respond well to micro-management, and wanted a short break. I had been to the exhibition in the Kings Place Gallery on the lower floors a few times so I went to Pangolin London instead. And I was glad that I did.

When looking at the sculptures on my way in and out of the building I had assumed that they were made from metal so I was surprised to learn that most of them were ceramic. Impressed by the technique I asked one of the helpful staff there about it and she explained to me how they were made. It was a complicated process and it included two layers of clay, one to form the shape and the second to hold the colour.

There were limits to the size of the kiln that restricted the size of the pieces and the largest piece, the red one at the top, was made of metal, so I was partially right after all. There were a few smaller metal pieces, similar in style to the twisted ceramics but with several stands rather than a single sheet and the blue piece in the top right corner is an example of this.

I found them interesting but more for the techniques and skills used to manufacture them than their artistic merit (art is an intensely personal thing).

My favourite piece, Morphogenesis - commissioned for this exhibition, is not pictured and was quite different. It looked something like packaging for tennis balls and it changed colour, from black to blue, and became less formal along its length. This was another ceramic work and had been made from three separate pieces because of its size and these were deliberately hung with a small gap between them to show how they were constructed.

Sculpture may not be my thing but my ten minutes or so walking around this small gallery a few times certainly perked me up and prepared me for the final session in the office.

Greg Tricker: Revelation – Sacred Art, Sacred Music at Kings Place Gallery

An exhibition titled Sacred Art, Sacred Music was always going to struggle to appeal to somebody as unspiritual as me, and so it proved.

Kings Place Gallery (a.k.a. Piano Nobile Kings Place), is in the same building as the main office that I work in so I look at every exhibition whatever the subject.

Revelation made the sacred nature of the works by framing most of the stained glass pieces in what looked like church windows. I could appreciate the idea but was not convinced by the execution as I felt the frames were too prominent and so drew attention away from the pictures.

Understandably the subject matter was very sacred too and that had no interest for me. What I did like was some of the use of colour.

In trying to summarise what I liked about the exhibition I've chosen a picture of Noah in his arc. I've had to zoom in and crop the picture to hide the frame and I try to ignore the holy glow around Noah's head. What I do like is the bold red of the boat and the strong, blue, yellow and green that surround it.

Revelation – Sacred Art, Sacred Music was far from my cup of tea artistically but I would much rather have a gallery in my building that sometimes does art that I do not like than have no gallery at all and, besides, there is usually something for me to like in any work of art anyway.

John Golding: Finding the Absolute at Kings Place Gallery failed to stir me

I have mentioned several times how much I like working in a building that has a couple of art galleries and I have also mentioned many times the excellent exhibitions of modern art that I have been to here and abroad.

So, on the face of it, John Golding;s Finding the Absolute exhibition at Kings Place Gallery should have been just my thing, but it was not.

I've been turned on by a pile of tea-towels in the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt and by metal blocks at the Gagosian Gallery London but not by these paintings.

This surprised, and still surprises, me as I generally like this sort of abstract art, i.e. large canvasses with just a few coloured shapes and/or lines. And, to be fair, I do like the opening picture with the blue on black rectangles. I did not like any of the other pictures though and it has taken me a while to attempt to understand why that was.

I think that the colour was part of it. The blue on black was two bold colours but elsewhere there were timid blues and unexciting greys. Not just dull colours but uninteresting combinations.

I also found the non-straight lines a little disturbing. They started to make the shapes look like objects rather than just being shapes; is that a black paintbrush handle at the bottom of the picture?

John Golding may not be my cup of tea but I am not going to let one little disappointment put me off modern art in general or the Kings Place Gallery in particular.

Frans Widerberg: The Art of Re-Enchantment at Kings Place Gallery

I had not heard of Frans Widerberg before visiting this exhibition of his works at Kings Place Gallery, but that is true of almost all of the exhibitions that I have been to there.

The lure is the gallery, not the painter, and that is because the gallery is conveniently situated in the same building as my office.

The gallery space feels like something of an add-on to the corporate spaces above and the concert spaces below as it is little more that the wall around the atrium. That does have one advantage in that the entry down the steps from the ground floor can be quite dramatic.

The entrance was dramatic this time with the name of the exhibition displayed quietly above a large colourful picture called Rider: Northern Lights. This set the tone of the exhibition with its bold primary colours, fantastical theme and rough drawing style that eschewed detail.

Most of the lower ground floor was in the same vein with large pictures of simple figures in plain landscapes painted in unnatural colours.

A lot of the pictures had even simpler colour schemes using mostly just two of the primary colours, e.g. the centre one here is mainly red and yellow and the one on the right is mainly blue and yellow.

Several were of static single people, like the ones on the left and right here, and in these I found the subject matter almost irrelevant (as there was so little of it) and the pleasure that I got was from the use of colour. There is a very broad line between representative and abstract art and I often like pictures that play in this space.

The other characters to appear were centaurs, reinforcing the fantastical tone, and there was one in my favourite of the painting in this section.

This is Centaur Wedding and I love it.

The ad hoc nature of the gallery meant that the exhibition continued to the floor below. This can be a problem as corporate events are often held on that floor and so I chose to go down on a day when it was free.

With the change of level came an unexpected change of mood.

Having got accustomed to large fantastical paintings I had to readjust to small landscapes. This adjustment was helped a little by the these paintings also relying heavily on the primary colours and a simplicity of construction.

These pictures had less immediate impact because of their smaller scale, subtler colours and traditional subjects but they held up to closer scrutiny and had some noticeable charm. That said, their normalness and pleasantness were not enough to make up for a lack of noticeably artistic flair and these reminded me of the sort of pictures that I buy on holiday from street vendors.

It was easy to forgive the slight landscapes hidden in a corner of the lower level because the large fantastical paintings boldy strutting their stuff on the main floor of the gallery were so striking.

Entertaining evening at Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival 2014 Day Four

For its third and final week Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival 2014 shifted slightly from Central Saint Martins to Kings Place. I work at Kings Place, on the top floor. Omens like that cannot be ignored and worked in the office (rather than at home) on the Thursday and Friday so that I could go straight to the festival.

That proved to be a good plan as on the Thursday I found myself working until after 6pm and so the only way that I could have got to Kings Place in time was to already be there. The bar and cafe on the ground floor were open, as usual, so I helped myself to a pint of Becks Vier and an egg roll before going down two levels to the opera zone.

Despite having worked at Kings Place since it opened I had never been to any performances there and I was looking forward to seeing this side of the building in action.

I almost fell at the first hurdle as I tried to use the online booking system (it was cheaper that way) only to have it fail on me, so I went downstairs to book it there. They could only book me in to one of the two shows that night as the other was sold out. Luckily the Tête-à-Tête was also at the desk and she explained that online booking stopped at 12:00 on the day of performance as they had to print off and sort out the tickets then and she was about to do them for the sold-out show and if they had a spare then I could have it. They did.

Women Box by Size Zero Opera was my first show. This was in Hall 2 which was just a room with a raised stage and some chairs.

The performance was actually four separate pieces.

Opening and closing it were String Quartet I and II by Mauricio Kagel. These were decidedly weird and the main point seemed to be to find out how many ways you can make noise out of a traditional music instrument. At one point a cello was played upside down. This was music that demanded attention and never let you relax.

In the middle were two operatic pieces that looked at the role of women in what were traditionally men's roles, boxing and conducting.

The boxing piece made quiet an impression on me with its movement. The singer had been coached by a female boxer and it showed. Her foot and head movements were particularly convincing. She could sing too and it was a nice little piece,

In the second a woman conductor first disguised herself as a man (not very convincingly) and then decided to be proud of her femininity and stripped down to a somewhat distracting negligee. That may be why I have largely forgotten the music.

The four pieces worked well together and I had a fun hour watching them.

On the Axis of This World was almost a filler, chosen just because I was there and it was on, but it proved to be one of my favourites in the Festival.

The blurb said that it was an operatic meditation on the vast perspectives of Antarctica so I was expecting something Vaughan Williams-ish, and it was.

The slow gentle music was joined by two male voices, an interesting combination of countertenor and baritone, and an actor/narrator.

Stylistically it reminded me of Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which is a favourite of mine.

It was a gentle, strong and distinctive opera which I enjoyed immensely.

I found the communal spaces at Kings Place less welcoming than Central Saint Martins, there was no draught beer and the acoustics made it very noisy, so I did not linger long looking for people to talk to. Instead I headed home happy and satiated.

I can see your office from here*

Logica moved out of Stephenson House by the Euston Tower and in to Kings Place by Kings Cross in 2008. The Kings Cross area has seen a great deal of change in that time with much more to come.

One of the new arrivals to the Kings Cross Campus is CSC who my eldest son, Howard, works for and we've swapped photos of each other's office.

This is Howard's photo of Kings Place, that's the big grey building. Logica, now CGI, occupies the top (7th) floor so we have the best views. I am normally on the long west side (I'm there now) somewhere just to the left of the red vertical band that marks the main entrance.

We have a nice veranda on our floor so I was able to walk outside to take this photo. It is taken from the top of the red tower in the previous picture.

The safety barrier is rather tall (I am very pleased to say!) so it restricts the view down, which is why I moved to the gap above the entrance to take the picture. Howard's building is the grey one on the left that is partial obscured by the metalwork.


*My thanks to Camel for inspiring this post's title and for making so many fine albums.

Sculpture in the Home at Pangolin London

The best thing about working at Kings Place is the art. There are modern statues on the two sides facing the canal, a large gallery on level -1 that often spills over to level -2 and there is Pangolin London too.

Pangolin London is the little gallery on the York Road side that lies between The Guardian and the main entrance to the arts complex and the offices. Because of its street-side location it is a gallery that I have looked in to many times but have only popped into a couple of times.

The current exhibition, Sculptures in the Home, was so striking that I had to go in and have a closer and longer look.

Sculpture in the Home was inspired by exhibitions with the same name from the 40's and 50's. It had a rich feast of sculptures and a nice topping of a few pictures displayed in three period rooms.

Everything about it was brilliantly conceived and executed.

The rooms were as lovely as anything in the Geffrye Museum and it was worth going just to see the two Wingback Armchairs in Sanderson Festival fabric. The furniture and furnishings were part of the exhibition and were included in the catalogue. The chairs that I loved were a tempting £3,000 each.

I would have been quite satisfied if that was all that the exhibition consisted of but there was more to it than that. The real point of the rooms was to show off the works of art.

Discretely sprinkled across the room were 32 sculptures and 21 prints. They were placed so naturally that it was hard to find all of them.

The sculptures were by people like Lynn Chadwick and Elisabeth Frink who even I had heard of.

I would have loved to take all three rooms home with me just as they were but I was about £1m short of the asking price so I had to be content with just looking and dreaming.

The Lost World of Norman Cornish at Kings Place Gallery

Possibly the best thing about working in Kings Place is being in the same building as Kings Place Gallery. I like to pop down there during a break and I have been seriously impressed by several of their exhibitions. Including this one.

Norman Cornish worked as a coal miner in a small village in County Durham and he painted what he saw around him. The exhibition was called "The Lost World of Norman Cornish" because that world been lost with the closure of the mines.

It was a hard world with the miners walking miles to the local pit to work in cramped conditions underground and getting little money for their efforts. And while this hardness comes through so does the character and community. This is a world now viewed through grey-tinted glasses but at that time it was just how things were.

I had seen one of the pictures of coalminers walking to work before (there were several similar pictures in the exhibition) but I cannot recall now where that was, it could have been a gallery, a magazine or a website. However, it did make an impression at the time and that is a good thing.

There were a few pictures of inside the coal mine too including this one of men climbing the gantry at the pit-head and some of men working underground.

Another common theme in Cornish's work was the pub where the men went in the evening. These shared some of the characteristics of the men at work pictures with groups of identically dressed men in long coats and caps usually viewed from behind. The impression was given that the pubs were as cramped as the mines, and the possibly were.

Artistically as well as compositionally the pub scenes looked much like the work scenes with broad shapes in browns and greys and that is the main reason that I have not included an example of one of them.

The third set of pictures were quite different. These were scenes in and around the village that showed people going about their normal business. These were smaller pictures (A4ish) done in watercolour.

There was more actual colour in them too, though I have chosen one of the least colourful examples as it is the one that I liked the most. At least the woman has a blue headscarf that almost makes my point.

The final set of pictures were rough portraits and sketches of people.

It was a large exhibition spread over all of Level -1 with a little overspill on to Level -2 and I liked everything in it. I walked around it twice before heading outside to continue my lunch break.

I think that this was my favourite exhibition at Kings Place Gallery so far. I have really enjoyed some of the others, particularly Ørnulf Opdahl, but I prefer Norman Cornish because of the sense of humanity that they exude. These are pictures of real people in real places.

Ørnulf Opdahl: New Paintings at Kings Place Gallery

I had never heard of Ørnulf Opdahl before and so would not have gone too far out of my way to see an exhibition of his paintings. Luckily I did not have to as the exhibition came to Kings Place Gallery which is in the same building as my office.

The main exhibition space was on Level -1 and walking carefully down the long staircase towards the large open area the paintings started to appear and made an immediate and striking impact due to their size and colour.

Getting closer, and the abstract mix of greys became a landscape with a thin row of lights from a settlement struggling for survival between the menacing sea and the brooding sky.

A couple of years ago I travelled along the coast of Norway, from Bergen to Trondheim, and Opdahl's Norway was a Norway that I recognised. And loved.

The pictures were mostly, but not exclusively, of the coast as viewed from the sea or an opposite shore and, despite being very darkly coloured, conveyed the sense of peace that Norway has outside of the towns and cities. The coastline is largely uninhabited with just the occasional shack to show that Man has ever been there.

With no Man to spoil the view, Nature is allowed to show-off what She can do and does this with towering cliffs, thick clouds and deep water.

I would gladly have any of these pictures at home. Sadly the larger ones were priced at up to £20k so that was not going to happen. Enough of the pictures had orange dots to show that other people felt the same way but had deeper pockets.

This was a pleasingly large exhibition too filling the two gallery areas on Level -1 and also stretching down to Level -2. A corporate lunch was about to start there but I managed to see the pictures down there and escape back upstairs before the guests arrived.

The smaller gallery on Level -1 had some smaller pictures (all sold I believe) and also some limited edition prints. They were £1k or less so somebody in a red and white outfit could get me one in the next few days. If not, I'll never believe in Santa Claus again.

Looking at the pictures again as I write this post I am impressed by their grandeur and I want to see them in their full-size glory again. I'll have to find another excuse to go in to the office.

Sandra Blow exhibition at Kings Place

I have not been to the London office of CGI/Logica much in the last couple of years as I have been working on projects away from home. That is a shame as I like Kings Place.

The canal-side location is an obvious plus, and so is the gallery.

The gallery is on the lower level, i.e. just below the reception/cafe area, and consists of both a gallery room and also all of the space that surrounds the atrium. This is a large space with high walls and that means that they can show large works, as they did in the Sandra Blow exhibition where some of the canvasses were around 3m x 2m.

This time there were so many works to show that the exhibition spread to the level below (that's Level -2) which is where the concert spaces are.

Sandra Blow's works were abstract paintings and assemblages, i.e. not quite collages but heading that way.

I found some of the smaller works lacked impact. Not only were they small but they tended to be simple in composition and use few colours.

I loved most of the large works though.

This love seemed to be shared as these were priced from £75k to £95k. There is no way on earth that I would ever pay that sort of money for one of these pieces (or have a wall suitable to hang one on) but it was wonderful to have the opportunity to see them.

Kings Place on a Saturday afternoon

I had been to Kings Place (just North of Kings Cross) many times previously but only during the working week and only to work; Logica (now part of CGI) occupies the top floor.

I found myself there on a Saturday afternoon as I was walking along the Regent's Canal and Kings Place was in the right place at the right time for a short rest, a cup of tea and a slice of cake.

I had no expectation of any other entertainment but I went downstairs to the gallery area anyway, just on the off-chance.

I was very pleased to discover an exhibition of paintings by Adam Birtwistle (son of Harrison) of whom, like most current artists, I knew nothing of. I likes the paintings immediately for their structure. They were mostly portraits set low in the frame against a black background with just a touch of detail that related to the subject.

This picture shows the paintings in situ. The upper of the two floors is the exhibition floor (this is one down from the ground floor) and the lower floor is where the concert spaces are. The two Birtwistle pictures shown at the top can just be seen either side of the pillar in the centre.

There were more Birtwistle paintings off to the right and further to the right there is a separate gallery which was displaying paintings by John Lessore.

I liked some of his subjects, such as the London scenes, but I found the colours insipid and none of the pictures made me pause as I walked quickly around.

Returning to the atrium area, what did make me pause on one of the soft benches there was some acapella music.

The cluster of people standing in the exhibition area were a choir who entertained us for quarter of an hour or so. I guess there was some event on as I could hear more singing when I went back up stairs for my cup of tea.

I could not end my story without saying just a little more about Adam Birtwistle's art.

This closer look at my favourite of his paintings, obviously Sir Patrick Moore, shows just how rich the compositions are.

The bold red of the shirt is a refreshingly bold statement against the blackness. In this case the black is punctuated with celestial objects.

It is a lovely picture but I am not sure that I would pay the £38k that was being asked for it.

That seems a reasonable price when compared to other paintings in other galleries, it is just that art is generally very expensive.

The tea and cake worked their magic and i was soon able to resume my walk. Kings Place impressed in that brief visit and with so much going on in the area I suspect that it will not be too long before I am back there. And not just to work either.

Along the Regent's Canal

Saturday 26 January 2013 was a busy day that started with an exhibition at the British Library and ended with a ballet at Sadler's Wells. Between the two was an inspiring walk along the Regent's Canal with a short break at King's Place.

This is the story of the walk.

I find the British Library architecturally uninteresting and it is made even more so when compared to the, er, incomparable St Pancras next door which peers in to the courtyard of the BL with justifiable disdain.

The one quarter that manages to spark some interest is the north-east corner where the clock tower, window shades and the relentless brick combine to make something photo-worthy if not quite special.

The walk starts ugly with the passage north along Midland Road where the substantial presence of the station dominates uncomfortable.

Things soon get better as the road veers away from the rail and St Pancras Old Church and grounds fill in the gap between them. January is not the best time to go there as the trees are at their bleakest but the monument is still there and it draws you to it.

From their another short ugly walk along Camley Street takes you over the Regent's Canal and to the steps that take you down to the footpath on the north bank.

Heading east takes you under the railway lines and immediately after there is a small mooring that holds around thirty boats.

The still boats from two centuries ago are in marked contrast to the new trains that whizz above them on their way to and from Europe.

Camley Street Nature Park lies on the other side. It plays no other part in this story as it is closed on Saturdays, for reasons that completely escape me.

Just beyond the moorings is an even greater surprise, for those who do not know the area, a lock.

It is small and clearly not that busy but its main purpose today is as an object of historical industrial architecture, which it is rather good at. By now the trains and the other signs of modern London are obscured enough to be forgotten and the dreaming can begin.

A slope down and a bend to the left bring you to the new Kings Cross, the biggest building site in London.

Most of the site is being reclaimed from its previous use and new buildings are coming but in the area nearest the canal the old buildings have been retained and converted. These are now the new home of the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design.

Kings Place lies just the other side of the bridge that carries York Way over the canal.

There lies another marina and beyond that more converted warehouses that make the walk even more rewarding.

There are a couple more bridges before the canal disappears in to a tunnel that finally gives the passing boats peace from the joggers and lunchtime sandwich snackers. The bridges acknowledge the passing of the canal beneath with decorative metal work.

I have done this walk many times, mostly as a break from a working day in Kings Place, and still the magic of the canal remains. It is a sudden and deep immersion in to another world and long may it remain so.