A friend and I decided to meet up last Saturday so that we could go to London and take photographs of new street art. I have wanted to walk along Regent's Canal for awhile now as I know that there's some street art along the canal. (Actually, there was not as much as I was expecting, but I did see a couple of canal boats.) We started the day early and were at Angel station at about 8:40 in the morning. I'll start by saying how much Angel has changed. The last time I visited it was in the summer/early autumn of 2000. It's completely changed and 'gentrified'. It's amazing what can change in a little over a decade.
Angel (an underground station on the northern line) is where the journey started, and we walked east and finished the walk at Roman Road so that we could get a bus to Brick Lane. (My Nintendo DS device clocked up over 21,000 steps by the end of the day, and a good amount of this was spent on the canalside walk.)
(Map from GoogleMaps)
Above is the journey that we walked along the canal path. Ignore the places where my crudely-drawn red line does not quite follow the canal's path. We stayed along the canal banks, but we did venture up out of the path a couple of times to check out the area and get photographs, but we returned on the path to complete the walk. Of course, there were a couple of stops off along the way.
Further along from Angel station, we came to the first set of locks. It was quiet here, and we did see a couple of early-morning joggers.
We came across City Road Basin and Wenlock Basin, which are two off-shoots of the canal near Angel. They are short off-shoots, and there's some nice-looking houses and flats around this area.
Further along, we saw more locks.
I liked the painted face on this canalboat. The number of canal boats 'parked' along the banks, sometimes three deep from the side of the canal, was amazing. I wonder what living in one is like.
I liked the street art that I saw along this stetch of the canal, which was somewhere around the north of Hoxton. These purple and blue figures were poling their faces around at us, and we saw them in a few other places between here and the other side of Broadway Market.
Some of the buildings around the canal looked like warehouses. We came across a pub/cafe, but it was shut.
We then arrived near to the Kingsland Road junction, which heads across the canal and from Hoxton (in the south) to Dalston Junction (in the north). There's a few pubs and cafes on this stretch, and we stopped off at The Proud Archivist. This is a small cafe, which I had heard things about and wanted to visit for awhile.
The Proud Archivist has exhibitions and speakers, and it's a community-oriented cafe. It also has a small shop selling graphic design and photography and arty books. We stopped to have a drink, and I had a hot chocolate.
After our drinks were finished, we continued on the journey along the canal.
The sun was shining, and I got some photographs from the bridge at Kingsland Road.
Isn't it beautiful?
Now, I had walked one small stretch of Regent Canal before. I'd gone to Broadway Market in the past, and the easiest station for me to go to in order to visit was Haggerston. From Haggerston Station, I simply walked along the canal until I came to the market. Haggerston Station is near Kingsland Road, so this was the area of the canal I walked along.
We saw some geese and more of the purple/blue/green men.
At last, we came to Broadway Market, and I took a few photographs there and bought a couple of items. We did not really look around the market much, though. I really wanted to try some food at the Schoolhouse Yard part of the market, but what I wanted to try was not there, and it was still a little too early. We arrived at about 10:30.
Bread and miniature cupcakes caught my attention. I do like Violet's cupcakes at Broadway Market and have had them before. I also tried a slice of banana bread.
Meringue Girls creates small flavoured meringues, which look so cute. I had to get a photograph, even though I've previously photographed them. I just could not resist.
We were both hungry now and wanted to sit down for awhile. By now, a lot of the cafes were packed full. However, we wandered back and found the Market Cafe, located next to the canal. We had brunch here. The scrambled eggs were so nice, and I had a watermelon martini. It was not yet noon, but I could not resist.
After our brunch, we continued along the canal. By this time, the sun had disappeared. The remainder of our walk was in the cloud.
I saw this bulldog on one of the canal boats, and he was guarding the boat. I just had to get a photograph of him.
The area became less populated here, and the buildings and area did not look as well-kept from Broadway Market as we continued east. We saw more grafitti and had a couple of detours to get some photographs of it around Cambridge Heath Road.
We continued on our way, and the left side of the canal (which we followed), soon became clear so that we could see the large park (Victoria Park). The park was busy with visitors by then, and it was after mid-day.
I photographed this old 'tugboat' in that area.
We soon came to Old Ford Road (the bridge below is the road) and another branch of the canal (Hertford Union Canal), which leads to Hackney Wick.
Not much further along from here is the Roman Road junction, and that was the point that we decided to end the walk along the canal. Luckily, a number eight bus just pulled up as we had walked up from the canal, so we rode on this to get us back to the top part of Brick Lane.
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