Russell Davies

between the towers

Because I've always wanted to, I'm going to walk the Coast To Coast walk in May. (Well, most of it.) And I'm doing some little walks about town to get in practise, and because I like the odd bits of London you find it you devise a walking scheme that takes you away from the usual routes. (And because, as was pointed out to my this week, these pointless/pointful walks seem like prototypical unproduct.)

Today's jaunt was a round-trip from the BT Tower to Tower Bridge and back again, North side of the river first, South side second. There's a little flickr set here.

It was a good walk, served up some of the randomness one associates with walking in London, but it was a bit on the beaten track. Not as meandering as previous excursions such as anti-clockwise around the congestion zone, BT Tower to Gherkin, all the way up the Edgware Road or from The Sark to The Dome.

Good though. Good way to explore somewhere you thing you know.

BT to gherkin

Inspired by Richard Long and funky dave's comments about navigating by tall buildings I did a walk from the BT Tower (symbol of the nice 60s future, when everything was going to be like Space 1999 or UFO) to the Gherkin (Swiss Re, symbol of Mordor and the evil future, for some reason, which I can't quite articulate).

I've always liked the way that there are no long straight lines in London - especially not between places you actually want to go so I drew a straight line between the two towers and then endeavoured to walk as close to that line as possible. The line is shown below.

Belsize Walk

Walked through up through Regent's Park and went on the Belsize Way. There's a guide here.

To start with it was pleasant, but kind of boring, I wasn't suprised to learn that a lot of Belsize was developed as a rival to Kensington - it's got the same big, blandly impressive feel. If slightly untidier - full of academics and lawyers rather than Eurotrash and models.

So I was quite pleased to see a bit of tagging on a wall, made the place feel a bit more lived in.

I did like the look of England's Lane. You could easily imagine it being used allegorically by a N. London novelist. Has there yet been a novel called 'The Bins On England's Lane'

And being early January you see these corpses of Christmas all over the place.

It gets more interesting as you head towards Hampstead but you also realise that this is the place where the cultural elite was hatched. From Girl Guides to Montessori schools, Bloomsbury, communism, Air Studios, the BBC, Lee Miller, Roland Penrose, Goldfinger, they're all on this walk. And so you can see where the vision of Britain we're often being sold has come from. Little shops, leafy streets and everyone living within a dog's walk of Hampstead Heath - this is what we're supposed to aspire to.

I keep promising myself I'll go swimming here one day - or more excitingly winter swimming in The Serpentine.

So then I sat on Kite Hill and realised I could see the BT Tower in the distance, and since that's just about where we live I thought I'd try and navigate my way back - which was slightly perilous, becuase I don't really know North London. But there were a bunch of interesting things on, what I think was, Southampton Road.

sark to dome

I was listening to Robert Elms the other day and heard about this Memoryscape thing. It's a walk, from The Cutty Sark to The Dome with accompanying MP3s based on a sound archive - dockers and local people talking about life on the river and in the docks. You can download the mp3s and the map from the site.

I went on Sunday morning and it was fantastic.

You get a very good sense of the overlapping industrial histories going on. From clippers to docks to light industry to wasteland to imminent flats.

The relatively unpeopled nature of the place makes for a lot of graffiti.

I wonder what that exclamation mark is trying to tell you. 'Look out! There's a river!' Isn't that relatively apparent?

You get great industrial shapes. I bet you get a lot of photographers around here, doing the juxtaposition thing they love so much. Nature and Industry. Industrial Wasteland and Yuppie Flats. Poverty and Wealth.

Do cranes get used a lot in sculpture or art? It seems like they should do. They look great and they're probably dense with all sorts of metaphor. But I don't remember seeing any big cranes in the turbine hall.

Near the dome (which I love) there's a real wasteland. An area waiting to be compulsarily purchased. And there's this great cafe/motel called the Millenium Motel where various migrant workers stay. Either inside or in the caravans and camper vans in the yard. While the spaceshippy spurs of the Dome lurk in the background.

The dritwood's not really delivering on the romantic John Masefield / Caribbean beach bum / Robinson Crusoe images the word conjures up. Lots of sports equipment in there though.

And there's lot of interesting little holes and things to peer through. A great walk. Try it. There's also a version on the posher bit of the river - West of the city. Probably more pleasant and less interesting.

day 39 - anti-clockwise round the congestion zone

Decided to walk round the congestion zone. It's further than you'd think, about 15 miles. And
a lot of it is kind of unregarded bits of London. Biggish roads, not much happening. But there's interesting stuff in the detail.

I've always liked this block on the Euston/Marylebone Road. The flats with the garage on the ground floor. I can imagine Lord Peter Whimsey or Bertie Wooster pulling in to refuel before heading down to Blandings or somewhere.

The Dorchester Plane.

This is that strange construction at the south end of Vauxhall bridge. A huge rocket launching device pointing straight at MI6. Surely our intelligence failures aren't that dramatic that we can't spot such an obvious Smersh ploy?

I thought the Richardsons ruled South London.

Good sign on a disused bike shop.

Hairdresser windows are like museums of hairstyles. Why don't they ever get updated?

I like this. Layers and layers of information all leaving faint traces but no meaning.

I love this place. Sitting on the Kennington Lane a restaurant that thinks it's at the seaside. It's mad and it knows it is.

I think I remember the shopping centre's on its way out. I don't supposed it'll be hugely lamented by anyone, but at least it was a useful landmark, and it had an insane kind of ambition.

A great sign.

Two shopfronts down by Spitalfields Market. Shame they're just fronts now. At least, I've never seen Dino's open.

Do you think he's really called Peter?

Just urban stuff.

This is probably by someone famous.

The Castle Snack bar. Going in agoodplaceforacupofteaandathink shortly.

Ended up at the VG Snack Bar, Great Portland Street.

day 18 - from marble arch to a big pile of wood

Decided to go for a walk up the Edgware Road (what used to be Watling Street).

Started at Marble Arch, one of those odd bits of nowhere in London, left isolated by traffic. Even at lunchtime on a sweltery day there's almost no-one sitting on the grass. I've always wondered what the hell this thing is, until I just found out - that it was originally the entrance to Buckingham Palace. It got moved up here by Victoria and Albert. You can see what's going on around there by looking at the BBC London jamcam.

The road starts with a fantastic area of Arabic culture. Lots of cafes with blokes smoking hookahs (is that what they're called?) And there's all these fantastic shops selling odd stuff - luxury goods, electronics, fruit, lots and lots of phones.

How did they ever go out of business with a fantastic strategy like 'everything for everyone at discount prices'? How do you lose with that? This is just down from the Metropolitan as featured at eggbaconchipsandbeans.

I love these shops selling phone cards and internet access and calls and stuff. Basically they're not selling anything. Just air. Yet, as this shows, it's all about knowing your audience, knowing their needs, knowing their language. And obviously, graphic design.

And then there are other businesses which never need to change anything.

After a little while the Arabic dynamism gives way to the sleepy mansions of Maida Vale. Huge blocks seemingly full of little old ladies with tiny dogs.

But then, and this is what I love about London, as soon as an area decides it might be a bit fancy the council come along and erect a load of estates. There's huge bits of the road where you have dead posh mansions on one side of the road and huge estates on the other. That's stirring the melting pot.

So you get an actual tradesman's entrance on one side...

...and some great 70s type on the other.

Then, you're into Kilburn.

Ellie's Cafe, as featured in a good place for a cup of tea and a think.

How long must this have been in the window?

Hmmm, just noticed I seem to stop taking photos at this point, for quite a while. Perhaps that tells you something about the stretches through Cricklewood and Shoot-Up Hill and all that. Which are just kind of average. Until you suddenly pass through a little furniture district and then emerge into all these retail sheds and you realise you're in Brent Cross.

More enterprising behaviour. Selling England flags at the side of the road.

Staple's Corner, the bottom of the M1, is not the nicest bit of town.

Of particular note is this enormous pile of wood. You can just see it beyond the trees. It's always been a talking point for us when we head up North. Presumably it's some scrap thing, but it never seems to get any smaller, and always seems on the point of collapse.

This is a sign on the bridges around Brent Cross, maybe this kind of sign is on loads of bridges, I've never noticed. But it seems somehow less than thorough. What do you do if the bridge collapses at the weekend?

Ah, those elegant North Londoners and their love of nature.