Annabel and Dave's Awesome Adventures: Regeant's Canal Walk

Little Venice - Maida Vale

You find that after a while you get a little over museums and art galleries and need to get back to nature, at least I need to. On a whim we bought a Walking UK magazine, and one of the walks suggested was along the Regeant's Canal, it's 14kms long and runs through the north of the city, from Maida Vale in the west almost to Canary Wharf in the east. Whilst it's probably not as picturesque as most walks in the UK it's nice to know that you can get out of the hustle and bustle even in the middle of London. Having done the full 14kms I would suggest for anyone keen to just do the first couple of kilometres, the stretch from the start to Camden Town is definitely the prettiest, though if it's a nice day you have to fit in a detour to the top of Primrose Hill. Once the walk is over you can have lunch at Camden markets. A pretty good walk, though somewhat lacking in wildness.

There were a couple of spooky looking tunnels, walkers were forced on longish detours above ground

I will say it certainly gives you a different side to London. I think London can sometimes have the

Pretty colours near Regeants Park

impression of being all dirty streets and cars and concrete, whereas with this walk you would only be on roads for about 500m all up. It is certainly a lot more peaceful than the streets.

The walk starts in Maida Vale, which is a suburb in the west of the city. Apparently this area is known as Little Venice, but it seems to me every big city has to have some sort of "Venice" residing there. Having been to Venice I really can't see the resemblance, I mean there's some water there, but then there's water in the Thames too.

There were a few longish tunnels in this first part of the walk, which necessitated detours through the streets. It must be a bit spooky to traverse them on your barge. The first part of the walk was also the prettiest, London is the opposite of Sydney, in that the nice suburbs seem to be in the west half, and then it gets a bit more dodgy the further east you go. This is only in the north of the city though, the south doesn't seem to feature much.

Some big mansions near Regeants Park

This mansion was typical of those in the western part of the town. I'm not surprised though, backing on to the canal like these houses do, you would think it would be fairly sought after. I think there were either security guards or residents in this place, which is why I've taken a sneaky corner shot of the house.

Free view of the hyenas at London Zoo

London zoo is located in Regeants Park, and I didn't know this but the grounds span either side of the canal. Which means that you can see some of the animals as you walk along. So a bit of a free zoo trip, so long as you only wanted to see hyenas.

At this point we had nearly reached Camden Town, but a detour up to the top of Primrose Hill is highly recommended. You could stop for a meringue at one of the bakeries there, just to keep your energy levels up, there's still a long walk ahead of you after all.

The city skyline from Primrose Hill

Sinking boats

You know you have nearly reached Camden Town when you see the Pirate Castle! I'm not sure why it's a pirate castle, but this is where to come if you have grown tired of walking and want to kayak the rest of the way. Another thing it tells you is that it's nearly lunchtime!

Pirate Castle! near Camden Town

Camden Town is famous for it's markets, and for Amy Winehouse. It's absolutely seething on a Saturday night, and I would recommend not catching a taxi right through the middle. But on a sunny Saturday afternoon it's very civilised and the perfect spot for a roast pork sandwich.

Yummy markets at Camden

One thing Dave and I have realised is that pork is the lamb of the UK, in that it is uniformly delicious, but sooo much cheaper than lamb here. I think everytime we see a recipe for lamb we'll just replace it with pork.

On my infrequent runs into work I actually run over this lock, though I stick to the road across it. So it was nice to see it from a different angle for once.

The action of the Camden Lock

There was a lot of bird action along the canal, even in the middle of winter. And quite a few white swans, which I still get a kick out of seeing. If you are in London and have some spare time then I would definitely recommend this walk, it's a completely different feel to the rest of London and it's really quite peaceful.