Summer In The City ..... Part Two

 

Considering I’m in the centre of a very large city, it’s quiet in Little Venice.  In the early morning the first sounds are the thump, thump of joggers on the towpath.

Time to move away, go up the canal to stock the fridge at Sainsburys, turn and then stop to fill with water. A Black Prince hire boat pulls alongside.  It’s crew are seven ladies from Boston on a weeks cruise.  They’re seven nervous ladies because they’ve never done this before and ahead are unknown locks and long tunnels. We impart words of wisdom and encouragement and then leave them to it.  They are heading down to Limehouse Basin where a pilot is meeting them to take them up The Thames

At Camden Locks lots of legs hang over the edge of the lock mooring.  If they were my legs and sixteen ton of steel was about to squash them against a wall I’d move but the lock side drinkers and grazers are made of sterner stuff and it’s me and Rea that have to get out of the way.  I wonder how the ladies from Boston will cope with crowds and heavy locks and nowhere to tie up because of moored boats.

Through St Pancras and Kings Cross were the development is rife.  Sometimes London seems to be one big building site.  Cranes loom, buildings under construction, old commercial warehouses being renovated. There are no signs of recession here London is booming, is the country going to tilting southwards because of all this development. Is The North quiet?

 

Through Islington Tunnel hoping to find a space on the visitor moorings.  Just outside the tunnel there is one space and we double berth against a shiny new boat inhabited by a shiny young man. He tells us we are in a quiet zone (confirmed by notices) where we can’t run engines for more than an hour, must keep noise to a minimum and not burn wood. ‘Boris lives up there’ he says pointing up towards a row of smart white houses, ‘so I suppose he makes the rules’.  I can see Boris’s point, who wants to pay over a million for a house and be constantly reminded of the presence of the riff-raff living on the ditch below you.

Late at night there is the sound of a crowd singing and shouting. It gets louder as the mob approaches, then just as I start to worry about being caught up in crowd violence a narrow boat emerges from the tunnel with three lads on the back singing their hearts out. The tunnel and the deep cut it emerges into amplify the sound .

The next day it’s the sound of bicycle bells that mingle with the rhythmic feet of the joggers that act as the alarm clock. Then it’s onwards towards Limehouse, a fascinating journey passed new build housing, old warehouses, smart offices derelict buildings and graffiti.  Flotillas of children in canoes.  Canary Wharf looms ahead. 

 

Lock gates are stiff and leaky. There seems to be a laissez-faire attitude from the boaters in these parts with boats double moored, sticking out, on lock landings and at water points and the gates on the locks left open. It just wouldn’t do on the Grand Union but then London is another country.