An Urban Wander around Limehouse, London E14

At last, as sunny day. It’s cold, very cold, but I much prefer this to cold and wet. Catching the train into London this morning I couldn’t help noticing, and not for the first time, that there’s a train at almost exactly the same time as the London train, that goes to Devon. Also, and I don’t think I’d noticed this before, it’s actually called The Devon Express. It would have been a perfect day to hop over on to the other platform for a day out of the rat race.

However, the rat race seems to be unavoidable for now, but fortunately I managed a temporary escape from it this week at work, when once again I found myself with spare time before a meeting over in Docklands. I alighted the DLR at Limehouse and wandered through the streets to Canary Wharf, taking a slightly different route to the one I’d taken a few weeks before (see my previous Limehouse to Canary Wharf urban wander). Today's urban wander took me by past some older, more interesting buildings than the new ones on the riverside and in the docks.

This first picture is of an old wharf building, complete with the winch fittings that would have been used to haul goods up to the first and second floors and in through the doors.

Limehouse Wharf, Narrow Street, London E14

Narrow Street, Limehouse, London E14

This third photo is probably my favourite of the batch, and the greyness of the sky is easily compensated by the vibrant blue of what I assume to be a former pub judging by its location, windows and signage.

Former pub(?), Narrow Street, Limehouse, London E14

However, what caught my notice more than anything on the wander were a couple of sign posts pointing north away from Limehouse along the Limehouse Cut, which goes up to the Lea Valley. Obviously no time to explore this route today, but definitely one for another day, and a quick bit of internet research this morning has promoted this future trip quite high up the agenda.

In other news, I am still struggling through Iain Sinclair’s Lights Out for the Territory. If I’m honest I’m finding it a bit hit-and-miss, with some chapters being such hard-going that I lose track, whilst others I seem to breeze through. Maybe it’s just me and I’m reading at the wrong times of day when I'm easily distracted by other things.

    

And stay tuned folks, I actually managed two urban wanders again this week. The second one was from King's Cross to Oxford Circus, through mews and passageways.

Urban Wandering: London Docklands

I'm always a bit nervous about writing a blog post that features no pictures to break up my writing. However, the weather during my Urban Wandering today was too grey for taking decent pictures, and far too cold to take my gloves off. I have actually cheated a bit as you'll see as you read down through the article. My wandering today was half-planned, and half-forced upon me but some minor tube closures at Paddington. My original intention was to travel as far as Whitechapel by tube and then walk down to Canary Wharf from there, but I ended up taking a far more circuitous route because of the tube situation. Instead I caught a bus over to Bank, another to Shoreditch High Street, and then the Overground to Shadwell from where I then started my wander down to Canary Wharf.

If I'm honest the walk between Shadwell and Limehouse wasn't particularly inspiring. Maybe this was the route I found myself following, which was along a busy, main road. Fortunately, despite the fog, I could see my destination towering above the low rise flats, so there was no need to get my phone out for navigation purposes. Once I arrived at the westerly end of Narrow Street, the wander became more interesting, passing old pubs and wharves, after which I dropped down on to the Thames path and made my way along to Westferry Circus before heading up to Canary Wharf. I still know relatively little about this whole area, so it's another place to revisit, but when the weather is better! Also, having looked across the Thames quite frequently over the past few weeks, I've become curious about what's on the other side of the Thames and am tempted to take the ferry crossing to visit what I assume is the Rotherhithe, Bermondsey and Deptford area.

My journey home was a bit shorter as I had to get home in time for my Shrove Tuesday pancakes, but I did manage to walk from Canary Wharf to Westferry. This short walk took me through parts of the London docklands I'd not visited before, and right past the London Docklands Museum, which is already on my to visit list. Whilst I like to docklands, there doesn't seem to be much of the original docklands left, so I'm hoping that when I do manage to find time to visit the museum then I'll get a better glimpse of what it was like in its hey-day, before becoming run-down, and then recreated as a glass and steel banker's theme park.

As time was running short I caught the DLR at Westferry back to Tower Gateway. For the urban explorer, this is a great route to take, especially on a cold day. The majority of the journey is above ground, and all sorts of glimpses of disused London can be clearly seen from the train. One site that was particularly evocative was a fox on the curve of a disused railway track bed that peeled away to the north west just before the train pulled into Tower Gateway. I had no idea where this track would have led, but a quick check in my 1928 London guide book showed that it led to a goods station just south of Aldgate East.

Map of part of East London and London Docklands from 1928 guide book

And also a couple of vintage postcards that help give a better impression of what the approach to the docks was once like.

I've always had a passion for exploring London, but this passion has been renewed over the past few weeks, through two of my recent reads Edgelands and Psychogeography.

    

A small glimpse of summer in London docklands

I know it's very British to moan about the weather, but this year has been spectacularly poor. It has however made me appreciate the few glimpses of summer I have been lucky enough to find. The two pictures below were taken just after I had arrived at Canary Wharf and before I locked myself away in a windowless meeting room for the day. The blue skies were a welcome sight in the morning but needless to say they did not last very long.

Canary Wharf, DLR station

Canary Wharf

Fortunately when we broke for lunch, I was able to get a half decent picture from up high, back across London. This will almost certainly be the last time I visit London docklands area for a while now as it's set to get crazily busy for the 2012 Olympics.

View from the Clifford Chance building

I had hoped to be able to photograph some more London mews in the sunlight, but alas the weather has not been on my side. Hopefully we'll get a late summer so I'll be able to do this again later in the year.

In other news, I can't say that I've been able to get out on my mountain bike as much as I'd have liked, mainly due to the weather. My reading of Parallel Lines remains slow, and I've yet to even open Mile by Mile.

On the music front however, I have been quite active. I've bought quite a few CDs over the past couple of weeks. Favourites to date are The Orb featuring David Gilmour - Metallic Spheres, and Pearls Before Swine - The Use of Ashes / These Things Too. As with most of the CDs I buy, these will ultimately end up on my web site as I tend to limit the misc I keep in physical form these days.