An Explorer’s Route

Yesterday was the feast of Oshun, Queen of all rivers. Some say all the sweet waters of life come from her tears because she constantly cries; weeping at the knowledge the world is not as beautiful as she knows it could be. Usually honoured with sweet wine, pastries, honey and bronze coins, there seems no better day to travel the water, journeying east to where the Regent’s Canal meets the Thames.

The boat chugs with a rhythmic diesel splutter and leaves its mooring. As we pass Dead Dog Tunnel my mind runs ahead of our four miles per hour speed and I think of the Isle of Dogs. The enigma of its naming dances in the imagination whenever you set out towards it. My mind is awash with Moon Card hounds howling at the towers of Canary Wharf.

To meet the Thames we must fall 86 feet. Our first descent at Hampstead Road Lock sets the pattern. Window drops from towpath to dry stone, then to moss and water slimed wall revealing greened bricks bearing the stamp 1915. It is the same at Hawley Lock and Kentish Town Lock. Wood and iron gates are opened then shut, gears turn, water rushes and foams a boiling white as we descend down.

The boat travels not just through water, but history itself. The first signs come before we have even cleared Hawley Lock. Two-inch grooves have been smoothed into iron by countless years of horses and rope. Elsewhere the turns of fortune are measured in the buildings. Camden Brewery long closed, it brick bones became home to TV-AM. Now that channel is forever dead, phantom static lost to the stars, its egg-adorned ramparts are cracked and rotting while its studios are hijacked by MTV.

We make passage through the patch of St. Pancras where the shanties of Agar Town stood. Now as then, you see what those in London consume most is space. Old buildings are reclaimed. The stones and bricks that once turned their backs to industry of the canal are now forced to embrace it in the form of converted waterfront flats.

Alien species, the hoodoo heritage of being a port flourish in the Camley Street Natural Park. The former Cambridge Street Coal Depot now marsh, meadow and reed bed. Rare tropical grasses mix with hemlock water dropwort and skullcap. The expected herons and moorhens rubbing shoulders with aggressive terrapins.

Travelling under the new Channel Tunnel link, old panels mask new concrete and steel. Tourist glamour as the line to Europe rolls above. It will not be long before the crumbling behemoth of the Great Northern coal depot will be forced to follow the redevelopment path; become yuppy flats with compulsory balconies so small you cannot even put plants on them. Already I envy the coming owners their views – the gas holders’ complex ironwork skeletons are testament to the Victorian ability to grace even choking industry with an element of beauty. Who would not want Battlebridge Basin and the chance to imagine the flicker of Boadicean fire?

We cross over the culverted Fleet, the lost river below us. Currents and flow hidden from the eye, we must soon disappear as well. The boat enters the Islington Tunnel – 960 yards of underworld. Engine echo instead of feet on the ceiling, but the journey through the darkness still feels like hard work. We are reborn in sunlight and enjoy a blue plaque moment, remembering it was at 25 Noel Street that Kenneth killed Joe.

Psychogeography on the water is new and disorientating. The pace does not flag after six miles of concrete. There is no drifting into diversion, only drifting when the engine splutters out and we still inch forward. The push is relentless, the room to manoeuvre set by the bound of the banks. Even at four miles per hour, on the canal our view of London seems to have sped up. This means we lose detail can become but new impressions arise. For the first time I see how violent graffiti blooms in Hackney and Tower Hamlet is rich in crows.

The way ahead takes us under the Fenchurch Street viaduct, under Commercial Road. This is my first ever time below the London start of the A13, key ley of English Hoodoo and as Billy Bragg would have it: ‘The okay road that’s the best.’ (Though others might prefer Jah Wobble’s lyrics proclaiming it: ‘A way of life, a way of death’).

Breaking into the Limehouse Basin, the narrow line of the canal gives way to a lake of green algae that scrunches and pops as we make our way through it. Like a rampant science fiction experiment, it becalms and slowly consumes all flotsam, making it look like all the boats are beached on a field of clover. The skyline is full of enough strangeness to usually keep me occupied for days. The pyramid-topped incongruity of Canary Wharf dominates, but insane Disney-esque giant Sacred Heart statue atop Our Lady Immaculate and the tower of Hawksmoor’s St. Anne can still be seen when the seemingly relentless, replicating flats pause for breath.

Despite the fact it is Ramsay holding, we pause to enjoy potent gin and tonics at The Narrow. Klaxons blast, barriers come down and the whole road beside us swings. Narrow Street has gone, the ship lock open and there is now nothing between the waters of the canal and Thames except an imaginary line imposed by the mind.

The first river of Albion reached and greeted, it is an explorer’s route homeward. We crawl along the Limehouse Cut – its name like a resonant scar in the landscape – then push north ups the River Lee Navigation before turning into the Hertford Union. Trees swish the water, afternoon sun ricochets off of brick and stone to graze the reflections our boat constantly breaks. Bow has never looked more beautiful.

I am seeing another London. One where the presence of water seems to calm the worst excesses of the city, where it is perfectly normal that Neville Staples of The Specials is opening the St. Barnabas fete. Stopping at Old Ford, I search for herb and chillies to grow while Surreal Girl treats me to an ice cream. She also buys a Lotto ticket – she has seen waterside cottages she wants to buy. The trip gives me my own new lottery dreams to take back west.

Heading back, I try to trap memories with the camera, grabbing good shots of the gas holders’ bones against the ripening pink sky. However, my eye is not quick enough to catch the boat topped with a skull and candles or the best of the flourishing graffiti. At least I glimpse the time shade cameo of Hitchcock, haunting the site of Gainsborough Film Studios, huffing at the building’s latest reincarnation as the obligatory luxury apartments.

The arc of our wake creates hits the bank, waves echoing back in hypnotic patterns that would make Bridget Riley proud. Weariness hits me as climb through the locks towards the fading bustle of Camden’s markets. The boat moored, I am more aware than ever for the blessings of the water, dropping my coppers into the darkness with joy.