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.

Navigating by Music

Sunday afternoon arrives. It steals in the door as a morning of idleness, broken only by a stroll for the papers, slips out. A meeting point keeps drifting. Wembley market, outside a green Hackney Carriage hut, briefly Primrose Hill before settling on Camden Lock.

Buying pastries at Baker & Spice to fuel us on our trek, we begin to make our way along the canal. We walk under Victorian brickwork, under the rumbling steel of railway bridges doubling as troll hiding places, under willows enjoying the chance to weave sunlight. We stop only to pick blackberries and wave at those on the water, but the sun and the rhythm of the place keep our feet no faster than the slowest boat.

Heading north east in the wide green valley cut below the surface of the city, the things you take as London constants disappear. Traffic static becomes a haze memory. The soundscape empties itself of the clatter of cheek by jowl living, allowing new elements to fill the space. The water, still high from the recent deluge, is noisy in its eager lapping of the edge. You can hear vegetation stretching itself in the sun and breeze. There are sudden bursts of quarrelling geese, alien cries from the aviaries as you go through the zoo in Regent’s Park.

Eventually we hit the beginning of crowds. Groups of torpid neo-goths clinging to the shade. Discordant public schoolboys sitting cross-legged at the edge of the towpath, refusing to budge as bewildered Spanish tourists try to escape the gravity well of hip T-shirt sellers.

In the ripe confusion of commerce of Camden’s sprawling markets, I chose navigating by music. A busking accordionist tells me I am close to the Camden Lock footbridge, the sound of St. Clair Pinckney means I am on the far side of the food stalls. Detect the crunch of techno dub and you have your true north, allowing you to make your way to Gilgamesh and all points beyond.

I have no interest in crawling through the shops. My toleration for the embryonic Blade Runner-ville is diminished by sunlight, relative poverty and a lack of storage space. I am much happier sitting on a roof, drinking iced coffee. Meeting achieved, we watch the lock in action. There is childlike delight to be had from seeing the operation of the gates and the rising of a boat. Victorian engineering in action can often cheer the soul.

We follow in the wake of the passing craft. It is heading out along our route home, moving towards moored houseboats, hapless fishermen and greenery. The strong bell of a Primrose Hill clock strikes six. Sunday afternoon leaves us.

Moments of Grace and Light

Since February, the majority of my days have had a life during wartime feel. The guerrilla attrition of stress has been cutting deep into the elements of my life still recovering from old injuries. I have felt old, broken and emotionally exhausted. The shuck has been prowling and I have been worried about going tharn.

Now, if you are one those readers who agree the anonymous commentator who wrote ‘Please go back to slashing your wrists in public – you being happy is boring’ this might be a good time to stop reading. I could easily give you enough vivid details of my angst to turn English Dreaming, English Rain into the Fugazi Times. However, today I would rather record moments of grace and light.

One of my favourite, less psychogeographically heavy walks in London is along the canal from my home to Camden Lock. Sauntering passed colourful houseboat homes with ripe names; passed mosque skylines and temples of old money; passed hyenas ripping flesh in Regent’s Park; under the undeclared works of art that pose as Victorian bridges; through clammy tunnels to bursts of green that speak of a vegetal force ready to recover the city as soon as mankind vacates it. On a good day, even the tattered professional drinkers hugging their cans of beer and watching the water from wooden benches can make me smile at the richness of illusion.

This afternoon, in sunlight and the best smiling company, I walked to Camden Lock. A half-hearted browse through the over-priced junk of the old horse hospital, a laugh at the ‘Bono is a Twat’/‘Make Coldplay History’ T-shirts and the obligatory stall lunch were all managed before it was time to catch the last waterbus back. All of this was a wonderful diversion. Even just focussing all my attention on watching the deft strokes used to create our crêpes gave me relief from dwelling on everything currently preventing me from getting more than four hours sleep a night.

If I had to pick a favourite memory above all others from 2006, it might just be taking the waterbus from Camden Lock with Surreal Girl towards the end of last summer. Even above memories of travelling around the Highlands and Islands, concerts in Hyde Park or eating ice creams at midnight when returning from parties held in the shadow of MI5, that particular boat ride still shines. The trip back today was just as glorious.

The whole ‘There is nothing, absolutely nothing, half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats’ may seem overly English, but the reality is that taking a boat along the canal it is incredibly relaxing. Once you aboard, you have to submit to its pace. You enter a bubble of reality that runs on its own timescale. There is nothing you can do but give in to the actual rhythm of the water for an hour.

The gifts of a riverborne perspective – uncommon angles, the enclosing darkness of the Maida Vale Tunnel, invading the privacy of the stretches of moneyed riverside, being within touching distance to Browning Island – wash over you. The river becomes a reflecting road. Following it in this way cleanses and refreshes the spirit.

It has been a beautiful day.