Posted:  Thursday 31 July 2008

Eight Associates met at Warwick Avenue Underground Station on a beautifully sunny June morning.  Many of those who had signed up to come on the walk had to cancel but those who did come enjoyed a lovely walk through a leafy and interesting part of London.

The walk began at Little Venice and we passed lots of residential narrowboats on the Regents Park Canal with their own gardens and pots full of flowers.  On the other side of the canal are the large impressive houses designed by Nash when the canal was built.  Most of us would have liked to have one of the narrowboats and perhaps one of the Nash houses would not have been bad either.

It was hard to imagine you were in the middle of a big city.

After a while we turned up a path off the canal and entered Regents Park close to the boating lake.  We stopped by the lake for a coffee in the sunshine, and then crossed two little bridges over the lake where we could see many varieties of waterfowl, some we had never seen before.

We continued beside the lake and then crossed another footbridge to leave Regents Park to go into Queen Mary’s Rose Garden.  This is the best rose garden I have ever seen and it was the perfect time to be there.  There were countless named species in myriad colours.

From the Rose Garden we re-entered Regents Park and crossed to the Cumberland Gate to see Cumberland Terrace with its impressive Nash houses.

We had lunch in the sunshine in a charming pub garden surrounded by Regency houses.  After lunch we puffed up (or some of us puffed up, one marathon runner had no trouble) to the top of Primrose Hill.  From there we had views right across London to Canary Wharf, St. Paul’s, the Gherkin, and the Post Office Tower.  Coming down again we crossed back to the Regents Park Canal and retraced our steps passing the narrowboats and Nash houses on the other side of the canal again.

We had planned to continue on through Little Venice to the Paddington Basin, but after 5½ miles walking in the hot sunshine and a pub lunch we decided to omit that extra half mile and return the way we came via Warwick Avenue Underground Station.

I must admit it was very nice to sit on the tube train all the way back to Waterloo to catch our respective trains home.

Margaret Burnip

Note:  If you're using "Internet Explorer 7" then try changing the Zoom Level to 200% to view the picture.

(ph  31/07/2008)

« Back to News