Short days and unpredictable (or predictably miserable weather) do not lend themselves to undertaking long trips far from the home base. And so December offered an opportunity to fill in some holes in local sightseeing.

One very nice walk leads along the Regency canal, which starts around the Paddington station and describes a convex to the north semicircle, and after about 14 km joins the Thames at the Lime Pool, just upstream of Canary Wharf.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Paddington is a short (30 minute) walk from the house and from there it is only a few minutes to “Little Venice” – part of the canal where it breaks into several arms currently used to moor narrow boats (alternative to living in an apartment), couple of restaurants and cafes. Very pleasant in summer, kind of gloomy this time of the year and I imagine rather cold and damp if you live on one of the boats. The Regency canal was built in the first half of the 19th century to connect the Western Union Canal to the Thames. It was apparently a great success – at first. The problem was that it was built just a few years before the railroad and once the railroad was in place it quickly lost its ability to compete. But thanks to that 19th century commercial flop, today there is an excellent recreational waterway in the center of London.

The old tow path is now a walking/cycling path and it takes one through distinctly different parts of London. Posh villas on the north side of Regency Park (given that a 2 bedroom apartment costs half a million quid, I wonder how much these houses go for), the market area around the Camden lock with a truly international open air cuisine, rather non-descript stretch of warehouses around St. Pancras locks, the Islington tunnel, where the canal disappears underground and you have to follow sidewalk signs on the street level to find its other end, then Victoria Park and finally Lime Basin, which is today surrounded by nice apartment buildings and where you can see boats from different European countries.

St. Albans is about one day journey north of London (on horseback). Today, it takes about half an hour. The name and the city’s claim to fame is that it is the site of the first British Christian martyrdom. Mr. Alban, a roman citizen of the town of Verulamium (site of the resent day St. Albans) refused to give up his faith, got his head chopped off on the nearby hill and when the empire adopted Christianity as its official religion, became St. Alban. The hill where the execution took place became a pilgrimage site with a chapel, later a church, later a monastery plus a cathedral. During the reformation the monastery was abandoned and the cathedral fell into disrepair and was restored only during the Victorian era. As a result you can today see the Norman part of the cathedral with its round arches as well as the later additions in various flavors of the gothic style. The walls are built of flint (the only hard rock in the otherwise crumbly chalk which underlies the whole area) and re-used Roman bricks from the ruins of Verulamium. There are still ruins of the old Roman city, rather well preserved city wall and few other bits and pieces.

Due to its distance at one day journey from London, St. Albans thrived in the Middle Ages not only as a pilgrimage site, but also as a major stopover with many inns and stables. Today it is still a pretty town and will be a fun to visit again if we are here long enough to enjoy warmer temperatures and longer days in the summer.