Regents canal

Cool dwelling

Regents canal, London

For something completely different take a canal walk through the centre of London. The Regents Canal runs for over nine miles from Paddington Basin in the west to Limehouse Basin in the east. We met up at Paddington station, one of the main London rail termini where you catch the train to the west country. It's a good place to load up with supplies as it has all the services needed including Marks and Spencer's and a Sainsburys to stock up on food.



If you take the right hand exit from the station as you face the platforms there is a bridge that takes you into the Paddington Basin, a shiny modern complex of offices and services bordering our start to the Regents Canal, and a bit of a sideshow at the beginning. We had a very informative guide who told us about two very modern small bridges in the vicinity, both of which straddle short stretches of canal. They are just as much for decorative purposes as they are to carry pedestrians, because one bridge rolls up into a hexagonal shape from a flat start when the right buttons are pressed, whilst the other splays up sections which fan out to give a Mohican effect. We were privileged enough to be given a personal demonstration by the very friendly staff. Officially demonstrations were given on a Friday but they did it for us on a Saturday. This part of the canal is all modern in its ambience, steel and glass constructions on the quay pointing to the sky, with one building designed to look like the bow of a ship.

Little Venice

The next section takes you the other way from Paddington towards Little Venice, and you can see why it is called this. It's a bit like some of the poshest property in London mixed in with the romance of a mature waterway. Here the property must be some of the most desirable in London because you have your palatial mansions blending in perfectly with barge laden waters. This is a bit of London I had never set eyes on and reminds you of the amazing variety London has to offer.

This sort of water based opulence continues all the way to Regent's Park, with beautiful architecture catching the eye all the way along, and the odd cafe suspended on a bridge over the canal. I have to say that if I was looking to live in London this area would be on my list. Years ago this canal would have been strictly for industrial purposes, transporting all manner of merchandise up and down the capital's arteries. Now of course it is a testimony to Britain's rich  industrial heritage, but given over primarily to leisure.

Regent's Park continues the theme, with attractive buildings rather more spaced out at this point. We took a diversion up to the top of Primrose Hill for lunch where many others had the same idea, eminently sensible as we sat and admired the view in front of us of the London Basin with the Shard, the Post Office Tower and the Gherkin all prominent on the skyline.

The canal is a great place to cycle along as well, and plenty of cyclists were trying to negotiate the Saturday afternoon strollers on the towpath. Basically however, Saturday is not a good day for cyclists to chance this journey due to the extreme preponderance of pedestrians.

A little further on and you get to Camden Lock which is like someone scooped up all the young people in London and tipped them into this tiny corner of the capital, another 'where it's at' kind of place. Spot the hipster anyone? We breezed through fairly quickly when everything cried out 'sit down and enjoy some refreshments.' You make your way along the shore past bundles of people consuming food and drink on an industrial scale. The lock is surrounded by a market, sheds, parked barges and overall an atmosphere of having a good time. Somewhere to return to without a doubt.

Camden Lock  Rocks!

The ambience changes when you get towards the St Pancras/Kings Cross stretch where the skyline become decidedly more commercial and industrial, old gasworks, railway architecture, workshops and desolate waste spaces. Here we are near one of the hubs of the European rail transport system, in the near distance you can see the roof of the new St Pancras, rising over the skyline like a silver hump backed dolphin. Eurostar trains with limitless numbers of carriages slide in and out of the terminus over the bridge above us, and a little further on we reach Kings Cross. This area always had a slightly sleazy reputation as a red light district and arrival point for kids running away from home, with all the attendant charities and church workers trying to minister to the jetsam and flotsam of human life. Now there is a major effort to renew the whole area with shiny new squares and glass and steel high rises. The old Kings Cross goods shed is being turned into a Waitrose plus ancillary activities, the Granary building, an old industrial warehouse turned into university building presides over London's newest square with chIldren bathing in the waters of the fountains and new cafes springing up like flowers in the desert. In the midst of modernity is the abandoned underground station of York Rd with its classic old station frontage, and there has been talk of reopening it to relieve congestion at Kings Cross especially with the new development. Specially built viewing platforms provide the opportunity to check out the new development.

New King's Cross

Swimming pool as well!

Going on from Kings Cross you get the same lazy ambience all the way to Limehouse Basin where you are in Canary Wharf territory. However, it's a fair hike still from the rail hub. The section of canal this side of the city lacks some of the glamour associated with little Venice or Camden Lock but people still sit beside the water eating and drinking at various bars, or sit on the top of barges with a beer can or glass of
wine.

The canal passes through Islington where it disappears into a canal tunnel. This is where I lost it like a dog slipping its lead. Thus I had the opportunity to wander throughout the centre of Islington, a new experience for me and a chance to adjust any stereotypes of the political elite indulging in endless dinner parties in leafy Georgian terraces. Perhaps the demise of New Labour has done for some of those parties. There were certainly traces of wealth, with fine looking streets of old terraced houses, but Islington town centre does not seem anything out of the ordinary, just a typical well established suburban centre the type of which you would find all over London.

Meanwhile I am totally lost, where has this wretched canal gone, can't find it anywhere? Has it disappeared into some CS Lewis fantasy land full of pipe smoking jolly barge men in waistcoats and eternal sun playing on dappled waters ruled over by an Aslan like creature full of benevolence and goodwill? I follow the instructions of my iPad and it leads me this way and that, until finally I manage to rediscover this watery artery after a considerable detour. During that detour I find a massive spur coming off the main route, surrounded by prestigious new development. Back on track, I follow the towpath onwards past worn old industrial architecture and new builds, under ancient bridges and through old locks, dodging the usual bevy of cyclists. The canal runs past Victoria Park (Vicky Park or the People's Park) for some way, which adds a somewhat leafy feel again, although we are in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. This park is considered by some as the finest park in the East End, for that is where we are. Originally this park was an essential service for the East End working classes. In the past it has also been the centre for all sorts of political meetings and rallies, attracting socialist speakers like William Morris. It must be some park, as it was awarded second place in a national award for the public's favourite Green Flag Awarded park.

Victoria Park

Furrowing on, the glass, steel and concrete of Canary Wharf increasingly loom ahead indicating we will soon be at the end. So we arrive at Limehouse Basin,  once at the heart of London's industrial port superstructure but now looking more like a marina dedicated to boating pleasures. Here you can catch the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) back into town and the Bank underground station.

End of the voyage - Limehouse Basin

The DLR s a lot more interesting than the underground as it is overground and gives some good vistas of the East London skyline. Just a little tip at this point. When you get off at Bank underground station there is an endless network of tunnels linking different lines, and also the toilets were shut on a Sunday evening which was slightly uncomfortable since I spent an appreciable time discovering the delights of the tunnel network only to find them closed. Funnily enough, in a 2013 poll Londoners rated Bank tube station, one of London's busiest, as the worst on the network!

Still, we must not finish on a negative. A nine mile watery walk through the centre of London laced with copious amounts of food and drink is a totally cool way to spend a day.

Now that's some back garden! (Cliveden parterre)

Cliveden

Cliveden House is located in a gilded stretch of countryside in Buckinghamshire, about half an hour from Windsor and north of the M4. It has a past laced with glamour, intrigue and famous people from Winston Churchill to Rudyard Kipling, so that should be enough to lure you in from the leafy surrounding lanes. 

I was fortunate enough to visit on a beautiful June day when a gorgeous slice of the Home Counties looks its peerless best. This area is plump like a well stocked salmon fishery with tokens of opulence like open top sports cars, green and brown astro turfed tennis courts, and glimpses of irresistible property. So, unless you are driving a white Jaguar and are dressed in red corduroys and sporting a big quiff just don't bother to come!    

Driving into the grounds through the main entrance with its cannon ball stones to either side you feel like an aristocrat entering their lair, but then you realise that there are a thousand other cars like yours doing exactly the same thing. I'm just another peasant! The driveway winds through extensive grounds and there was some sort of checkpoint where cars were both parked and were stopping. Some cars were carrying on and I decided to follow. The NT official at the hut waved me on (obviously knew I was aristocratic stock) and I carried on up to the main car park adjacent to where it all happens. 

Cliveden is a big site, one of the biggest I have visited, with cafes and toilet facilities scattered over a large area between gardens and house, so if you miss one refreshment stop, there's another not too far away. Where you park up it's a short walk to the outbuildings and an information kiosk where you get your map and ask if you can go on a tour of the big house, which you can do on a timed basis.  Mine was for 4pm. Meanwhile around here are gardens and a cafe to keep you occupied. Also in this area is a cinema, Gas Yard, maze and Estate Office.

Go through the gate and you find yourself not far from the Fountain of Love at the end of the main driveway to Cliveden House. Again, unless you are driving a Jag or a Bentley, with a lady in a light head scarf and shades alongside you, up the straight gravelled drive to the main house you are not doing it properly. You feel naked standing on your two pins in a pair of jeans wallowing in all this opulence. The word 'grand' comes to mind when you espy the house in the distance. The fountain is just too big and decorative, the driveway too long and wide, the house too much of a magnificent pile in the middle distance to be called anything other than.

The Fountain of Love - spot the Lamborghini!

Only to be approached in an Aston Martin!

You couldn't make it up, but as I was standing there taking photos a white Lamborghini eased down the drive and stopped by the fountain to show off or whatever. The two doors opened gull like  upwards and outwards like a Thunderbirds super car and out stepped a tall and striking man of the world dressed like somebody important with attendant big hair and sunglasses. From the other side stepped, no, not a raging beauty of the Sophia Loren sort, but a short man who could be the head gardener. But of course he could be one of the world's richest men just dressing down for the day. Or could perhaps these two be checking out the locale for the next Bilderberger conference? Who knows? 

I couldn't be bothered to quiz them or hang around for a photo op so headed towards the nearest garden off to the right to check the hinterland and move towards the Thames which is deliciously near. Up through the Long Garden with its topiary and sculpture puts you in 'wandering aimlessly' mode, and then you reach the Blenheim Pavilion built to commemorate the battle of Blenheim, a smallish white colonnaded structure, which sits just outside the Long Garden high above the Thames and sort of provides the main introduction to the less perfectly gardened outlying grounds.  

Have you seen my Long Garden?

From here the grounds fall away steeply and extensively towards the Thames. Not far away is a grass amphitheatre on the slopes surrounded by vegetation, apparently a spot where the great and the good entertained themselves with various performances, including the first rendering of Rule Brittania when the estate was leased to Frederick, Prince of Wales. This area is all rich woodland falling down to the Thames which is tantalisingly invisible due to the foliage apart from glimpses of the water. If you follow the path parallel to the Thames far below you get to a felled oak (Canning's oak), a plum spot where Lord Canning, Britain's shortest serving prime minister (119 days in 1827), would sit here for ages and contemplate the view. He often visited as a friend of Sir George Warrender. And it is some view, down to the Thames glittering below and running alongside the wooded slopes, then on the other side, a scrumpled duvet of green countryside stretching away into the distance. A great place to contemplate the affairs of State, and this spot, now so accessible from London, would have been an age from the capital in those days. Just over the Thames is the village of Cookham, reported by the Daily Telegraph in 2011 as the 2nd richest village in Britain. Well who cares! But you get the vibe.

Cliveden view

You can make your way back up the slopes to the house at this point, which I did for the tour. In the apron out front of the house is the usual assortment of cars no doubt for house guests, as this is now a top hotel. Here you can spot a massive Bentley lined up with an attention seeking number plate to go with it. 

It's only a short tour round part of the ground floor, but worthwhile nevertheless. We get a potted history of the place including the era when the American Astor family used it for lavish entertainment in the pre war years. Cliveden is known of course for the 'Cliveden Set,' a group of prominent upper class individuals who frequented the estate in the thirties, and for the Profumo affair which brought down the Macmillan government of the early 1960s. No doubt there have been some exaggerations around these topics, but you can't help thinking that there would be no better place than Cliveden for intrigue, bohemian behaviour, spy stories and illicit goings on. We were informed about the usual such as the paintings, key characters in Cliveden history and the various setbacks that have afflicted the estate, including not one but two fires finishing off a previous house. The present house was designed by Charles Barry, who incidentally was the architect of that small London building, the Houses of Parliament, as well as St. Peter's church in Brighton.

Cliveden terrace

Pity about the scaffolding

Cliveden is definitely up there with the grand houses of the UK with its large size and extensive grounds, but what gives it a bit of an edge in the competition stakes is what's on the other side of the long drive up to the entrance. Blenheim Palace might be the daddy of all UK stately homes, and Knole might have a great deer park, but Cliveden can shake her apron skirts and unfold her crown and joy, the peerless parterre rolling out of the back of the property. A parterre is a formal garden constructed on a level surface if you want to know, and the one at Cliveden is one of the largest in Britain and covers an area of four acres, filled with 30,000 bulbs and plants in the spring and summer. It really hits the eye as you peruse it from the grand terrace at the back of the house. Not only huge and beautiful, it's the setting with grand open vistas of countryside and the Thames twinkling down below in the distance that really hits you. Quite magnificent! If anything typifies Cliveden it's this view, it cannot be missed.

What do you think of my parterre?

Take a stroll around the parterre to discover one or two more delights. There is the chapel to the right hand side, a little construction suspended above the Thames with accompanying balcony for photos. Sadly I was too late to step inside, all locked up! Normally entry is free and no tickets are required.

Make your way around the outside of the parterre and take a few more snaps of the great house and it's terrace, and you can take a break at the Orangery cafe just to the north east of the main house. This has two cafes in one, a smaller snack bar and a bigger sit down affair. By the time you have downed your toffee and fudge cake it may be time to vacate the premises for a half five close.

THE SOUTH DOWNS NATIONAL PARK

South Downs national park - Arundel

Pick a gorgeous early summer day and take yourself off to Arundel to explore the verdant green rolling downs surrounding the town. Arundel itself is a great place to wander around if you just want to gorge on cream teas, antique shops, a trip around the second biggest castle in England and perhaps round off the day at an Indian restaurant or a Pizza Express. Otherwise Arundel is tagged onto a massive park that blankets over the top of the Downs and has its very own folly, lake and network of public walkways. If you head into Arundel from the A27 from Brighton, over the bridge and immediately turn right, you head down a tree-lined gladed avenue until you reach Swanbourne lake on the left. This is like a leftover from the Victorian age with its ancient cafe building and duck filled lake. You can take the safe option, sit on the benches and have a picnic, otherwise you can explore a wonderful sweep of down and woodland that switchbacks right over to the northern scarp edge of the South Downs and yields wide open vistas of the Weald of Sussex to the north.

So how would you proceed? Take the path up the east side of Swanbourne lake into a comfy green valley with Box Copse on the right. An interesting aside here is that if you look up far to your left you see a brick folly peeping over the top of the hill from its green resting place. This my friends is Hiorne Tower, used as a location for a Dr Who film involving the cybermen. Alas, I spotted none myself! After this stretch bear right and up through Dukes plantation, Firm plantation and Dry Lodge plantation, all open downland towards the northern end of Arundel Park. With woodland to your right and left, the whole of West Sussex jumps into your face as you creep over the lip of the downs and the scarp slope drops away below you. Scrumptious ramblers feast!

Then you take the clear path down towards the River Arun, sometimes out in the open with tantalising photo opportunities of the Arun valley, sometimes hidden in the woods, until you hit the winding bends of the river. Then you trace its course until we reach the village of Houghton. There is not a lot of Houghton, it must literally be one of the teensiest weeniest little settlements in England easily scooped up in the hands of a giant. But here is the George and Dragon pub, supposedly a stop off point of Charles 1's son on his escape to France in 1651 after his defeat by Cromwell at the battle of Worcester. The Monarchs Way long distance footpath from Worcester to Shoreham-by-Sea is supposed to trace his footsteps.

Here you stumble onto the main road that drops down to Amberley just a few hundred metres further on. Be careful walking down here as there is a distinct absence of pedestrian walkway. Over the old stone bridge and you are there, a little piece of old England all on its tiddly own. Here there is the Bridge pub,a restaurant and a perfect cafe with indoor and outdoor seating, although outdoors wins my vote as the tables sit on the edge of the River Arun. With the ancient bridge, the bucolic meadows bordering the river meanders, and the South Downs rising up on the horizon, it's just like sitting in your own limitless back garden with your cream tea and scones.

Strike south from here towards the tiny village of North Stoke. All the villages are tiny round here! Take the side road from the Bridge pub alongside the rail line which heads towards Arundel. This peaceful,tree lined avenue heads straight ahead with water meadows stretching out towards the downs on the right. Soon the road winds up to the right into North Stoke which consists of barely more than a street of cottages hitting a dead end with a tiny church and farm. You can take a detour to check out the church, but otherwise clock the red telephone box, another bit of old England, and just to the left another path heads out towards South Stoke. You have to negotiate a field which is often inhabited by frisky cows that even if congregated far away in one corner start moving ominously towards you as you stride out across the field. Could make a man nervous, but if they get too close stare them down and make a bit of noise! Next stop the bridge built by the Gurkhas a few years ago across the pond/stream that borders the woodland, which then has to be negotiated by a winding path that takes us through to the river Arun at South Stoke.

Here you cross a bridge into the village and with the church and cottages on your left (all classic England around here) follow the lane round until you see a bridleway going off to the left. This takes you on a fairly long straight route through the fields rather than following the very narrow road along the side of the scarp slope. Eventually the path takes a climb up onto the lane later after a very easy walk on the flat. Take a left turn on the lane then immediately right down a cutting through the downs to the Black Rabbit pub. 

The Black Rabbit is the sort of pub you dream of visiting in a dream about the most idyllic English countryside pub visit possible. Snug up against the River Arun, the long low construction of this watering hole contains ample beer swilling room and tables for a tasty pub lunch. Outside across the road are multitudes of outdoor tables and benches crammed against the river bank where you can while away the hours contemplating the cow filled meadows across the river and admiring the gentle slopes of the Downs in the middle distance, whilst an occasional distant southern region train whips past on its way to Arundel and reminds you that we are in the twenty first century and cannot remain in 'smock wearing ale swilling peasant' mode. When you've had your fill of rural bliss a trundle down the country lane towards Arundel castle returns you to your car at Swanbourne lake. 

You really could not spend a day in any better way.