A Morning on the Canal

The English really know how to get around. OK, the tube is a hot little cesspit but those doubledecker buses? Let's just say I have no idea why people pay many pounds to ride private versions thereof when they could sit on top of a regular route for much less and see the whole city. And the mainline trains? Fab. But before all that, and when you think of it, one of the contributing factors to all the development that made those modes of transport possible --and, paradoxically, themselves obsolete-- was the English canal system.

Our first full day in London, we took a narrowboat ride along Regent's Canal from Little Venice to Camden Lock. This is picturesque Little Venice, the canal crammed with modern narrow boats designed only for people to live in. And quite wealthy people at that.


People also run the narrowboats for pleasure; while in Hampton Court and Windsor later in our vacation, we witnessed the leisure class boating the Thames. It looked quite civilized, and if I didn't think I'd run the boat aground as I once ran a snowmobile into Bob Senior's fence, I'd suggest we take a canal boat holiday sometime.

But I digress. In the 19th century, and trickling into the mid-twentieth century, the canals and the boats that ran them were all about work -- transporting the raw materials and products that made the industrial revolution possible. But the railroads and the automobile soon made them obsolete. A cargo company or two still exist; one working narrowboat was docked at Little Venice and our guide, Sarah, told us how lucky we were to see it. The emotion in her voice was palpable and to some, I am sure, strange. But I got it. The past is another country, but every once in a while we get a glimpse of it in action.

Working canal boat.

Now of course, the majority of boats serve much more frivolous purposes:

There's a lot of life along the canal. As we prepared to leave Little Venice we watched a little community consultation unfold:


And we watched a couple of women and their children feed the waterfowl, which soon turned into the women trying to protect their children from interloping Canada geese.


I like the delicate kick being delivered by the woman on the right. Invasive birds ... honestly! A couple of days later we saw signs on Hampstead Heath pleading for people to help re-establish the declining house sparrow population. Had I only known, I could have brought several million with me in my carry-on luggage.

The local denizens made themselves known. Cormorants:


Coots, or as Kelly likes to call them, Phantom-of-the-Opera-Ducks:


And swans. I saw my very first cygnets, at first nothing more than big grey balls of fluff:


But in the next moment, something much, much more:


By this time, our boat (the Jason) had pulled up at Camden Lock. We had run through a couple hundred years' of history in 45 minutes.



That's what I love about London -- you don't even even to look for it; the history just seeps through everything. Even a market that you stumble upon as you head for the tube turns out to be the horse yard and veterinary hospital that served the horses used to pull the narrowboats along the canal before the engine age.


Like London, it was full of surprises, like this shop full of Turkish pottery and glass.


We capped off the day at the Canal Museum, where London surprised us again, this time with a little visitor similar to someone we once knew and loved very much.


What a great city.