London day 5 - From a higher perspective

Something different today Wednesday ... still walking but today ...

... along the Regent Canal

... past the large villas 

This house has a viewing area on the roof. At the coast this would indicate a shipowner wanting to look out to sea, but I doubt very much whether the people who lived here in the 1800s wanted to watch the boats on the busy Regent's Canal. In today's terms, it would be like sitting and watching the traffic on the M25. They probably turned the other way and looked into the Park.

The site was formerly occupied by Bedford College. The college merged with the Royal Holloway College and moved to Egham in Surrey to become Royal Holloway, University of London, having previously been based at Hanover Lodge. The creator of the Regent's Park, the 18th-century architect John Nash, had intended to construct 48 villas in the park, but only eight were eventually constructed before 1826 when work on his scheme was stopped by the government.[2] In 1987 the Regent Park's Crown Estate Commissioners commissioned the Neo-Classical English architect Quinlan Terry to build six detached villas that echoed the style of Nash. Terry said in a 2002 interview that the Crown Estate had told him to "step into Nash's shoes and carry on walking".[1] Prior to the villas' construction Terry had said also that it was a "glorious opportunity to tidy up a superb site"[3] The villas were constructed from the late 1980s to 2002.[1] Several of the villas were purchased by foreign buyers upon completion, with some having to be expanded to include extra staff accommodation.[4][5] Terry described the construction of the villas as "a dream commission" in a 2002 interview given to mark the end of construction of the villas. Terry also said that "There were times when I thought we'd never finish them all" and that "It would have been a disaster if someone had decided to abandon the last three and given them to modernists to design."[1] The first three villas sold for up to £9 million, with the Gothik villa selling for £6.5 million in 1994.[6][1]

Just before reaching London Zoo we turned off the towpath and started to climb up to and across Prince Albert Road until we came to Primrose Hill on the tip of Regent's Park ...

It was another sunny day and we took a blanket and a picnic and enjoyed the views from 213 feet ...

I could identify most of the buildings on the city skyline except this one - can anyone tell me please?

... from there we continued upwards, left, right, right, left turns and were relieved to see this sign - we were actually on the right road!

Arriving at Hampstead Heath and Parliament Hill

The view towards Highgate as we reached the viewpoint

London's skyline from 322 feet and at a slightly different angle from Primrose Hill

After a wonderful day out in the fresh air how were we going to return home? Not walking ... our feet were killing us by then!

We'll catch a bus!  It took us a good 20 minutes to find a bus stop and then we had to look down the list until we found a destination we recognised - in this case St Paul's, so looking on the map we worked out where our bus would go from - another 20 minute walk to find it, but find it we did and duly got onboard with our passes.

Well, what a ride that was! From Highgate to Holloway to Finsbury to Highbury to Islington to Clarkenwell to Farringdon to Barbican and at last to ...

... St Paul's - a journey of usually 50 minutes but in the heavy traffic of late afternoon took at least an hour and a half - a lovely ride to be honest sitting for free on a bus watching the world and his wife go by! From St Paul's we caught the number 23 which we're a bit more familiar with back to Paddington.

After a quick change of shoes for both of us we set out once again for a tasty dinner at the Victoria - a good end to another good day!