Well it’s been an exceedingly long time since my last post, but I haven’t totally given up on Travels With. My good intentions regarding the walking haven’t completely fizzled out, although I have managed to lose the little pedometer. Work commitments etc., have prevented me from posting, but now I’m a little quieter, I’ll see what I can do. So, today, an epic: my walk home.
Sounds simple? Not so much. I work in Central London, and live in Wood Green, about 7-8 miles away. So it takes a little time. Two hours, to be exact. So I’ll break into accessible chunks, for convenience.
Part 1: Holborn
We kick off at the London School of Economics campus, centred around Houghton Street. Although the School has been here since 1905, you be hard pushed to find any architecture from beyond 1970 until you venture up to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where the new academic building is readying completion, appropriately named, the New Academic Building. But we go around the back of the Foster-designed Library along Grange Court, Carey Street and Portugal Street – around the backs of interesting buildings rather than looking at them: the new court buildings, the rear of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Land Registry. Then it’s through Lincoln’s Inn again, through to Chancery Lane.
Chancery Lane is not really interesting enough to merit a tube station, where that the criteria. It’s not even all that close: those responsible would have done as well to have named it Gray’s Inn, or Staple Inn. Anyway, it’s an unremarkable stretch with a couple of interesting-looking passages (not all that exciting, sadly): Quality Court always sounds fun, like a higher class Quality Street, and up Cursitor Street you’ll find Vanilla Black: I had a vegetarian dinner there that I enjoyed, which is unusual for me (although it didn’t fill me up).
We turn right briefly onto High Holborn before crossing and disappearing through Gray’s Inn. I’ll establish here that given the distance ths is just one of many routes available: you could use Hand Court and go up through Bloomsbury, you could cut through to Hatton Gardens, but this is the easiest, I think. Gray’s Inn is one of the Inns of Court, and as all of them are, is very attractive indeed. The chapel and The Walks, Grays Inn’s equivalent of Temple Gardens or the New Square in Lincoln’s Inn, are very pleasant.
Wending through Grays Inn you’ll reach Gray’s Inn Road, the main road between High Holborn and Kings Cross. Turn left here to arrive at the junction with Theobalds Road and Rosebery Avenue. There’s not much variation necessary here if you’re aiming for pace, even though this is a very short walk really. However, if you want to vary things up before part 2, you could explore a little further East in Farringdon: try crossing over immediately upon exiting Grays Inn, onto Baldwins Gardens, which will bring you to some pretty ancient parts of the city: the market on Leather Lane, the multitude of jewellers on Hatton Gardens, the ancient, long-buried kitchen gardens of Saffron Hill, then onto the artisan enclave of Clerkenwell – the bookshops of Cowcross Street, the restaurants of St John St., etc.
Alternatively, take the next road past Rosebery Avenue, Mount Pleasant, and explore the warehouse studio blocks of Laystall St, the back of the monolithich post office, and so on. You can explore the hills and dales of residential Clerkenwell on Lloyd Baker Street, Granville Square, Percy Circus and the like. Either way, we’re heading North-east in our trek, so don’t stray too far.
Map
Photos of Lincolns Inn; Grays Inn
