From Grays Inn, Theobalds Road splits and half of it becomes Rosebery Avenue. This is Finsbury: no longer related to Finsbury Park, and certainly nothing like it. Rosebery Avenue is a broad street surrounded at it’s bottom end by large red brick buildings. On it’s path through Islington it’s a scenic, but undervalued thoroughfare; except around the hub of the junction with Farringdon Road, not a great deal happens.
When you reach this intersection, Clerkenwell suddenly springs into life before you. With the fire station on one side, and the huge sorting office on the other, you’re suddenly faced with the designers’ hangouts, the media types’ locals. I saw Billy Childish here, just the other day [/namedrop]; his gallery, The Aquarium, is just around the corner.
Turning right down Farringdon Road here will take you the scenic route to Farringdon station, to Turnmill Street, to Clerkenwell Green, complete with olde well. Turn left and you go the hilly way round to King’s Cross. Look slightly off to your right and you’ll see Exmouth Market – an actual market, and home of fine book, tat and food shops. But we forge on along Rosebery. We’ll pass apartment blocks in various states of attractiveness; various little gardens, parks and squares; then we’ll pass Sadler’s Wells – no longer the monastic spring of yore, now famous for the dance recitals in the Theatre.
Turn left at the cute boutiques along St. John Street. If you were to turn right you’d end up at Smithfields market, so you can get your bearings from there. Instead, head left and up towards the huge junction with Pentonville, City and Goswell Roads, minding the multitudinous buses and swarms of traffic. Particularly watch out if you’re on your bike…
Angel, of Monopoly fame, isn’t really all that these days. The hubbub surrounding the area and Upper St a while died after the gentrification set in, and while Upper St is not horrific in terms of its shops (a nice cookware store, a few boutiques, lots of antiques stall if you pick the right day), the sheer volume of human flesh makes it treacherous and a bit yuck, most of the time. Nevertheless, if you wish to brave it you might be more comfortable on the considerably more down-to-earth Chapel Market (when the Apprentices of BBC fame managed to make a hilarious mess of selling fish) or you could stroll in either direction along the canal which ducks under Upper Street, but resurfaces close by in either direction.
