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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
Smithfield is a fascinating area and during the walk
you’ll hear of bumarees at the famous meat market,
visit the site of a plague pit and see the beautiful
London homes of Hercule Poirot and Sir John
Betjeman. We’ll stay in Smithfield to buy lunch,
eat at The Bishop’s Finger - a macabre reference to
torture and execution or in the Norman cloisters of
an old monastery at London’s oldest parish church.
In the afternoon we are going to enjoy a 50 minute
cruise on a traditional narrow boat taking us from
the old industrial warehouses of Camden Lock
which today house a bustling weekend market to
the opulent splendour of Little Venice where the
stuccoed Georgian houses can fetch weekly rents
of £20,000! The route take us through Regents Park
and London Zoo.
The Regency architect John Nash was a director
and investor in the canal company established in
the early 1800s to connect the Grand Union Canal at
Paddington with the River Thames at Limehouse but
the company struggled for over a decade to persuade
landowners to allow the canal to be cut through their
properties. The day was finally won when Nash was
able to include the canal in his plans for the new
Regents Park. By the time the canal was built though
the new railways were already taking trade away and
it never really returned a decent profit. Today it
makes for a very pleasant cruise especially as it
takes us through London Zoo where you see the
aviary designed by Lord Snowdon and often, if the
sun’s out, Paul the warthog snuffling about.
You’ll see a line of rather grand villas which look like
Nash designs but are actually modern houses that were
built in the past 20 years. That’s one on the previous
page. All very nice but for all that money the owners
could hardly enjoy their Pimms on the rather sloping
lawn without being gawked at by all of us cruising by!
We disembark at Little Venice said to have been
named by the romantic poet Robert Browning. Along
this last section of canal are beautiful stuccoed houses
and along the towpath a colourful collection of
traditional narrowboats make for a super photograph.
All in all this is a super day, highly recommended and
suitable for all months from March to the end of
October and particularly lovely in May and June.
This trip is in our main brochure which you can read in
electronic form by