Saturday September 6

 I have given myself today and tomorrow in London before starting the walk. A good thing because I’m having technical difficulties getting on to the AirB&B site that I need to access for my Monday night accommodation…

Today I had a lovely walk to Canary Wharf along quiet streets bordering the Thames. The tide was high and the water a bit agitated, but the sun was warm and the strollers happy. 

Over 25,000 bombs fell on this area of London in WWII as the Germans fully recognised the importance of maritime trade to British resilience. Some warehouses have survived (or been rebuilt) and the extensive blocks of post-war flats are very attractive (and very very expensive.)

I had a pleasant break in a sixteenth century pub, the ‘Prospect of Whitby’, where Charles Dickens would come to listen to dock folk - original flagstone floors and a pewter counter on the bar.  From the waterfront balcony patrons in earlier days could watch as pirates and smugglers were hung from a gibbet over the Thames.

Canary Wharf is surprisingly pedestrian friendly. Its highest building is named One Canada Square because of the key role the Canadian Reichmann family played in creating not only this building but the whole concept of a new privately owned financial district. Lots of restaurants, walkways, fountains and art installations, and very few cars and parking lots make this a much more pleasant walking experience than downtown Toronto, for instance.

Example of art enlivening a walkway (Camile Walala 2020)

The visit ended at the Dockyard museum in a converted warehouse. Its exhibits focus on the hard physical work of generations of dockyard workers, and the one million slaves who transited through here, enriching the country and underlying so much of what we now rather heedlessly admire in museums and country estates.