Greenford to Paddington

Day 14 : 21 Sept 2010

I was on the path soon after 09.00. The day's walk would take me only about eight miles, meandering in a generally south-of-easterly route to Paddington. I usually average twelve or thirteen miles a day, and as it promised to be in pleasant early autumn sun with just a suggestion of autumnal mist over the water I was looking forward to it. Although my recent summer walks have been minor exertions compared to those undertaken by many people, and spread over several months rather than on consecutive days, they still wear me out, especially when I'm trying to fit them in around other activities. So I was looking forward to getting to Paddington, buying myself a coffee and settling back into a train seat knowing that I'd walked about 180 miles since Chepstow.

There are no locks on the Paddington Arm (nor were there any on the Slough Arm, in case I forgot to pass on this nugget) but there's a wide double-lane aqueduct that takes the canal high over the North Circular Road, close to the Hanger Lane underpass.

The canal skirts Sudbury Golf Club to its north, and Greenford, then Perivale, Alperton, Park Royal, and North Acton to its south. Like many non-Londoners when I hear those names I mentally sideline them as "yeah, whatever, somewhere in London" which is both a waste and an insult. Each has its own history and character no less than Chepstow or Newbury, and it's not their fault they became wrapped in the urban sprawl. I can't even claim to know them much better now, as the towpath was never deflected from the canal and I didn't leave it. Old Oak Common, Wormwood Scrubs, Kensal Town and West Kilburn came and went. Westway appeared high overhead, but remained an irrelevance to those of us at water level despite its colossal bulk. Soon after that I got to Little Venice, and tried not to be taunted by the entry to the Regents Canal, which I'd resolved not to walk. It heads in a northerly arc through Camden and St Pancras, down to the Thames at Limehouse Basin, a mile downstream from Tower Bridge.

At Paddington I'd expected to find evidence of the original 1801 basin, but there was none. Dozens of different modern building styles crowded up round the old basin, each architect determined to stand out from his peers even if the result melange was a mess. The canal, now prettified and reduced to a tourist attraction, lay still and inert, unused apart from a few boats used as cheap accommodation. It wasn't what the canal was built for and its founders Mr Praed, who got a street outside the station named after him, and Mr Jessop, who got a camera shop, would have been appalled.

A year ago, on my last day down the Wye, I leant into the teeth of a tempest and felt deeply frustrated to be walking through stunning landscape without an opportunity to see it. In a strange way I had the same feeling as I neared Paddington. Despite the day's sunshine I'd registered only the water and the bridges and the canal banks, and had no real appreciation of their significance. I'd been too lazy to educate myself about the history of the place I was travelling through. I'd assumed that the natural unfolding of the canal's course would be enough to keep me interested, but it didn't. Appreciating a canal needs an understanding of its history even more than its geography, so before I do anything like this again I'll do my homework.

• History of the Grand Union Canal

• Back to 2010 walk index

-- RodBird - 03 Jan 2011