It was to be an odyssey back to our teenage years, I thought, this walk with my friend Charlotte round Camden. The borough was created in 1965, a merger of Hampstead, St Pancras and Holborn, its name chosen for no other reason than Camden Town lies at its centre. Yet our 16-mile loop would barely brush its hedonistic heart.
A good starting point on the circuit is opposite Tufnell Park tube, on the eastern boundary with Islington. I’ve lived across the borough for 15 years, and there’s something comforting about mooching around its outskirts as the sun transforms the city. We begin walking up Brecknock Road.
Near the nineteenth-century Caledonian Park Tower, we pass my first flat, before continuing down York Way, and passing King’s Place, home to the Guardian, and Shrimpy’s pop-up restaurant in a converted petrol station.
Blue sky smiles over the fenced-off regeneration, dandelions and celandines adorning grassy banks. “King’s Cross will always remind me of us coming back on the train from uni,” Charlotte says as we pass the gleaming King’s Place. It recalls the haunting Pet Shop Boys track on their 1987 album Actually too.
When you trek miles through the city, the hours ebb and flow around you. “I get my bus from there,” Charlotte says, as we drift down Tottenham Court Road. “How strange to see it with totally different eyes.”
Weaving our way up to Fitzrovia, as builders clang poles on a vast construction site, the memories drip on to Hanway Street, the scene of many a lost night. Charlotte points up at the Troy Club. “Do you remember drinking red wine there with Anna, the skateboarding lesbian nun from Big Brother?”
Leaving a sun-drenched Regent’s Park, where pink bodies bask like seals, we trail through the drowsy streets of St John’s Wood and Maida Vale, and are relieved to reach cosmopolitan Kilburn High Road, with its crammed pavements and exotic blend of Arab shops, workers’ caffs and Irish and gentrified pubs. Urban walks give you a thirst for text, and our two favourite sightings are here: The Famished Café (could there be a better name?) and The Good Ship, “a pub, bar, club transmogrification”.
We climb Shoot-Up Hill into the pebble-dashed enclaves of NW2. Charlotte is reading the map and is convinced the boundary goes through Hampstead School, so we argue about whether we can simply stroll through the gates – and whether we look like parents. We don’t, says Charlotte. “But,” I protest, “we could have a child of 18!”
At Hampstead Heath, we’re plunged from such suburban modesty into a shimmering world of silver birches with luminous leaves, brilliant-yellow gorse and the smell of nettles. I point out my favourite bench inscription: “To Mr Jo And His Dogs. ‘Dead, Gloriously Dead.’”
Before the final descent to Tufnell Park we pop into St Joseph’s Church, notable for its iconic green dome. “You know, religion never leaves you completely,” says Charlotte as she lights a candle.
We’ve been on the road for six hours. At Dartmouth Park, just below the grassed-over reservoir, we look out over the estates of Holloway, Emirates Stadium and the East End beyond.
It’s an unheralded view of London, unrecognisable to a tourist, but as vital a part of this sprawling jigsaw as any. Two girls swing idly in the children’s playground below.
“It’s been a break from the world, this walk,” says Charlotte, as their laughter, and raw language, swells in the breeze.
Words & Photos: Stephen Emms
1 thought on “Free Weekend? Hike the 16 mile Camden borough boundary”
What day are people doing it??