The Regent's Canal / Little Venice to Camden

I have set myself a little project for the summer - to walk from Little Venice to Limehouse along the Regent's Canal. I got hooked on the canal some years back when I did some marketing for one of the sightseeing boats. The canal has a fascinating history - and is often a tranquil space in the midst of so much noise and fumes and stuff.

It is too far to do in a day, certainly for me, and I don't want it to become a chore! So it will be in gentle stages - and to begin with here is the bit from Little Venice to Camden Lock which passes through Regents Park and is rather beautiful. Camden Lock is today London's best-known craft market with masses and masses of stalls.

The Regent's Canal was built to link the Grand Junction Canal's Paddington Arm (which finished near Paddington Station), which opened in 1801, with the Thames at Limehouse - in those days important as that is where the docks were. The canal was designed by the famous architect John Nash who persuaded the Prince Regent, (later King George IV) to let his name be used for the project.

The canal was opened in two stages, from Paddington to Camden in 1816, and the rest of the canal in 1820.

To build the canal cost £772,000. Twice the original estimate of expenditure - some things never change!

The explosion at Macclesfield Bridge (now called 'Blow Up Bridge") of 1874 was a famous incident in the canal's history, in which a gunpowder barge blew up, destroying the bridge and sending debris in all directions. Some people thought a revolution has started!

One thing that always fascinates me is how things were powered. These days we naturally assume things have engines, but in fact they reckon that horses were still being used to pull commercial barges as late as 1956.

The horses went along the tow-path, hence the name, puling the narrow boats behind them. But the tunnels were built without tow-paths and the men who worked the boats used to push them through the tunnel by what was called 'legging' lying on the boat and pushing your feet onto the tunnel walls!

In 1826 a steam chain tug was introduced. The chain was secured at each end of the Maida Hill Tunnel (pictured) which is 272 yards or 251 metres long, and the tug pulled itself and a train of barges by winding the chain around a barrel on board. This means of haulage survived over 100 years until the 1930s when boats with engines became commonplace.