Where was I...?

It's time to stop teasing you and reveal the location of the pastoral idyll I featured the other day:

Just savour the bucolic tranquility for a moment or two longer: you can almost hear the birdsong in these images:

As the title of the first post hinted, it is, in fact, the Grand Union Canal, and these first few shots were taken about 3 or 4 miles from central London.

Here's the canal about a mile from Paddington, looking eastwards at Willesden Junction, the Great Western Railway running parallel.

And here it is a little further inland:

Where it is not passing through delightful green space, the main buildings backing onto the canal are dirty light industrial users and cheap social housing. In glorious sunshine even these can look faintly romantic:

In early Victorian times this was, obviously, a superhighway, and the few buildings from that era have a glorious purposefulness about them (I don't know why that one house needs quite so many satellite dishes, though):

And there's one part where the curves of the canal are mirrored in the curves of the Westway, overhead:

But those are the exceptions. For the most part, walking on the canal towpath is to experience verdant green and utter peace:

London is just full of surprises, isn't it?