Unusually for a Wednesday, Tigger doesn’t have to go in to work but, on the other hand, she had an appointment in deepest Clerkenwell at the uncivilised hour of 8:20 am. Glutton for punishment that I am, I went with her.

Aboard a number 30 bus

Accordingly, we set off on a number 30 bus, here running down the lower reaches of Pentonville Road.

St Pancras Church
Photo by Tigger

We left the bus in Euston Road near the Grade I listed Church of St Pancras, built 1819-22 though refurbished in the 1950s.

Shops in Woburn Walk

Our way took us along the picturesque Woburn Walk with its Georgian (1822) shops, still in much their original form. Note the gratings covering the basement area, presumably to allow prospective shoppers to approach the window and see the goods on show.

A fluffy wedding dress

Several of the shops were displaying wedding dresses in their windows, all of them in a frothy, filmy design. Do people really wear dresses like this or are they exhibition pieces to show off the dressmaker’s art?

House with turrets

I stopped to admire this house with twin turrets. I have a long-standing, but so far unfulfilled, ambition to live in such a house and to inhabit a room in a turret. I don’t know why one turret is nicely painted green and the other left dull unless the house is perhaps a shared occupancy.

Marchmont Community Garden

As we approached the place of the appointment, we found we were early and so we made a pause in this pleasant setting, the Marchmont Community Garden. There were wooden seats and benches so we sat for a while, looking about us and enjoying the peaceful setting.

The Brunswick Shopping Centre

The appointment concluded, we walked to this fascinating place, the Bruswick Shopping Centre. It is an enclosed area filled with shops, restaurants and a cinema. Along two sides are blocks of flats built to a terraced design.

Leon

We came looking for breakfast and plumped for Leon, a chain restaurant that we have visited often before.

Order at a terminal
Photo by Tigger

Inside, I encountered a novelty, though Tigger had already seen – and used – these terminals. You touch items on the displayed menu to create your order then pay electronically. You are asked to give a name for them to call when the order is ready but in fact they didn’t use it. They used the order number instead.

Inside Leon

We chose to eat inside and as there were few customers at this time in the morning it was easy to find a table.

Coram’s Fields

We decided to walk home and set out happily, fortified by breakfast. Among the notable places we passed through was the park called Coram’s Fields, named after the philanthropist Thomas Coram (1668-1751).

The Foundling Museum

Thomas Coram is especially famous for the Foundlings Hospital that he set up in 1739 for orphans and children whose families could no longer care for them. The original building no longer exists but is memorialised in the Foundling Museum which can, of course, be visited.

Thomas Coram
Sculpted by William Macmillan

Nearby is the Grade II listed monument to Thomas Coram. The likeness was sculpted by William Macmillan in 1963.

Percy Circus

We walked through a number of streets without seeing much of interest and arrived at last on home territory in Great Percy Street. We made our way up that hilly street, going through Percy Circus Garden, though we did not tarry here today.

Cumberland Gardens

We passed along Cumberland Gardens to Lloyd Square and thence to Myddelton’s deli where we of course stopped to buy coffee.

Myddelton Square Gardens

We carried our coffee along River Street into Myddelton Square where we found a bench in a shady area of the gardens.

Panorama of the gardens

We sat there for quite some time, enjoying the sights and sounds around us. For good measure, I made a panorama view of the gardens.

Walking through Myddelton Square

We at last decided that it was time to go home and walked up through Myddelton Square homewards with lunch to look forward to.

The temperature is slated to reach a heady 29°C this afternoon. That’s enough to keep us indoors for the duration but if it cools down later, we may venture out again for an evening stroll.