At the deli

The day started damp and cloudy but that was to change and the rest of the day was dry and warm. We started in ritual fashion by visiting the deli for coffee.

Wharton Street

Afterwards, we walked down Wharton Street and…

Percy Circus

…passed through the lovely Percy Circus.

St Pancras Station

Following a path through a maze of streets that only Tigger could negotiate with aplomb, we arrived at St Pancras Station where we were to meet a relative arriving by train.

King’s Cafe

We three made our way to a cafe that we had “discovered” during an earlier visit to the area (see Strolling Somers Town).

In King’s Cafe

There we enjoyed a late breakfast, early lunch or brunch – call it what you will.

St Aloysius RC Church

As last time, we passed by the RC Church of St Aloysius with its curious drum-shaped body.

St Mary’s Church Somers Town

We didn’t visit St Aloysius but a bit further on we came to St Mary’s. This posed a question: was it C of E or Catholic? It looked Catholic but didn’t say so on its information boards which Catholic churches usually do. We went in for a look.

St Martin de Porres

Inside we found Stations of the Cross and statues of saints with candles in front of them – all suggestive of a Catholic Church. St Martin of Porres (1579-1639) is apparently the patron saint of public health workers, social justice, race relations, barbers, innkeepers and the lottery. One busy saint.

Perorate from here

The font

It turns out that St Mary’s is an Anglo-Catholic church. Don’t ask me to explain what that is as I am not well informed as to the ins snd outs of all these sects and denominations. It seems there is nothing quite so good at dividing people from one another as religion.

Old cinema

Continuing on, we cane to Camden Town where this handsome building stands. I imagine it is an old cinema which has found a new purpose in life.

The Carreras Cigarette Factory

We came next to this unique building, the Carreras Cigarette Factory. Built in 1928, its design is inspired by Ancient Egypt. It is so large that it is difficult to photograph in its entirety.

Egyptian cats

Egyptian cat

The entrance is guarded by a pair of large and rather splendid Egyptian cats.

Cat motifs

There is a row of cat motifs along the length of the building though these are not so obviously Egyptian in inspiration.

Downstairs in Costa

We tarried awhile in the downstairs lounge of a local Costa Coffee.

Camden High Street

We walked up Camden High Street which was quite busy – I took this photo during a deceptively quiet moment.

Aboard the 214

We now caught a number 214 bus which carried us to Highgate Village.

Alleyway

Leaving the bus, we walked down this alleyway to…

Pleasant square

…this pleasant square where the trees are shedding their leaves for autumn.

Highgate High Street

We walked down Highgate High Street, quite a long hill with lots of interesting sights to explore, to a bus stop.

Finsbury Square

A longish ride in the number 271 bus brought us here: to Finsbury Square in Moorgate. The tower on the right is the one I mentioned in The globe-trotter of Triton Court.

Broadgate – in a mess

We walked through Broadgate which was in a mess because of building works. It seems that all open spaces are being “developed”, that is, made to disappear under buildings. Such a shame as they will never be recovered.

A pause for coffee

We made another pause at a branch of Costa that we used to visit quite often but haven’t been to for a while. It has changed and the atmosphere is different but, then, everything changes, does it not?

Liverpool Street Station

We crossed through Liverpool Street Station to Bishopsgate.

Aboard the 205

Here we caught a number 205 bus which carried us back to…

St Pancras Station

…the fairytale palace that it St Pancras Station.

Is it art?

We deposited our relative at the station and, as we were leaving, Tigger spotted this object suspended above the hurrying crowds. You can’t really see from the photo what it is but it seems to be a model of St Pancras Station.

Midland Road

We left the station into Midland Road where we caught a 214 bus back to the Angel, completely the circle of our outing.

If you have been following my blog since Saturday, you will know that we decided to try wireless broadband to see whether this would provide advantages over our existing DSL connection.

Putting names to the characters in this drama, we receive our DSL from Zen Internet and have been trying out a wireless router supplied by Three.

We have been Zen subscribers for several years and have in general been satisfied with their service. There have been a few upsets such as when we were offline recently for about 36 hours as a result of outages suffered first by BT and then by Zen itself. Precisely, because two parties are involved in supplying our Internet, that doubles the chances of things going wrong.

Why change? Our connection is quite slow (the Which? speed test showed 14.9 Mbps this morning) and we thought we should look at upgrading, perhaps to fibre or to wireless. A secondary consideration is that conventional Internet connections require a phone line, which means a subscription to BT on top of the cost of the Internet connection. Switching to wireless would allow us to dispense with the phone line which we do not use for calls, only for Internet.

As we have our mobile phone service from Three, it made sense to consider using a wireless router supplied by Three. In our area, Three’s 5G is available to mobile phones but not to Internet routers. However, 4G is already pretty fast so it seemed worth trying.

Three’s 5G router

On Saturday, we signed up for a 5G router (which also captures 4G). The contract is for 24 months but, if you are not happy with it, you can return it within the first 30 days.

Setting up the connection is simple: first insert the supplied SIM into the router and plug the power cable into a power socket. You can “join” your various devices by clicking on the router’s name and then inserting the username and password printed in the side of the router. There is also an ethernet socket in case you need to connect a device by wire (the black cable in the photo).

First impressions were highly favourable: the router worked perfectly, our devices connected without any trouble and, despite the connection being only 4G, we were experiencing speeds about 10 times faster than our DSL. By Sunday afternoon, we were feeling fairly confident that we would be adopting the wireless router permanently.

Sunday was a day of rain and thunderstorms, pretty severe thunderstorms, in fact, affecting much of the country. Not that this bothered us particularly, sitting snug and warm at home. But then…

“The connection’s laggy,” said Tigger.

I agreed: websites were slow to load and pictures were taking a long time to appear. I did a speed test and it came out in single figures! The connection had become virtually useless. On top of the router, the symbol for cellular signal strength was red and flashing, indicating a weak signal.

I switched off the wireless router and switched on our Zen router. Would this be affected by whatever problem was slowing the wireless router? No, not in the least: Zen ran happily at its usual slow but steady and reliable pace.

I assume that it was the thunderstorm that brought the wireless router to its knees. Information online suggests that wireless routers are indeed affected by adverse weather conditions. Now, if we lived somewhere where bad weather was rare, we could perhaps live with the occasional outage but, come on, we’re talking about Britain! In this fair land, bad weather comes as standard, not as the exception. We cannot face the prospect of losing the Internet connection every time there is a crackle of thunder or a heavy shower of rain.

In a sense, the thunderstorm did us a favour: had it not occurred, we might have completed the 30-day trial period and adopted the wireless router, only to encounter problems later.

We shall be returning the router and, having recovered our aplomb, looking round to see what other more stable solutions exist for upgrading our Internet connection.

At the time when we would usually set out for Sainsbury’s, it was raining hard and the weather forecast was warning of severe thunderstorms. We decided to wait for a promised clearing later in the morning.

Farmers’ Market

When the rain did pause, we went to Chapel Market to have lunch before shopping. We were surprised to find our usual favourite, Cafe Sizzles, closed.

Rainy Chapel Market

Though the market was open, a number of the usual stalls were missing and the market was hardly crowded with customers. Open markets are vulnerable to bad weather.

Chapel Cafe

We had recourse to our second choice, called the Chapel Cafe. The food is good and the prices reasonable.

Walking through Chapel Market

Sainsbury’s was fairly busy, no doubt because we were there later than usual. Afterwards, we passed through Chapel Market…

Inside Mercer’s

…to call in at Mercer’s for coffee.

We returned home to put away our purchases and drink our coffee bought at Mercer’s. Our next call was to the “Cutting Bar” in White Lion Street where we both had our hair cut.

Sunshine in Upper Street

When we left the Cutting Bar, the weather was sunny and pleasant and so we decided to walk to Islington Green and to the branch of Caffè Nero there.

Approaching Islington Green

Yesterday, there had been a protest near here when members of the group Just Stop Oil superglued themselves to the road, blocking traffic and causing delays to the bus services. We didn’t see the protesters ourselves but this Guardian article reports it with a photograph.

How do the police tackle protesters superglued to the the road and other places? Apparently, they have a fluid which dissolves the glue. They are not saying what it is exactly, perhaps wisely.

At Caffè Nero

At Caffè Nero, Tigger grabbed a table while I queued to buy our coffees.

A green wall

We returned via Berners Road from where we have a view of this green wall which always intrigues me. I suppose it must maintained but have no idea what that involves.

Liverpool Road

We crossed Liverpool Road (very close to Sainsbury’s) and entered Ritchie Street.

Angel Primary School
Now closed

In Ritchie Street stands this large school building called the Angel Primary School. I don’t know when it was built but would guess an early date in the 20th century.

Infants’ entrance

This entrance has the word “Infants” engraved above it. Whether it was still used as such or whether that precise use had lapsed, I di not know. Sad to say, the school closed fir the last time on August 31st this year. What is its future? Perhaps like other closed schools in the area, it will become a residential block.

—————————-

Over 24 hours have elapsed since we first fired up our wireless broadband router from Three. It is still working very satisfactorily. I would be rash to judge the issue after so short a time but if the router continues to perform this well, then I have no doubt that we will adopt it.

I have carried out numerous speed tests using online websites. They all give different results! Their results range from 130 Mbps to 180 Mbps which is 10 or more times faster than our existing Internet connection. That is using 4G and when 5G finally arrives in our district we can expect an even better performance.

Update: see The experiment fails.

The time has come to try an experiment. “An experiment with what?” you reasonably ask.

Going to the Three shop

I will explain later but here’s a clue: setting up the experiment involved us in a visit to the Three Mobile shop in Upper Street.

Our favourite coffee place

Having completed our negotiations, we went to our favourite coffee place, Myddelton’s deli where we relaxed for a while.

Garnault Mews

We then passed through this passage leading to Rosebery Avenue.

Exmouth Market

We walked on down to Exmouth Market. We passed along it looking for lunch but…

Cafe Maya

…decided to go to Cafe Maya on the corner of Farringdon Road with Rosebery Avenue. We used to come here a lot but hadn’t visited in a while so it was interesting to try it out again.

The old fire station

We went past the old fire station, looking very sad and empty.

Continuing down Rosebery Avenue

We continued down Rosebery Avenue and then came upon the first of a series of streets with strange or poetic names.

Coldbath Square

This is Coldbath Square, whose evocative name (according to information received) comes from a Cold Bath (a natural spring?) discovered in 1697 which was believed to cure nervous disorders. It existed until 1870..

Warner Street from Rosebery Avenue

Rosebery Avenue crosses Warner Street by a bridge.

The stairs

We accessed Warner Street by this rather grubby staircase.

The bridge

From Warner Street we have this view of the Rosebery Avenue bridge.

The Coach (and Horses)

This fine Victorian pub was originally called The Coach and Horses but, for some strange reason, the name has been shortened to The Coach.

Herbal Hill

The second poetic name was this one, Herbal Hill. The name may derive from the onetime cultivation of saffron here as the road was previously known as Little Saffron Hill.

Saffron Hill

The name of this street, Saffron Hill, definitely comes from the fact that saffron was cultivated here in the 18th century.

Hatton Wall

This street has the curious name Hatton Wall. I don’t know what wall is referred to.

Lily Place

Here is another street named after cultivated plants: Lily Place. I wonder what it looked like originally: was there once a garden here?

Steps to the street

Saffron Hill led us to a passage that joined the street by a staircase, 28 steps in all, if I remember correctly.

Shoe Lane

We now came to the last of today’s curious and poetic street names, Shoe Lane. Was this once a district for shoemakers? If so, there is no sign of them now. I do know that there was once a wworkhouse here.

Man and sculpture

This pair made an engaging picture, a building labourer and a sculpture. Unfortunately, there was no plate indicating the sculpture’s details.

Aboard the 341

We finally arrived in Fleet Street and there caught a number 341 bus back to the Angel.

Now, about the experiment. For some years, our ISP has been Zen. They are quite good but recently BT suffered a nationwide outage and as Zen provides its service through BT, our connection went down. Once the BT outage had been dealt with, Zen itself had problems. All in all, we were without a connection for 36 hours. This is the third time in recent months that we have had problems. Might it be time to try something new?

That something new is called “wireless broadband”. Your router achieves its connection by wireless from the mobile phone mast. You connect your computers, tablets and phones to your router also by wireless.

The best routers are those thot work off the 5G network but if your area is not yet on 5G you can use 4G. It’s not as fast as 5G but if, like us, you have only DSL and not fibre, then 4G is likely to be faster than your existing connection.

The wireless router

We acquired a 5G router and SIM card from Three. You insert the SIM and plug the router into a power point and wait a couple of minutes for it to boot up. You connect your devices by supplying the username and password printed in the side of the router. There is also a slot for an ethernet connection if this is needed: the black cable links to the NAS on which Tigger stores her photos. The router is about 23 cm (9 ins) tall and very lightweight.

But does it work? Yes, it seems to work very well. Our neighbourhood is 4G with 5G for mobiles only. The router seems to run mainly on 4G with occasional flickers of 5G. Speed tests suggest that the connection is 9 to 10 times faster than our plain vanilla DSL

We have the router on a 24-month contract (£10 per month for the first 6 months, £20 per month thereafter) but we can cancel within the first 30 days if we are not happy with it. We shall be testing it rigorously to decide whether to keep it or not.

If we keep it, we will cancel our account with Zen. Furthermore, because we use the landline only for Internet and never to make or receive calls, if we continue with wireless broadband, we can cancel our account with BT, saving £25 per month. A lot hangs in the router’s performance over the next couple of weeks.

Update: see The experiment fails.

We performed our usual shopping run to Sainsbury’s this morning.

Tables outside still

As we went through Chapel Market, I noticed that some of the cafes are still setting tables outside for their hardier customers.

Sainsbury’s

We were a little later than usual which may be why Sainsbury’s was a little busier than usual first thing on Sunday.

When Tigger put away the shopping at home, she discovered that one “fresh” item was in fact 11 days beyond its sell-by date and that another had a broken container. After lunch, then, we returned to Sainsbury’s to return these items. We were given a refund of their cost.

Police vehicles in Tolpuddle Street

From Sainsbury’s, we went to the deli for our coffee but took the long way round (exercise is good for you!), striking off along Tolpuddle Street. There is a police station in this street (one that they haven’t managed to close yet). The street has double yellow lines all along its length but this doesn’t prevent them parking police vehicles along it. Then again, who’s going to put a parking ticket on a police vehicle?

Lloyd Baker Street

After our coffee break, we set off along Lloyd Baker Street. The sunny morning had mutated into a cloudy afternoon though it was pleasant enough for a stroll.

Georgian Houses, Lloyd Square

We walked round Lloyd Square with its lovely Georgian-style houses. These have triangular pediments as though the architect sought to marry the Georgian style with Greek classical.

Boot scraper

In front of some of the Georgian houses, you still find stout iron boot scrapers, a reminder of how muddy London’s streets tended to be in the 18th and 19th century. Having fallen into disuse, many of these scrapers are broken or have disappeared entirely. In some cases, the scraper is perched right on the edge of the path so that the mud falls down into the basement where the servants would have to deal with it.

Surviving ironwork

Boot scrapers were not the only ironwork to grace these buildings: there were also the railings (necessary to stop passers-by falling into the basement “area”) and decorative work at the windows. Being necessary for safety, railings survive but ironwork at the windows is increasingly rare though some beautiful examples survive.

Cumberland Gardens

We entered Cumberland Gardens by the pedestrian path at the lower end. In summer, the gardens in the left had been ablaze with flowers but these have now died away until next year.

Autumn foliage

There was still some colourful autumn foliage to make up for the lack of flowers. And look at how many chimneys there are on the roof! These would be chimneys for two houses but even so, it’s an impressive number. Imagine this number of chimneys multiplied by the number of houses: no wonder London’s nickname used to be The Smoke!

Percy Circus Gardens

We passed through the elegant Percy Circus with its central garden in which we enjoyed some happy times with coffee and perhaps even s picnic lunch, during our lockdown walks. In fact, today’s stroll reminded me very much of those lockdown outings.

The path to Holford Gsrdens

We walked up the path that leads to the small park called Holford Gardens behind Bevin Court. (The path probably has a name but, if so, I don’t know what it is.)

Fallen tree, Holford Gardens

When we passed this way during our lockdown walks, we used to admire the Leaning Tree. That tree sloped at what seemed an extreme angle but, for all that, it seemed healthy enough. Then, one day, tragedy struck and the tree fell. I’m glad to see that the trunk has been left in place where it can be used by the smaller inhabitants of the park. It even seems to have put out some new twigs though these have now withered.

The path continues

The path continues beside Bevin Court. There is grass and there are trees and the trees have an interesting feature:

Bat box

That is, bat boxes have been installed in them. (Bat boxes, in case you haven’t come across them before, are like bird boxes but for bats. Instead of a front entrance, they have an entrance at the bottom.) I have not so far seen any bats here but perhaps that’s because I haven’t been here at the right time of day.

Bevin Court

We passed in front of Bevin Court, that “cliff of apartments”, with its pleasant and well tended garden in front. Here too, the trees have something of use to wild life:

Bird box

Bird boxes have been installed. These look quite new and I hope they will attract tenants in due course.

Cruikshank Street

We returned home via Cruikshank Street where I photographed this sign in the road. It indicates that this is, or rather was, a parking space for an ambulance. It is obviously obsolete because it has been partially covered by installing a bollard. I have tried to find out whether there was once a hospital here or whether there was some other reason to provide a parking space for an ambulance, but without success. For now, the mystery remains.

Pigeon banquet

As we passed through Claremont Square, I took my last photo: a flock of pigeons enjoying a banquet that someone has put out for them. This cheerful scene gave me a cheerful memory to carry home with me.