After yesterday’s sunshine, today’s rain is a disappointment but we will make the best of it.

Rainy Pentonville Road

We went to the bus stop in Pentonville Road from where I took the above photo. It shows you the damp conditions but not the chilly temperature (around 10°C but the damp makes it feel colder).

Aboard the 205

We boarded a 205 bus and sat upstairs. You can see how the cold has steamed up the window. The shown destination (Old Street Station) is wrong and we were heading for Paddington Station.

Entering Paddington Station

We entered the station by this alley that probably has a name but what this is I do not know. You have ti run the gauntlet of smokers who come here from the station where smoking is of course not allowed.

Not as busy as usual

The station was not as busy as it usually is. This is because there was to have been a rail strike and although this was called off at the last moment, things has not recovered from the expected hiatus.

In the Mad Bishop and Bear

We went up to the station’s top level where there resides a pub called the Mad Bishop and Bear (the Bear in honour of Paddington Bear).

Baked Squash Tagine
Photo by Tigger

We had lunch here, both choosing the vegetarian baked squash tagine.

Aboard the 23

Afterwards, we returned to Praed Street and boarded a 23 bus.

Ladbroke Grove Station

The bus deposited us here, near Ladbroke Grove Station. We started walking to our next destination.

The friendly cat

Along the way, we met a friendly cat who came to be stroked.

Portobello Market

We passed the colourful Portobello Market but did not investigate it today.

Graffik Gallery

We had come to visit the Graffik Gallery in Portiobello Road.

Downstairs in Graffik Gallery

The gallery specialises in “graffiti art” and, in addition to selling works, holds workshops. In a sense, having graffiti art in a gallery is rather like having wild animals in a zoo. The displayed works are on canvasses to be sold which, in a sense, runs contrary to the whole ethos of graffiti.

Tree absorbing railings

As we walked back, I admired this tree which, in growing m, had found itself confined by the railings and had simply flowed through them, absorbing them into itself.

Railway bridge, Ladbroke Grove

We returned to Ladbroke Grove where the railway bridge crosses it. We were looking for somewhere to have a coffee break but everywhere was crowded.

Aboard the 7

So we boarded a number 7 bus which took us on a long ride, finally terminating in…

Oxford Street

…Oxford Street. Despite the chilly and wet conditions, Oxford Street and its shops were quite busy. Has Christmas shopping started already, I wonder?

Aboard the 73

The 73 bus has a terminus here and so we went aboard for the journey back to the Angel.

Islington Green

Our outing was not quite at an end, however. We left the bus at Islington Green and walked across Upper Street to a certain venue that is something of a favourite of ours.

Queueing at Caffè Nero

I refer, of course, to Caffè Nero where we often go. After an agreeable coffee break, we walked home, finally ending our ramble.

Today is November 5th, the day on which we remember the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes and others tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up Parliament during the state opening. Already, as I write these words, I hear the odd bang of fireworks going off. The wet conditions will perhaps (literally) put a damper on things but in any case firework parties usually go on for several days around this date. I just hope people are sensible enough to bring their cats and dogs indoors as many are frightened by the flashes and explosions of fireworks.

Tigger has a half-day at work today and so we will have the afternoon to ourselves. I set out to meet Tigger at her office when she leaves at 11:30 am.

St John Street

Leaving plenty of time for my journey, I went to the bus stop in St John Street. As you can see from the photo, the sun is shining beautifully. It’s rather cold (around 10°C), though, and I have put on my winter coat.

Aboard the 153

I caught a 153 bus, changing later to a 100.

St Katharine Docks

At journey’s end, I paid my usual visit to St Katharine Docks. I was hoping that there might be some waterfowl but I was disappointed though I did hear some coots honking.

Liverpool Street Station

We caught a 100 bus to Liverpool Street Station and had a train for our destination within a few minutes. That destination is Cambridge which we haven’t visited for a while.

Off we go!

The train was not crowded and we easily found seats. For once, the train’s wifi was working well and was fairly fast – something which is often not the case.

Cambridge Station

We left the train at Cambridge’s main station which is of an unusual long, low design.

Walking to town

We walked from the station into the town, passing this landmark, the Catholic Church of Our Lady and English Martyrs.

Inside The Regent

As we went, we looked at menus along the way and finally plumped for a pub called The Regent.

Mac ‘n’ Cheese

On the menu was vegetarian Mac ‘n’ Cheese. I was expecting it to have a crispy top but in that I was disappointed. Still, altogether it was quite good if a tad expensive.

University Arms Hotel

After lunch we continued walking. We passed this building whose engraved name is University Arms Hotel. The portico may look old but it bears a date of MMXVII (2017).

Guarded by bears

Guarded by bison

We found ourselves in front of the. Sedgwick Museum and went in to take a look. We have not been here before so it was a new experience. The entrance is up a double flight of stairs guarded by bears on one side and bison on the other.

Iguanodon

We admired the inhabitants, including this fine Iguanodon and…

Megaloceros giganteus

…this Megaloceros giganteus.

Traditional glass cases

There were also the traditional glass cases, a huge number of them, which must represent thousands of hours of work.

Displaced Mihi
Lionel Grant

In the grounds we encountered this object, presumably a work of art, by Lionel Grant and entitled Displaced Mihi.

College gate

In Cambridge, of course, there are more fine old buildings than you can shake a stick at. I think this one is Pembroke Collège, but I’m not sure so don’t quote me.

Church of St Botolph

The sun was sinking by now but it was still illuminating the upper levels of St Botolph’s Church.

The Corpus Clock aka Chronophage

We paid a visit to this unusual timepiece. By John C. Taylor, its official name is The Corpus Clock but I seem to remember it was also called Chronophage (“Time gobbler”). It was inaugurated in 2008 by Stephen Hawking.

In Caffè Nero

We took rest and refreshments in a branch of Caffè Nero.

Domed building

Walking again, we passed this building with a dome. Such buildings always attract me as I have a yen to live in a domed building and have my study in the dome.

Grand Arcade

We passed through the Grand Arcade but ignored the tempting displays in the shops.

A bus to the station

As we had done a lot of walking, we thought it was fair to take a bus ride back to the station.

Aboard the train

At the station, we found a train going to King’s Cross within the next few minutes. (King’s Cross is nearer home than Liverpool Street Station). As our tickets were for any London station, we were able to take that train even though we had started from Liverpool Street.

Arriving at King’s Cross

When we arrived at King’s Cross, we were at the rear of the train and had a long walk to the ticket barriers. All this walking should make us fit and healthy!

The bus stop

We at last reached the bus stop outside the station. We didn’t have long to wait and even had a choice of two buses that arrived together.

Aboard the 30

The number 30 bus carried us up the hill to the Angel and home. We will prolong the pleasure of the day by ordering supper online and having it delivered to us.

And that’s not all: we still have the whole weekend ahead of us!

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.

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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.