Pension lawyer meets world: Autumnal Walks

I could have entitled this entry "A trip to the dentists." I had to have a cap fitted and as my dentist is convenient for my office in the City, it is pretty inconvenient if you live up by the North Circular and there is a pandemic. Normally I just go in by train, but today I decided to stretch my legs and walk it, since it was mild and just about dry. It is not a short walk though - I took about 3 hours with some detours in parks on the way. So, this is my photo-journey. Omitting the countless grotty shops that line Green Lanes.

Church at Wood Green

Ducketts Common. Now the word "Common" probably conjures up something like Wimbledon Common. If it does, a visitor to Ducketts Common would be extremely disappointed. It is just a little left over land on Green Lanes now largely devoted to kids playgrounds and basketball courts, and druggies.

The southern end boasts a pub and a purpose built cinema dating from 1910. Unfortunately, reflecting the total demise of all culture in this area, the two are now a used car lot and a nutty evangelical church.

A much nicer sliver of land by the railway is the Railway Fields Nature Reserve. Very easy to miss this as you walk along Green Lanes. It really is just a scrap of land which is quite densely wooded and has a little network of paths, mostly frequented by mothers trying to entertain toddlers away from the High Street.

The Castle, which needless to say is not and never has been a castle. It is now a climbing centre, having originally been built as pumping station. Victorians didn't like just doing plain utilitarian structures.

Finsbury Park is large but rather on the grim side. My photos do it far more justice than it deserves. I think it was a rather grand park as originally envisaged by the Victorians with flower gardens and a boating lake, but suffered during the later twentieth century from both neglect and the invasion of particularly ugly leisure facilities. Luckily the trees remain.

..as does the lake inhabited by a few interesting birds in addition to the infestation of pigeons and Canada Geese, being copiously fed bread by people next to the signs saying don't feed them bread....

Pochard

Greylag Geese

And in addition to the birds - a rat

There are flower gardens, but very dull ones (and yes I know it is winter but...)

So yes the best bits are the old trees

A vastly more attractive park is Clissold Park a little further on.

Then one comes to Newington Green. The Green is quite small.

But when I arrived, I found a sculpture in the middle of it surrounded by slightly earnest looking women being given a lecture. Only later did I find out that this was the newly revealed statue to Mary Wollstonecraft, someone being reinvented as a pioneering feminist (although I think better known as the mother of Mary Shelley). This was described in news reports as the controversial monument to her by Maggi Hambling - "controversial" being a euphemism for crap. My photo here would suggest a totally abstract sculpture, but only because it cuts off the tiny and wholly insignificant little nude, not of the subject but representing "every woman". Main reason for this is I suspect that Maggi isn't very good at likenesses. So generic woman is easier.

And you don't get much for £140,000 of art spending these days. Essentially you get an amorphous blob with a barbie doll on top. At least it is shiny.

But the Green does have some interesting surrounding buildings.

Following down Mildmay Park you are surrounded by a lot of highly desirable housing.

Rosemary Gardens (I think)

At Regents Canal you meet a couple of nice big pubs nest to each other (obviously temporarily closed)

I enjoyed a little diversion down the canal (trying to ignore the graffiti)

Shoredtich Park is very bleak. And frankly Maggi's statue is still better than this lump of scrap metal. I guess the one thing you can say is art can't get any more banal than this.