Paddington

The junction where the Grand Union Canal meets the Regent's Canal, surrounded by cream stucco Regency villas and permanently moored narrowboats. The café boats moored in the basin serve coffee and light food. The towpath east along the Regent's Canal is one of the best urban walks in London — forty flat minutes to Camden, passing through Regent's Park at the halfway point.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's 1854 terminus — three original transept trainsheds in wrought iron and glass, each over 200 metres long, plus the Elizabeth line concourse added in 2022. The station is functional but also legitimately beautiful. The original Brunel trainsheds, particularly shed one and two, reward attention: the ironwork is extraordinary. The Paddington Bear statue near the departure boards is the most-photographed object in the building.

A floating puppet theatre moored at Little Venice since 1982, performing traditional Punch and Judy, marionette productions, and contemporary puppet theatre for audiences of all ages. The barge seats around fifty people and the performances — many devised and performed by the same family across three generations — have a quality that the setting alone doesn't explain.

The modern development immediately behind Paddington Station, built over the canal basin, with a central courtyard hidden from the street. A cluster of independent restaurants and cafes surrounds the square. The canal views from the upper walkways are unexpectedly good, and the square itself — usually emptier than it deserves to be — is one of those hidden London spots that rewards a deliberate detour.

The neighbourhood's local shopping street, with the Prince Alfred pub (a Victorian pub with a remarkable intact interior — ornate wooden snob screens dividing the bar into six separate compartments, each with its own door) at its centre. The surrounding streets — Castellain Road, Warwick Avenue — are among the best examples of late-Victorian mansion flat architecture in London.

A thirty-minute walk west along the Grand Union Canal towpath from Little Venice. The oldest of the seven great Victorian garden cemeteries, opened in 1833, with over 250 Grade I and Grade II-listed monuments. Thackeray, Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel are buried here. The overgrown Gothic mausoleums, the Egyptian catacombs, and the general atmosphere of benign neglect make it one of the most atmospheric walks near central London.