Monday 6 September - Grand Union Canal

The plan is to walk from Park Royal to Paddington and take the tube to Park Royal. I emerge from the station and the first thing I see is a Boden shop. Not sure what I expected to see but not this. Although there is not a sign of a person on the street, the shop is filled with women stocking up for autumn.

Park Royal appears to be another example of the 1920s/1930s housing boom.It's on a hill and all the houses have been built to pretty much the same design and all with space for the exciting new technology, the car. It's funny to think that whilst the houses still look modern, the cars that seemed so much more radical now look antique. Some felt have sought to demonstrate their individuality through changing the porch. There are pillars and cornices, stone cladding and stained glass. There is a small wood, it all looks very rural but a 100 yards further on is the North Circular. This seems to be a small island caught between the A40, A406 and the Hanger Lane Gyratory.

To get to the canal I have to walk under the Hanger Lane Gyratory which is slightly less confusing on foot than it is to drive round. On this side of the road, the houses look a little more battered. It is close to lunchtime and people are finishing shifts on the Park Royal industrial estate. Men have come down to the canal to have their lunch, read the paper and have a smoke. There aren't many people walking but it's quite a busy cycle track - mainly people changing shifts. The industrial estate is vast but largely hidden from the canal. The security is apparent, sharp and pointy and signs about CCTV - much the same as luxury homes. There is the smell of something sweet being baked, vanilla and caramel, a more pleasant industrial smell than many.

This is not the part of the Grand Union canal that gets written up in the tourist books but it's an interesting walk. There are big buildings that seem to need lots of power and appear to be making something (though never sure what), judging by the numbers of lorries and vans there are distribution warehouses. There are more anonymous 1980s industrial multi-purpose buildings - offices, warehouses - but more of these seem to be empty. There are also signs of people sleeping on the canalside. There is someone asleep in a sleeping bag, rucksack used clutched tight. There are hollows within dense clumps of bushes, a nest lined with sleeping bags and rubbish. A bit further on there is a hollowed out space under the bridge. I assume this would be a prime spot for a home on the canal bank. As I pass I see knees moving towards the entrance. I walk a little faster.

Every so often a narrow boat passes, these are all leisure boats (probably holiday makers and mainly older boomers at the helm). A heron takes off, lands a little further down the canal and stares beadily at me from the other side. Further down there are longer term moorings. The names on the boats range from usual boat names through the more hippyish 'Om Shanti', 'Kismet' (which may reflect a love of musical theatre as much as fatalism) through to 'Iron Maiden'. Most people seem to have a small garden on their boat. Tomatoes and herbs growing as well as flowers - geraniums, lobelia, marigolds.

Once the industrial estate ends, the railway line runs close. The air smells of diesel and trains speed east and west. From Ladbroke Grove everything changes, from here the land is too valuable to waste and I am back in the land of waterside apartments, some more affluent than others. A little further on and there are council high rises and the westway buzzing with traffic. Signs about the areas talk of swamps and slums that were cleared. 'Dust' was dumped here - 'dust' was what was cleared from the streets, mainly horse manure and then taken out via the canal. It's been interesting to see how rich and poor areas stay rich and poor. Some areas decline and get re-discovered. In the docklands the rich industrial areas are now rich leisure areas. But it seems that the poor parts remain poor. Geography seems to play its part: the rich live on the hill, the poor in the swampy, floodable low lands.

Little Venice is lovely and here I am back on the tourist track. Cafes appear and people are spending. But the light is fading, rain is threatening, the train strike is looming and I have tired legs so head to Paddington and home. Paddington is wrapped in scaffolding and busy with commuters. Just outside are the smokers, drawing deep to boost nicotine levels before the smoke free journey home. Funny how you used to be told not to smoke in the street and now it's the only place where people are allowed to smoke.