Walking on Sunshine!

As promised, today the Firefly is publishing a few photos from the Notting Hill walk we did on Saturday.
Things got off to a bit of a shaky start when London Underground transport (Tube) elected to close part of the Central Line, forcing us to change Tubes more often than we would have liked to and thus making us late for the rendezvous with Fran, who was patiently waiting at Notting Hill Gate Tube station.
We eventually got there and began the walk - admittedly taking the wrong road and therefore doing the entire walk the wrong way around. (Shhh!! I don't think they noticed!!)

As per usual, just click on the pictures to enlarge!

We walked past impressive large Victorian houses wondering who on earth could possibly afford to live there.


Who lives in a house like this?

The little mishap of walking anti-clockwise was however soon forgotten when we came across a lovely Italian delicatessen shop.
It was with great effort that we managed to crow-bar Gill, Jan and Victoria out of this shop - not however before they had bought some cakes and nibbles even though the walk hadn’t even started in earnest!!


The Italian shop

Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and the sun was shining on us as we walked up Westbourne Grove past the church and some nice clothes shops, food shops and restaurants towards Portobello Road.


At least we picked the right weather!

We soon arrived at Portobello Road with its nicely painted houses and its many shops selling everything from antiques, fashionable items to wear and ceramic pots to modern jewellery and pictures at the upper part of this road.


Portobello Road's multi-coloured houses

Looking past the sea of people into one of the little side streets, you could almost imagine living there. You’d have the best of all worlds - the cosmopolitan bustle of Portobello Road just around the corner from a quiet street, London at your feet and a property worth a mint!!


Pretty little side street off Portobello Road

Walking the other way, Portobello Road meanders down the hill towards Blenheim Crescent.
The shops and stalls here are stacked with ‘objets d’art’ and collectibles of all types and your eyes are drawn to so many different things that it is virtually impossible to keep track of each other.
This is where our mobile phones came in handy, as we only managed to re-group after informing each other of our whereabouts.


Silver . . .


. . . and all sorts of other stuff sold on Portobello Road

Just around the corner from Portobello Road in Blenheim Crescent you find the little Travel Bookshop made famous by the film “Notting Hill”, where Hugh Grant first met Julia Roberts. We just had to stop there and take a picture.


The gang in front of the Travel Bookshop, made famous by the film "Notting Hill"

Back at Portobello Road the market now turns into a food market selling fruit & vegetables, bread and other food stuff such as olives, feta cheese, cakes, herbs & spices to name but a few.


Portobello Food Market

We just took a little detour here to take a snapshot of the multi-coloured houses in Lancaster Road and see the old record shop in All Saints Road, the owner of which is sporting the most gigantic afro hairstyle ever seen! He definitely will scare children as well as the elderly and infirm and those of a nervous disposition.


I love those different colours!


From here the scenery deteriorates somewhat as we have nearly arrived at the Westway flyover. Chris is trying to blend into the surrounding and almost succeeds!


So, who's the animal?

By now everyone was getting hungry, prompting a ‘Why did you not organise a restaurant, Erik?? You always used to organise everything so well.’ outburst from Jan.
All my attempts to explain that I could not have possibly known at what time we would arrive where and that I thought we’d just grab a bite somewhere fell on deaf ears.
Luckily Jan found a little Greek place just under the flyover and I didn’t argue.


Jan spotted this Greek pitstop

We ordered some stuff and this arrived! It tasted great even though the owner of this place was a bit of a miserable son of a b*tch!!


Chilly Chicken Wrap! Mmmmm!

Towards the end of our walk we strolled past what was supposed to be the Portuguese area but as we looked at the shops and restaurants framed in the distance by Trellick Tower, all we could see was Moroccan stuff! Odd!!


Trellick Tower, the 31-storey concrete tower, completed by Hungarian architect Erno Goldfinger in 1972. For years it was a symbol of urban decay and disaffection, but now some of the flats are privately owned and the tower has become a fashionable place to live.

By now the sun had disappeared and there was an unpleasant breeze chilling nose, ears and fingers so we decided to call it a day and return to the Tube station.


Time to go home for a hot tea or coffee!

Personally I thought this was a great walk with much to see and with great company and would certainly do it again or recommend it to anyone.
Erik

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My target weight is 199 pounds and if you haven’t sponsored me yet, please do so by going to http://www.justgiving.com/firefly and adding yourself to the list.

Throughout the next weeks you will be able to follow my progess (O God, I hope it will indeed be progress!!) on my Biff-o-meter and can comment on this blogsite with words of encouragment or by throwing abuse at me.

Here then is the Biff-o-meter after week 6 of my Challenge!






Weight now = 211 pounds
Weight lost so far = 18 pounds

Notting Hill (as seen on DVD)

This post is for all you people who might be thinking of visiting London and not want to partake in the usual "Oh, let's see Big Ben and Buckingham Palace" tourist malakee!

We will actually do this walk tomorrow, so on Monday there should be pictures about it.

The Walk

Distance: 3 miles approx
Type of walk: circular.

Starts and finishes at Notting Hill tube station (central, circle and district lines)
This walk is planned for a Saturday, which is the best time to explore the Portobello antiques market at the south end of Portobello Road, which only opens on Saturdays.

We come out of Notting Hill tube station on the north side of Notting Hill Gate and take the first right into Pembridge Road. We branch immediately left into Kensington Park Road and left again into Ladbroke Road past a row of delectable white stucco Victorian villas characteristic of the new affluent Notting Hill.
Turning right into Ladbroke Terrace we reach Ladbroke Square, one of many private garden squares in this area of London. Only residents of the tall Victorian houses in the square have keys to the three hectares of wooded gardens hidden behind iron railings in Ladbroke Square Gardens. We now turn left into Ladbroke Square with the gardens on our right and take a right into Ladbroke Grove, the area’s main traffic artery, and cross at the crossing into Lansdowne Crescent with St John’s Church on our right.
This and the sweeping surrounding crescents of stucco houses with carved Italianate buildings and pillared porches form the heart of the Ladbroke Estate. If you think the estate’s distinctive circular shape on the A-Z looks a bit like a racetrack, this is because it originally was. The area was opened as the Hippodrome racecourse in 1837 circling the hill, but the venture failed and the racecourse closed in 1841. The Ladbroke estate was developed on the land in the 1840s with the church marking the Hippodrome’s central point.

We now follow Lansdowne Crescent round to come out at Ladbroke Grove and walk northwards with the blue railway bridge carrying the tube over the road in front of us. Shops and streets quickly become dirtier and shabbier, with small ethnic supermarkets and takeaways, as we get nearer the Westway, the concrete motorway flyover which carves Notting Hill in two.
This is one of the few remnants of an ambitious scheme in the 1960s to build a series of ringways throughout London, with what is now the M25 as the outermost ring. But planners were stopped in their tracks in inner London by a combination of mounting costs and public outrage and the ringways were abandoned in the 1970s.
Now the spaces under the Westway are occupied by cafes, a fitness centre and the north end of Portobello Market.

We go under the Westway and turn immediately right into Cambridge Gardens, where you can see the Westway on our right, incongruous against the backdrop of Victorian terraces on our left. Then we turn left into Portobello Road past a clutch of furniture and antique clothing shops and right into Golborne Road. This is the shopping and cultural centre of the area’s Portuguese community, with the Lisbon Patisserie, Lisboa delicatessen and Café Oporto all busy with customers talking to each other in Portuguese.
We now turn right into Wornington Road and right into Malvern Close looking for a path leading half left past the Malvern pub and we keep ahead across the end of Acklam Road to pick up Portobello Road under the Westway.
The northern end of Portobello Road under the Westway is much less touristy and upmarket than the well-known antiques market further south but still worth exploring. Shops sell New Age and grunge clothes, pubs and cafes serve Thai food and Spanish wine, and market stalls sell a vast variety of fruit and vegetables.

Turning left into Lancaster Road we take the second right into All Saints Road. In the 1950s and 1960s, this and surrounding roads were slums, the large houses divided up into bed sits, many lived in by West Indians who had recently arrived in London. Tensions between whites, blacks and the police led to the Notting Hill riots of 1958 and continuing unrest throughout the 1960s.
All this is difficult to imagine now, looking at the multicoloured house fronts newly painted red, green, yellow and black, the elegant contemporary art galleries and furniture shops and offices of architects and designers. The only reminder of recent history is the People’s Sound record shop with reggae music blaring out of the door.

We now turn right into Westbourne Park Road and left into Portobello Road. This is where the shops get smarter and the Saturday antiques market starts with stalls out on the road in front of shops crammed with ‘objets d’art’ and collectibles. Blenheim Crescent off Portobello Road on our right is worth a detour to explore its eclectic selection of bookshops including The Travel Bookshop, famous as Hugh Grant’s bookshop in the film Notting Hill, and Books for Cooks. Coming back to Portobello Road, the lush interior of the Electric Cinema was restored in 2001 after years of neglect. The Electric has a Brasserie if we want to stop off for a meal or a drink. Otherwise Portobello Road and Blenheim Road have a wide choice of pubs, restaurants and takeaways.

We continue up Portobello Road to Westbourne Grove on our left, with its designer loo incorporating a flower stall on the island in the middle of the road. Westbourne Grove is lined with upmarket clothes chain stores including Whistles and Joseph, alongside bars and restaurants.
To return to Notting Hill Gate station and the end of the walk, we continue up Westbourne Grove and turn left into Pembridge Villas, which becomes Pembridge Road which leads back to the Notting Hill tube station.

Click on picture to enlarge!