Barnsbury

The rain never got worse than a fine mist today, so we decided to do another walk from our favourite lists of self-guided walks, this time in Barnsbury. We ended up seeing parts of this area close to home that we've never seen, and Bob summed it up best when he said, "Ohhhhh, so this is what people mean when they say that Islington has posh bits!" I liked Sidney House's elegant glass and we walked around and through many peaceful, leafy squares, which are kept up by Islington Council and are thus open to the public (unlike all those private squares elsewhere in London).

We didn't see many people on our walk, and came across many isolated pubs and lovely streetscapes.

Strangely enough for someone who doesn't spend much time in pubs, every time I see a pub that's been converted into a residence, I want to live there! I don't think my photo succeeds in showing the lovely green hues of this building, but they were lovely as they changed in the light. The greenery on this home was spectacular--the window seemed like the perfect place to sit with a book and a cup of coffee, all cosy in a blanket of green:
The seahorse knocker on this door added an unexpected twist to the usual lion, and it wasn't until I got home that I noticed the additional bell-pull on the left:

Being a good Winnie-the-Pooh devotee, I was of course reminded of Owl's house, an "old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else's . . . because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull." (Don't worry though, the bell-pull we saw today wasn't made out of Eeyore's tail.) Next up was this great wall of old adverts for long-gone shops:
Although we saw many colourful doors along the way (indeed, the shapes and colours of doors are often highlights of any walk around London), this church door's piercing blue was especially pretty:

Before we knew it, there was our usual Sainsbury's almost right in front of us--we'd never approached it from this direction before and it seemed strange to be right back in the middle of the extremely familiar street, thinking about what ingredients to buy for dinner . . .