The Clerk's Well

I know you're probably thinking that we've become a bit too attached to these self-guided walks around London, but we really are finding that the more of them we do, the more we want to do more! Today's walk was yet another example of an interesting meander along roads and tiny alleyways (Can we go through there? Surely that's a dead-end . . . oh, no, it isn't!); into parks and amazing structures; and through an area of London that is so close to home, yet, as Bob said halfway along the walk, "We could live in London for ten years and never, ever stumble upon any of this. These walks are pretty great." Anyway, enough glowing praise--on with the walk! Probably the only strange thing about our walk through Clerkenwell is that we didn't see the namesake Clerk's Well, which is now very bizarrely contained in the basement of an office building and is apparently visible through a window! Even though we missed out on this highlight of the neighbourhood, we still saw plenty along the way, starting off with this interestingly named pub, on a street of the same name:

Bleeding Heart Yard has a fancy restaurant and also disguises its rubbish bins in a nice way:
Oh and characters in Dickens's Little Dorrit (which I haven't read) apparently lived here. (It's not a walk through London without a Dickens reference!) This small park had a series of benches that I almost didn't notice, and then one bench looked a bit odd
and then another,
and another!
(Bob sat on the one above and said it was actually quite comfortable.) I liked this cartoon character in the middle of a sea of tagging
and when I spotted a pair of school doorways, I thought they would be the usual "girls and infants" through one and "boys" through the other. I was half-right.

This lovely curved street was full of a mixture of offices and flats
and the white building was quite striking--our guide informed us that Dickens (yes, him again) once had an account at Finsbury Bank for Savings.
This kind of urban layering is one of my favourite things about walking around in a city--thinking about what once was or what once happened right in the spot where you're standing. Usually this is experienced in a slightly less literal sense, but I quite enjoyed the push to remember the past as marked in this square:
The outline on the pavement is of the "circular shape of the 1140s church" that stood here before being rebuilt nearby after suffering damage in WWII bombing. Just across from here, we peered through locked gates at a lovely garden--I have no idea what it is though!
The arch of St. John's Lane was a perfect place to escape from the rain that had just started, if only for a few minutes.
Nearby is this very fancy restaurant, whose website contains almost exactly the same photo as the one I took today! (I think mine is better ;-))
I had vaguely heard of the restaurant before, but I didn't take the photo because of it's renown; rather, I just enjoyed the sign that advertises bread sales alongside wine sales. Bread often doesn't get enough respect! On a sidenote, a quick glance at their menu led me to Google one of the ingredients because I had no idea what it was--a plant that tastes like oysters? Intriguing. Next up was the imposing Grand Avenue of Smithfield Market:A meat market for more than 800 years, the 1878 building is beautiful:John Betjamin lived in tiny Cloth Fair (you can just see the blue plaque on the left),
an atmospheric alleyway with a cosy pub that was full of people on this rainy evening.
This building doesn't look like it belongs in London, what with its pastels and Art Deco flourishes:
This is more London-like: After all, London isn't generally a land of Miami-Beach hues and sunny dispositions; it's a place where tripe needs dressing and offal needs selling. The menacing wooden structure on the roof and the proximity of the "men's lavatory" to this slaughterhouse complete the stark image. Nearby, another fancy restaurant places their chalkboard menu in an enticing passageway that is easily noticed even before you peer into the courtyard to see the restaurant itself. All in all, Clerkenwell has some interesting history and lovely buildings--well worth a walk. However, it also houses a lot of pretension that caters to young, wealthy City-workers who are stressed from their long work-weeks and have money to spend and want to do so with as much flash as possible! This last photo of one of the last sights on our walk, sums up this sentiment pretty well:A hotel/ bar/ restaurant with the achingly pretentious name Malmaison, their website contains the most painful hotel blurb I've ever read, on their "About Us" page. The over-the-top writing makes my teeth hurt, and the image over their link to their "Food philosophy" demonstrates a distinct lack of humour in addition to a lack of taste! And I'm sorry that I'm having a hard time letting this one go, but what exactly do they mean by "converting you from a white to a red man"? Are they talking about wine? Even if they are, the way it's phrased seems to imply a clientele of white men in search of . . . I'm not sure what. Anyway, I seem to have gotten a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to give you a sense of the scale of very 80s excess that still exists in London. Not my cup of tea, but I guess there's enough of a demand to keep all these places in business, so I'll just have to chalk it up to (very very very) different tastes.