The walk from Paddington to Old Oak Common via Little Venice and Ladbroke Grove takes about an hour but it offers a great display of architectural styles from the brutalist bus shelter hidden beneath the West Way to a bizarre example of a housing estate barricading some of its residents behind a reinforced blue concrete wall. The highlight of the trip is Trellick Tower, dilapidated but benefiting from the contrast between the concrete and an almost tropical blue sky. Old Oak Common is difficult to fathom stretching along the canal and sandwiched between two or is it three railway lines. At some point these lines will be knitted together to create an interchange and railway junction at the heart of a brand new London district. Until this happens, it remains one of the few places in London that appears lost, mysterious and just beyond the horizon of regeneration.

• Uncategorized