Saturday at King's Cross, London.

The Grain Store (before opening time!)

Today we met up with our friend Jane for lunch and a guided walk round King's Cross.  Lunch was at the Grain Store - very noisy, very trendy, very busy and also very good food!   The emphasis is on the vegetable but there is a little meat thrown in.  Jane and I had chickpea and yoghurt pancakes with avocado and salsa and a long list of other ingredients.  Tasted very good.
I spied Ian  Hislop on my way back from the loo...

After lunch we went to our rendezvous point, the Henry Moore sculpture in front of Kings Cross Station.  King's Cross and St. Pancras Station next to it have a long history.  The area used to be riddled with railway lines converging on London bringing in supplies from the hinterland...coal and grain etc. Imports also came into the area along the Regent's Canal.  The area in Victorian times was busy, dirty and poor with large train sheds, storage buildings and factories. The area continued to be dirty and poor until very recently but has been undergoing redevelopment perhaps spurred on by the arrival of Eurostar.   St. Pancras Station was renovated a while ago and now the whole area around the stations is being regenerated with an art school, open areas, a lot of planting, a lot of shops (eventually), a skip garden, flats and a LOT of restaurants.   The regeneration is being done in such a way that the old buildings are preserved and still illustrate the history of the place with the modern additions complementing them.   It's still very much a building site so a bit early to tell whether it's successful esthetically! It all sounds very good, but one does wonder how many 'shopping experiences' a person really needs!

Jane and Peter and our guide

Our guide was a very smiley, energetic man with a shiny bald head which was easy to see in a crowd and a great booming voice!  We were told he had been a policeman, though we rather suspected he had also been a teacher!  He was very good at getting people to give impromptu talks to the group...the girl at the skip garden, the young men cleaning bottles for a garden, the woman in the development office.

The new canopy in front of King's Cross Station

A preserved tenement building for railway workers

New buildings wrapped around the old

New and old, water feature and planting

The interior of the art school with former use visible

Fair warning! Look away now!

Along the canal towpath

I'm sure it was in a good cause!

Some of the planting

A fresh water pond for swimming with changing huts

Young men at the skip garden making a bottle garden

The greenhouse from donated windows

The skip gardens

The young woman explains the garden

Lots of places to climb and look around

More old and new

Just old!  And in need of a sit down!