Ladbroke Grove to Notting Hill Gate

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Now that I've gotten the hang of making my own Google maps, I'm having a lot of fun plotting out my London adventures. Usually when I walk around London, I carry a map book as well as narrative descriptions of a particular walk copied from a book or two, and maybe another map that I've printed from the web. It's rare that I follow any one prescribed course, as I'm generally trying to cobble together bits of different ones and work in other things of interest to me along the route. Now that I'm slipping into my dotage, I tend to forget some things in all this checking back and forth between my papers (and I look like a fool standing on a street corner, leafing through everything and trying to work out where I'm going next). With my own customized maps, I'm hoping to see more of what I want and look less of a prat doing it.

I'm planning to start this walk at the gates of Kensal Green Cemetery when they open at 9 a.m. I'll roam around the cemetery for a while (this will be the third of the Magnificent Seven that I'll see), and then cross Regent's Canal into Ladbroke Grove. From there, I'll wander down Portobello Road, which I hope won't be so crowded as I'm planning this for a week day, and into Notting Hill. I've mapped out some of the places in Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty (2004 Man Booker prize winner, and also a great miniseries). After that, I'll head toward Hyde Park for a walk through Kensington Gardens and over to the Serpentine Gallery. Weather permitting, of course. If it rains, I reckon I'll spend the day at the V&A and the Natural History Museum.

Greetings from London

I've made it to the UK and, except for a to-the-skin drenching on my first day when I was locked out of Roger's house on account of having a bogus key, things are going great. We've walked miles and miles and I have blisters on my feet to prove it. Thankfully, they have special plasters for blisters here.

Here's a quick list of what we've seen and done so far:

• Borough Market and Southwark (our first Banksy seen here)
• Portobello Road Market
• Pearly Harvest Festival
• Charles Dickens' House
• Inns of Court (the Temple Church wasn't open so Roger didn't get to see the Knights Templar)
• Banksy sighting in Chalk Farm
  
• To and from Brighton on the Megabus (wicked cheap!)
• Fish & chips, a night in a seamy B&B, excellent pies and mushy peas, and another Banksy sighting in Brighton
  

Today and tomorrow I'm on my own. The weather has been most cooperative, but today's it's raining again so my plan is to do some museums. Tomorrow the sun should be out and I'll be taking the Docklands Light Rail down to Greenwich.

Further reports to come.