One of my favourite walks..

..is from Lisson Grove down to Camden via the canal. I used to work up that way and did this walk after work all the time, but it's not an area of London I usually have reason to go to now. 

It's a very diverse area - Marylebone and Baker Street cater for the passing tourist and lunch time grab-a-sandwich worker. Walking up Lisson Grove you find a caff, a pie and mash shop and a chippy. Church St on the left of Lisson Grove has a thriving veg and cheap clothes/make up/jewellery market but also a number of quite posh antique shops, and as you move down the length of it there are fewer and fewer people in western clothes (although the accents tend to be British). 

Higher up the hill is Abbey Rd, where the Beatles recorded, and St John's Wood which is exceptionally posh and exclusive, but if you turn off down to the canal on the right before that (there's quite a slope - it's cut down well below road level here), and walk along, you either pass an estate on one bank, or the moored up narrowboats under the lee of the electric plant on the other. 

They've made a very nice little community there, with chairs and flowers in tubs and mirrors and bits, although sleeping next to that electric plant would give me pause.

You then go under the railway bridge and find on your right some small white city mansions. This is the back view of the buildings. They actually face onto the Regents Park outer circle and must be worth tens of millions for the address alone. 

The canal follows the curve of Regents Park and you walk through the London Zoo grounds, albeit at a lower level and kept out by fences, with a giant aviary on your left and deer and so on on your right on the opposite bank. Graffiti is a recurring feature, increasing in frequency and artistic interest as you get nearer to Camden. 

There is a floating Chinese restaurant which I'm sure lists more than it used to. There is a kids canoe place called something like Pirates' Castle, and back gardens opposite and more and more people about. 

Over to the left, should you want to detour, is Primrose Hill and a fairly famous view. 

And then you're at Camden and the place is rammed because it's Saturday afternoon (not 6pm on a weekday when it was normally quite bearable) and you hop on a bus (the tube being exit only) and go home.