Kings Cross, Industrial Redux

I have been so busy this last few weeks, it’s taken a while to get the last of these up.

Our last morning in London, we went to have a proper look around some of the new development of the Kings Cross area. After exploring the area some 15 years ago when I first read about the Camley Street gas holders, and failing later to get to see what they have done with these due to fractious four yearolds who wanted to see Eurostars I was very keen to visit these, along with seeing the Coal Drop yard development in the day time.

It is, to some extent a shame that the Gasholders have been enclosed so much in the housing on the site, but I suppose that is the way of things, and it is great they have been preserved. The influence on the Wellington Street Developments in Leeds is very clear as well, and I do hope Leeds continues in this vein to utilise its brownfield spaces in an interesting and progressive manner.

We had a lovely breakfast in Lina Stores – in fact here’s a rare selfie… I was tempted by more fancy Olive Oils and the like, but baggage capacity was becoming a problem…

I will say, the shops were a bit disappointing – I cannot even really think of why, except that most of them were unintersting fashion ore homewares, though it was nice to visit Søstrene Grene (which we had not yet managed to get to in Leeds at that point) – very calming and interesting shop, though much smaller than I imagined, I think I had some expectations of Ikea-ish proportions…

But the overall development is very well done – it looked a little empty to begin with, at 9 o’clock on a Wednesday morning, but I can see how the space would be great when markets and events are held.

And so, that’s it. Time to catch a train. This all stated as a random silly idea (albeit one we had bbeen avoiding due to expense for some time) but turned into a great weekend, revitalising some of the creative activities I get up to, and eating plenty of food…