The peculiar thing about Wilson Street in the City of London is that it carries on. It carries on and becomes Paul Street and carries on and becomes Pitfield Street and carries on and becomes Whitmore Road and carries on and becomes De Beauvoir Road and then it stops. Main roads and suburban roads sometimes do this, but it's unusual for a chain of central London backstreets to carry on for two miles. It makes for an easily navigable walk too... you simply carry on.
Wilson Street starts near Finsbury Circus, midway between Moorgate and Liverpool Street stations. You might never give it a second look. It's also slap bang on the edge of the City - the Red Lion on the right is in the Square Mile but the hotel on the left is in Islington. Behind the pub is the Broadgate development, but only the backside of the monolithic extension, not the alfresco-friendly Finsbury Avenue piazza. The first road junction is with Sun Street, a crossroads I blogged about in detail last year as the point where Islington, Hackney and the City meet. It's all mostly Hackney from here on, though. Prepare for many contrasts.
Paul Street is dominated by relatively recent office blocks benefiting from a near-City location without the corresponding rent, interspersed by a handful of Victorian leftovers. One's a pub (already pleading with passers-by to book their Christmas parties), another's a coffee roastery (whose obligatory humorous chalkboard would be funnier if only someone could spell 'forcast'). A couple of proper throwback cafes survive, one incorrigibly Italian, the other wafting the whiff of bacon out onto the pavement. A heavily-bearded cargo bike rider rocks by, confirming we're on the Shoreditch fringe.
The northernmost stretch of Paul Street is one of Hackney's first ultra low emissions streets, enforceable weekday peak hours only, so pick your vehicle carefully. Meanwhile the whole of Paul Street is part of Cycle Superhighway 1, or whatever it's been branded this year. Whoever mapped out CS1 clearly recognised the benefits of a quiet backstreet that carries on and on and on - this cycleway will be with us almost to the finish. The two-wheeled influence is most visible straight ahead at the extra-broad push-button crossing of Great Eastern Street and Old Street, by far the busiest spot on the entire route.
Pitfield Street will take us into Hoxton, but not the smart bit. Instead expect an increasing preponderance of council estates the further north we head. Inside the first kebab shop a moustachioed caricature is sharpening his two biggest knives. Two white-haired ladies are watching the washing machines inside the community launderette (open three days a week only). The George & Vulture takes the prize for the oddest-named pub. Muzzy's Cafe is where the hoodies hang out. Green Planet Organic sells Juices, Fruits and Veggies. It hasn't taken long for this central London street to reach somewhere to live rather than somewhere to work.
Our surroundings are now resolutely postwar, bar one classical Georgian parish church. This has a bike repair shed out back, which won't be the only cycle-related business to have taken root beside the superhighway. Eventually the flats break for green space. "We love Shoreditch Park" says the council banner slung across the railings, indeed they love it somuch they're building hundreds of flats, a new secondary school and a leisure centre in one corner. The leisure centre is to replace an existing one, and is almost complete on the site of the old tennis courts. The rest is all cranes and building site, narrowing Pitfield Street so it can currently only be used by bikes and pedestrians. Let's keep going.
Whitmore Road is relatively brief, sandwiched between the Colville and New Era Estates. A minor shopping parade exists for the alteration of clothes, the cutting of hair and (once again) the mending of bikes, but the main retail hub hereabouts is Hoxton Market. A quirky sculpture of a mother in a purple 'I ♥ Hoxton' blouse and her two children points the way. Whitmore Road's final flourish is to cross the Regent's Canal, just above The Barge House restaurant and alongside the potentially hilarious 'Canal Walk' streetsign (if the C's been painted over again, which currently it has).
De Beauvoir Road starts somewhat down at heel. A cluster of twenty storey blocks of flats overlooks a grid of lower-rise housing, this the De Beauvoir Estate thrown up in the 1960s just before the rest of the neighbourhood became a conservation area. Hackney council already have their eye on knocking down the area around the community centre to fit in several more flats. The change in circumstance as you cross Downham Road is dramatic. Here are the original "homes for the upper classes" laid out around De Beauvoir Square and first occupied in the 1840s. They're splendid, especially if you're on estate agent's commission, many with pillared porches and most with steps up to the front door and steps down to a basement. But in terms of density De Beauvoir Town's more Harrow than Hackney, and not quite what a 21st century inner city needs.
It's a very quiet road now, with through traffic diminished by the judicious sealing off of sidestreets. St Peter's church revels in the silence. The biking contingent finally leave us at Englefield Road, just past the authentic Indian restaurant and just before the horse trough lovingly filled with bedding plants. The home stretch is a broad avenue with speed humps, and retains one of Hackney's classic old N postcode streetsigns. What finally brings the two miles of linked roads to a halt is a primary school, a proper Victorian brick multi-storey, which blocks passage through to the Balls Pond Road. What I like is that anyone else who started walking up Wilson Street would have ended up precisely here, even without directions or a map, just so long as they'd carried on.
