Coming out of the community centre I turned left into Yerbury Road which, like several streets in this area, is blocked to vehicles part way along to prevent them being used as rat-runs. It runs parallel to Holloway Road and I dipped in and out of it as I covered the streets running off it.

! was amused to see that a cycling enthusiast had taken up residence at a key point in the London Cycle Network.

Across the park I could see the back of the Good Intent pub.

The pub is on the corner of Wedmore Street which I turned into.


I had been meaning to come down this way for a while as I'd read about the Good Intent in the local paper (although I have to confess, I don't read paper versions of local papers any more...). The owners wanted to demolish it to build luxury town houses. Planning permission was refused twice but eventually the objections of local residents, the council and the local MP were overturned on appeal by a planning inspector. The elderly Irish guy smoking a roll-up outside might have read my thoughts when he called out, "Take a photo now before it's gone."


I wandered over to chat to him even though it was difficult to understand what he was saying - a combination of his accent, a wheeze and the fact that he had probably had a fair bit to drink.
I found out from him that it was due to close on 24 May. It would be open all night. He invited me to come for a drink on the closing night. It turned out he had lived in the area all his life; remembered when the house opposite used to be the local shop, rememberd all the industry now converted to flats or offices. I resisted the temptation to pop in for a drink there and then even though it could have been my last chance as I knew I wouldn't make it to the closing day.
Opposite the pub was a house that looked as if it had also once been a shop (although the shop the Irish guy was talking about had been in the white building next door).
From inside came the sound of someone playing the piano and on the window was a David Hockney Ashtray print.

The left-hand side of the street, as you walk to Holloway Road, is dominated by red-brick former LCC dwellings. Probably many sold off under right to buy by now.


On the opposite side, a mish-mash of houses,converted industrial buildings and modern flats.
Just before reaching Holloway Road is Wedmore Mews complete with back street garage.
And on the opposite side a yard with the rather odd juxtapostion of an accountant, a builder and a gym.
The gym had an ad board attached to a bike parked at the end of the street. Keep fit, drive to the gym seemed to be the message.

On the corner of Wedmore Street and Holloway Road is the Nid Ting Thai restaurant which several people have recommended to me. The back of its premises was not a good advert though.

See all pictures from Wedmore Street

From Wedmore Street I turned right into Holloway Road and then right again into Tavistock Terrace.
See all photos from Tavistock Terrace
At the end of Tavistock Terrace I found myself back in Yerbury Road. The builders waved and wanted their photo taken.


The parking suspension signs informed me that spaces would be suspended - first for removals and then for filming. I wondered whether they were connected.

See all photos from Yerbury Road

I turned off Yerbury Road and left into Fairmead Road.



Neat and tidy terraces at this end. A ginger tom walked purposefully along the street toward me.



The street became scruffier as it reached Holloway Road. A motely array of bells indicated that this house had been converted into four flats. I wondered if the flats were in a similar state of disrepair to the bells.

See all photos from Fairmead Road

Instead of turning into Holloway Road, I retraced my steps back up Farimead Road to Highwood Road.

A short street running between Fairmead and Mercers Roads; well-maintained terraced houses, wisteria, nothing remarkable.

See all photos from Highwood Road

At the end I emerged into Mercers Road.


Where I was confronted with a motorhome without a motor. The cab had been removed and the front was held up with posts. The seats, stacked neatly in front of it perhaps came out of the missing cab. I wondered what it was used for. Perhaps someone was living in it. With the current level of rents in London it could be a nice little earner!

Mercers Road, as its name suggests, was built on land that belonged to the Mercers' Company. It mostly consists of terraced houses built in the 1860s but there's a commercial fringe at the Holloway Road end with a gym and the side of a rather lovely old office block that faces on to Holloway Road - currently boarded up awaiting redevelopment.
Walking back up from Holloway road I encountered a white cat.


There was a strange wooden building next door to a sub-station.

Then more building work; a house being renovated on the corner of Beversbrook Road.


I could have continued along Mercers Road but I decided to turn off here. The sight of the green dome of Holy Joe's, St Joseph's Catholic Church at the top of Dartmouth Park Hill where I live drew me back toward home.




More terraces, more wisteria, more building work. A builder sitting in his van taking a break asked if I'd got a good photo. Unusually, the house he was working on was a family home unlike most other houses in the street which have been converted into flats.

At the end, low, modernish two storey houses spread their way round the corner into Foxham Road.

To the right, Yerbury School which I didn't photograph on this trip but it hasn't changed since I last photographed it in 2012.

Foxham Gardens is a long strip of green space with a children's playground that stretches along the left hand side of the road. It's always seemed to me a gloomy space, so dominated by trees but no doubt it has its fans.


On the other side of the street the modern houses make way for older terraces until you reach Campdale Road, N7.

Thou shalt not trespass on thy neighbour's postcode, I thought.
I cut through Tufnell Park Playing Fields which lead to Huddleston Road,

also N7 so I scuttled up the steps at the end back to the safety of N19 - Station Road.


The name of the street is the only reminder that there was once a station here. Junction Road station was opened by the Tottenham & Hampstead Junction Railway on 1 January 1872 (toward bottom left corner of map). It largely became redundant when Tufnell Park tube station was opened in 1907. It was closed in 1943 and demolished in the 1950s. There's no trace of the station now although trains on the Gospel Oak to Barking Overground run along the route.
John Betjeman calls it a 'lonely station' in his poem 'Suicide in Junction Road Station after Abstention from Evening Communion in North London'.