Celebrating canals & the people that travel them

May day bank holiday weekend was the Canalway cavalcade at Little Venice in London - a celebration of all things waterways.  It was a beautiful sunny day and all the narrow boats were decorated with bunting in lots of different designs, all looking their very best.

There were lots of stalls selling various things, and the area was very good for people watching - some very interesting looking souls.

This stall had lots of homemade soaps and balms - I bought some yummy honey based lip gloss.  The bamboo creations were lovely and made me wish yet again that I had a big home with a big backyard to put them all in.

The sights and colours were beautiful - here are a few shots to give you a sense of the atmosphere.

There were lots of dogs out and about enjoying the day, but the one that we fell in love with was the one below enjoying his ice-cream - we spoke to his parents and the previous year they had adopted him after he was mistreated.  I love it when you see animals living the life they deserve.

For lunch we went into a lovely middle eastern restaurant just by the canal.  They made delicious cocktails and mocktails (guess who had the alcohol) which were beautifully decorated.  The food was scrummy and as you can see the decorations were very in theme.

Here's a selection of the very pretty narrow boats that were moored up for the festival - I love the decorations and the extra bits people add onto them.  There was even one that had the flags of the Aussie Rules teams as their bunting so of course I had to stop and talk to the couple.  They are British but every winter here they head to Australia where they have a motor home and they spend at least three months traveling around.  As you can see the Carlton flag is flying proud even if our team are propping up the bottom of the ladder.

Little Venice is a really lovely area to walk around even when there isn't an event on - love this statue of a family.

  

If you look really closely you'll see semi naked men in a hot tub just beyond this lovely boat.

Some more sights from the festival including a slightly inebriated folk band, people dressed in 60's fashion, and a man with a chameleon on his shoulder.

At Paddington station we found another Shaun decorated with London sights - Ken got up close and personal. Shaun's tail has Nelson's Column with the obligatory pigeons.

This is a life size statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel who was a very famous engineer - he's responsible for Paddington station so that's why he sits there.

We then went for a walk around Paddington basin - there were some beautiful narrow boats moored there and we found another Shaun dressed as Paddington bear.

I love that they even included the luggage tag - unfortunately we couldn't lift up his hat to see if there were any marmalade sandwiches under there.

That's it for now - hope you enjoyed this visit to Little Venice and the cavalcade.

Until next time be good, stay safe, and do something nice for yourself.

Pamela and Ken

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