The day after going to a Silent Disco at The Natural History Museum in London for my friend, Helen’s birthday, I found myself with a day off.

This wasn’t the intended plan when I booked tickets in March – I was going to travel down to London on the day of the disco, stay in a hotel overnight and then come home. As it transpired, work commitments that appeared later in the year meant that I would be in London not just on the day of the disco, but on the day before and for five days afterwards. I had to book a separate hotel reservation for the remaining period of time, and ended up with a room near Euston, which made travelling easier.

The Saturday after the disco was the only free day that I had, so The Bloke got on a train and joined me in London. We decided to have a day date and go to Camden – it was one tube stop away, the weather was glorious and neither of us had been there in years.

We set off quite early, but when we walked out of the tube station it was already starting to get extremely busy. We walked up the main street leading to the market, stopping in some of the more kooky shops and exploring the comic stores ( I love the bright colours of the buildings and the artwork / sculptures placed on the front), and I had very vague memories of doing the same thing with my family MANY years ago. I remembered that Von Dutch was the ‘in’ brand at the time, and my sister got a baseball cap / trucker hat with the Von Dutch logo on it, so this must have been in the very early 2000s.

By the time we reached the market, it had started to get very warm. The canal area seemed the same, and yet it was completely different. There was massive gentrification that had happened in certain areas, which is in direct contrast its punk origins, and now there seemed to be just a small amount of this remaining, with punks sporting enormous mohawks sitting on the bridge.

We worked methodically around the market, checking out the stalls and shops, and chatting with some of the owners. It always amazes me when looking at the different types on crafts on offer, and just how talented the people are who create beautiful things. The Bloke revisited his early rock days when we found the Cyberdog store, we explored the old-school stalls filled with bric-a-brac and vintage items and took silly pictures in a photo booth (for which we had to join a queue of screaming teenage girls and then wait as they did multiple takes of their photos for their socials).

And of course, there was the food. I’ve tried to learn from personal experience in the past (ie. spending many day trips feeling bloated with a stomach ache) not to eat all the things just because I can, but in somewhere like Camden where every type of food you can think of is available, it is difficult. I behaved myself reasonably well, getting a Mozzarella K-Dog from Uh K Dogs n Juicy, and a Bubble Waffle with Gelato from Hans & Gretel. Both were nice enough, but massively overpriced and served by people who had clearly lost any passion for their job a long time ago.

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a sucker for food that I have seen on Instagram, and it’s rare that it lives up to the hype.

After about four hours, my feet were hurting (partially because they hadn’t recovered from the three hours of dancing the night before), it was really hot and there were so many people that it was becoming difficult to move, so we decided to make our way back. I was delighted to randomly stumble across one of the space-invaders art work, (I love street art and have been on tours in other areas of London), but was gutted that someone had tagged across a Mr Cenz work just down the road.

A really fun day out, but would I visit again in the near future?

Absolutely – we only managed to see just a small percentage of what is on offer, and we stayed in the stereotypical area around Camden Locks.