Walking the Natural Way: A Nature Pilgrimage Through North Paddington

What happens when a community climate action coordinator walks the Camino de Santiago, comes home to North Paddington, and teams up with a library officer to think: why not here?

That is the question at the heart of The Natural Way, a new walking route inspired by Europe’s ancient pilgrimage trails, weaving through the streets, canals and green spaces of Westbourne, Queen’s Park and Harrow Road. In this episode of the London Walking Festival podcast, filmed on location along the route itself, Lola May from Paddington Development Trust and Eman Asir from Westminster Libraries talk us through the project, its origins and the communities it is already bringing together.

From Santiago to the Grand Union Canal

The Natural Way grew out of The Europe Challenge, a programme run by the Arts Council and the European Cultural Foundation that pairs libraries with community groups to create projects with lasting local impact. When Lola and Eman started brainstorming, the idea surfaced quickly. Lola had walked the Camino de Santiago two years earlier and was struck by how a laid-out route could transform the way you see a landscape. “I was really taken by the ability to discover new places whilst walking a route altogether,” she explains, “and by the idea of discovering your area in a completely new way.”

The result is a fully accessible, six-mile circular trail with no steps, connecting four Westminster libraries (Paddington, Paddington Children’s, Maida Vale and Queen’s Park) alongside community centres, gardens, cafes and places of worship. Walkers collect stamps in a Nature Pilgrim Passport at stops along the way. Each stamp was designed by a local child to represent the character of that particular place.

“They Didn’t Know the Canal Was Here”

One moment from the podcast captures the spirit of the whole project. Lola describes taking a group of young people on a walk between her two offices, which sit on opposite sides of the Grand Union Canal. “They didn’t know the canal was here,” she says. “They’d lived in this area their entire life. Their route to school ran alongside it. They just didn’t know it existed.”

That revelation became fuel for the project. North Paddington is one of the most densely populated and deprived parts of the UK, with limited green space and significant health inequalities. The canal, lined with trees and alive with coots, frogs and the occasional eel, is a corridor of nature hiding in plain sight. The Natural Way is designed to make it visible, welcoming and worth returning to.

Meanwhile Gardens, Gerry’s Pompeii and the Art of Noticing

The walk itself is rich with stories. At Meanwhile Gardens, a former factory site turned community oasis, Lola and Eman stand at the pond and spot frogspawn. “See, urban girl experiences nature,” Eman laughs. “The pilgrimage.”

Across the canal, they point out Gerry’s Pompeii, a sculpture garden created over 30 years by local artist Gerry Dalton, an Irish immigrant who worked in secret behind high hedges, building a gallery of historical figures on a disused strip of land. He wanted the neighbourhood to discover it after he was gone. “It’ll be like Pompeii,” he said. And it was.

These stories thread through the walk, turning an ordinary stretch of urban terrain into something layered and surprising. “So much of it is about teaching yourself how to notice,” Lola reflects. “People see a pond and think it’s just a pond. Starting to notice has been such an important skill.”

Swifts, Belonging and the Right to Joy

One of the most moving sections of the conversation concerns the project’s unofficial emblem: the swift. When the team began planning maker workshops with local children, they chose to build swift nesting boxes for the Amberley Estate. The symbolism felt right. Swifts migrate between North Africa and the UK, thriving in both places. “We were like, what a beautiful thing,” Lola says, “to have something that is native to both countries. You can be both and you are welcome to be both.”

The response from residents surprised them. People came to the door specifically to request a swift box above their flat. “I was kind of surprised,” Eman admits. “I didn’t expect people to be so knowledgeable about swifts.”

Beneath the conversation about wildlife runs a deeper thread about who gets access to joy. “So much of the area, when people Google it, they come up with bad things,” Lola says. “The only things people talk about are knife crime and how much people are suffering.” The Natural Way is a deliberate counterweight: a chance for residents to enjoy the area as a good place, without being spoken down to, without having to leave their neighbourhood to find beauty.

“Nature touches everybody,” Eman adds. “You don’t have to be excluded from it.”

Walk It Your Way

The Natural Way can be walked in a single outing or spread across as many visits as you like. You can start from any point on the route, collect stamps in any order and take your time. Maps are available from Paddington Children’s Library, Paddington Library (when it reopens), Maida Vale Library and Queen’s Park Library. The route is also available digitally on the Go Jauntly app, with step-by-step directions.

Guided walks are running throughout the London Walking Festival and beyond, with future plans including a bat walk and planting session, bird song identification workshops, and a trip to the urban beaver sanctuary further along the canal. Keep an eye on the project’s Eventbrite and Instagram for upcoming dates.

The Natural Way is a project of Paddington Development Trust and Westminster Libraries, supported by The Europe Challenge, a programme of the Arts Council and the European Cultural Foundation.

Links:

• • The Europe Challenge project page: theeuropechallenge.eu/north-paddington-nature-pilgrimage
  • Go Jauntly: North Paddington Nature Pilgrimage