The view from another infrastructure

I usually drive to work and am used to seeing London from the road. I look through my windscreen at the roofs of London from the elevated Westway, the ground floor exterior of roadside buildings through my passenger window, and* scores of kamikaze motorcyclists in my rear view mirror.

Pretty much the same view, everyday.

But yesterday, Next Door Kate and I cycled a mammoth 50km (sounds better than 31 miles) around the canal network of West London. 

And we saw London from a totally different perspective. 

We witnessed dozens of Eastern European workers relaxing with their friends and their fishing rods; we saw people living an almost bucolic existence next to water in the middle of the city;  we admired Goldfinger's Trellick Tower from beneath it (as opposed to in the distance from the aforementioned elevated section of the Westway), we smelt the food aromas from Hoo Hing Chinese wholesaler from an aquaduct over the North Circular, and we even chanced upon a girl sitting doing her knitting between a gigantic gas storage structure and a quaint looking canal boat.

We saw stuff from the perspective of a totally different transport infrastructure, and it's very different from roadside existence.

(* Please note the usage of the Oxford Comma.)