Sunday afternoon in Hackney Wick

I had a bit of a stroll around Hackney Wick on the weekend.

Hackney Wick sits in an old industrial area, just at the back of the new Olympic Stadium in East London.

It used to be one of the cheapest places to live in London. 

The warehouses became home to artists and alternative lifestylers who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Street art added a dash of anarchic colour to the drab and ugly buildings.

Now most of the warehouses have been turned into microbreweries and pop-up food stalls.

New apartment buildings are popping up like toadstools.

And there’s an axe-throwing alley overlooking the Hertford Union Canal.

For the moment, the tug-of-war between the crusties and the hipsters has created quite a buzzy little scene. You can enjoy an underlying edginess as you tuck into your craft beer and artisanal burrito.

It won’t last long. That sort of thing is catnip to developers. And judging by the number of signs saying ‘We’re looking for more land!’ it’s only a matter of time before they’ve sanitised the whole suburb and moved onto their next target.

But for the time being, Hackney Wick is a pretty cool place to hang out on a sunny autumnal Sunday afternoon.