Camden Market (Markets in general)

Member Name: slackjack

Product:	Markets in general
Date:	30/06/00 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap and a lot of fun.

Disadvantages: Gets very busy. Esay to spend to much money.

On a recent trip to London with my girlfriend, we decided to while away a couple of hours on a Sunday morning by visiting Camden Market. I'd been briefly once before and quite enjoyed, but we didn't expect to enjoy it quiet as much as we did.

On leaving Camden Market tube station, you find yourself on a road lined with shop - mostly clothes shops, but with some other stuff thrown in too. It's only a short walk down this street until you reach the first of Camden's several small markets. The stalls are small and tightly packed together, and in this part of the market sell mostly clothing - some of it new, much of it second hand. There are some real bargains to be had - second hand leather jackets start at £10, and that's not necessarily something that's worn out and useless. For £20 I got a nicely worn in leather jacket that only needed it's pocket lining sewing up. Having had a good look around this area, you find yourself back on the main road, but again it is only a very short walk until you find the brick passageway that leads into the next section of the market. Again, there are a lot of clothes for sale (this isn't a bad thing at all - lots of the stuff you see is unusual, and it's all very reasonably priced), but here there's a little more variety - pipes and rolling papers, tapes, and a few craft items start to creep in. There is a small outdoor area, then the market continues inside. Here there are more clothes stalls (of course), but also old toys jewellery and more. The bargain of the day was to be found in here - a stall with a rack of clothes all priced at £1.50 - you can't complain about a pair of Wranglers for a quid and a half. Unfortunately as you make your way through this area some tacky stalls have started to creep in - London souvenirs of the union jack tea towel and Beefeater teddy bear variety. Just across the road though is probably the largest market. Here the emphasis finally starts to
move away from clothes and more towards art and craft - picture frames, lamp shapes, some paintings, throws, even giant bean bags, and a lot of jewellery (which is definitely worth looking at - for £6, we saw rings VERY similar to those on sale in the British Museum shop for £35). In this area, there is a nice pub with beer at not too outrageous prices where you can sit by the canal and watch the boats negotiating the locks as you enjoy a pint. Also around here are a few food stalls - for £2.50 I had an enormous and delicious tub of chinese chicken noodles.

We only meant to spend couple of hours at the market, but in the end we were there for nearly five hours. Not only does it take quite a while to look round, but on your way back you're sure to look at everything again, trying to find the bargains that you wish you'd bought the first time around.

It pays not to take too much cash with you - although everything is cheap, there are a LOT of things to buy, and you can soon find yourself with bags full of bargains and no money. If you are planning a shopping spree though, make sure you do have enough cash with you - cash points are few and far between and you can queue for 10 minutes for the privilege of using one - and don't expect to be able to use credit cards in many places either.

A word of warning - we got there quite early, and the market was a nice place to be, but approaching lunchtime, it started to get very busy - the stalls are packed in tightly to begin with, and can start to get very claustrophobic with hundreds of people teeming around them. In fact, the market gets so busy that at lunchtime, when people are literally pouring out of Camden Town tube, the station staff stop letting people back in - to get a tube away from the market you must make the 5-10 minute walk to the next tube station. We arrived at about 10:30, and all the stalls were set up and easy to get around - leave it much later, and I'm not s
ure you'd enjoy the market as much as we did.

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