Yup, we’re still in Islington on that rainy Saturday in November 2016…
(Coordinates 51°53’44.3″N, 0°10’50.0″W.)
…and it’s another K2. I do like K2 boxes! Shame they have more breakable glass panels and are hence harder to maintain. This one’s in quite good condition though.
One last trip to Upper Street next week!
Update 5th February 2026: added coordinate link.
Yup, we’re still on Upper Street (aka. the A1) in Islington, which is a great street for phone boxes!
(Coordinates 51°53’49.0″N, 0°10’45.4″W.)
This one is a K2 model rather than a K6 – you can tell by the more bulbous top. As ever, the Wikipedia page has some good pictures illustrating the differences.
Love those autumn leaves too!
Update 5th February 2026: added coordinate link.
It’s another of my series of Islington phone boxes.
(Coordinates 51°53’43.3″N, 0°10’50.1″W.)
This one is just a few metres down from last week’s phone box – the two of them flank a sofa shop. Very pretty, even in the November rain.
Update 5th February 2026: added coordinate link, but in the process I discovered that this phone box has sadly been removed 🙁 (at some point between July 2019 and November 2020 according to Street View).
We move on today to a series of Islington phone boxes from November 2016.
(Coordinates 51°53’40.8″N, 0°10’52.3″W.)
Geth and I have been going to London in November for a few years in a row, due to the Beat:Cancer charity gig taking place at Slimelight. Unfortunately, we’ll be giving it a miss this year, as we already have too many gigs going on in the autumn. As such, I will have to wait until the London Marathon in April before I can start collecting pictures of London phone boxes again!
In the meantime, I have a lot of them to show you. Stay tuned for the next few weeks for more Islington examples.
Update 5th February 2026: added coordinate link.
Um…
I know what you’re thinking – that’s not a phone box. What happened was that for the third phone box in Shap, we were driving too fast for me to snap the photo properly, and on this occasion, Dad wasn’t able to stop the car.
Luckily, Google Street View comes to the rescue!
(Coordinates 54°53’29.6″N, 2°67’82.3″W.)
That’s a wrap in Shap. We’ll be somewhere else next week!
Update May 2023: added Street View link.
Today we’re looking at the second of the three Shap phone boxes.
(Coordinates 54°52’59.3″N, 2°67’44.9″W.)
Judging by the sign, this is (or at least was at some point) a modified phone box facility with a basic computer for email purposes. There used to be one of those at the bottom of Sciennes, Edinburgh, which I used a lot when I was living in the Sciennes student flats (which were the ONE block of university flats that hadn’t had internet put in by 2003). The Sciennes one was a KX series box, but it’s good to see that the classic K6s were at least temporarily used for this purpose as well.
We finish our Shap stop next week.
Update May 2023: added Street View link.
One of the good things (and also one of the bad things) about being a freelancer who works over email is that I can take my work everywhere I go. The negative side of this is that I’m never truly on holiday, but the positive side is that I don’t miss out on work when it arrives, and it’s still important for me to take every work opportunity that comes my way, because of the specific way in which my business is growing.
This is how I found myself sitting at a desk working all day on the Thursday of our Toronto trip. As work spaces go, though, our hotel suite wasn’t bad – the desk was really nicely set up, and that gorgeous view from the window was a lot more interesting than my usual work surroundings!
In the evening, we all met up at Kalendar, a restaurant just down from Geth’s favourite boardgame cafe on College Street, and I had pizza and blueberry cheesecake. Geth informed me that there was a red phone box next to the toilets downstairs, but my excitement was dashed upon finding this not-at-all-a-classic-British-phone-box:
Also, when I was spinning around confused with my phone camera, looking for this phone box, I got a very strange look from a guy finishing his business in the gents’ facilities, which were in full open view of the hallway. Awkward.
Afterwards, we went back to Malcolm and Steff’s place for a couple of drinks and to meet Sushi the cat.
On the Friday morning, I did a bit more work (and finally finished my Now! marathon!) before heading down to the Elephant & Castle pub to meet Geth, who had just delivered his conference paper. On the way, I did the irritating tourist thing of holding up pedestrian traffic at a crossing to get this nice CN Tower picture:
Readers with good memories might remember the Elephant & Castle from this Phone Box Thursday post about their red phone box. The pub is still a good stop with lots of sports on the TV and good cider on the bar, and Geth was finally able to have some decent chicken wings:
I also really like the stained glass windows – the patterns are lovely and retro.
After a couple of pints, we headed outside to make sure the phone box was still present and correct…
…and then went to the Black Bull for some arctic air-con, a very talkative guy sitting next to us at the bar who was telling us about all the gigs he went to in the ’70s (and is apparently friendly with Martin Gore from Depeche Mode!), and Geth’s new favourite pint, a beer called 8th Sin:
In the evening, we met up with Mum and Dad for another meal of delicious pizza and cheesecake in the Holiday Inn.
More from Canada tomorrow!
Today we go back a little in the chronology of my phone box collection and look at the first of a series of three red phone boxes in Shap, Cumbria.
(Coordinates 54°52’06.3″N, 2°67’07.1″W.)
This first one is pretty dilapidated, but I think it’s weathered beautifully. Not sure if that lacy material is being hung up to dry or is just some rubbish that has caught in the broken window in a very aesthetically pleasing way!
More from Shap next week.
Update September 2022: added a Street View link.
Back to Durham today for a couple of phone boxes in the centre of town.
(Coordinates 54°77’76.2″N, 1°57’47.4″W.)
Bit of a blurry photo today, I’m afraid, as we were in a hurry to get back to the train station and I could only take a photo from a distance. Next time I’m in Durham I’ll try and remember to take one from close up!
Update August 2022: added coordinates.
Update May 2023: finally took a non-blurry picture, but it’s down to a single phone box now!
Today our wander around Leeds town centre takes us to this modified phone box on Bishopgate Street.
(Coordinates 53°79’59.2″N, 1°54’69.6″W.)
AQL are a telecommunications company, but I’m not sure if they’ve taken over this box for any purposes other than advertising. Either way, it looks very nice with its blue coat of paint, rather like the Wetherspoon phone box from Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh.
That’s us done with Leeds for now. Somewhere new next week!
Update August 2022: added coordinates.