London is a racket. If New York is the city that never sleeps, London is the city that snatches a few hours here and there, but keeps the radio on downstairs.

There is noise everywhere, at any time of day. It’s got so bad that you barely flinch when a duet for fire alarm and pneumatic drill is added to the usual orchestration.

There is, though, one place, at one time, where there is no noise. Not a squeak. And to hear it - or, more accurately, not to hear it - you need to get yourself to the Regent’s Canal at 5.54am.

There you will find Danny Gillard and Niamh Walsh, who will stick you in a kayak, where you can rest your paddle on your lap and gently bob on the water while the sound of London doing absolutely nothing wraps itself around you like a giant in a woolly sweater with his thumbs in your ears.

London tours - by water

One's a very green space, one not quite so - we see the sunrise by kayak and try a high-speed boat trip

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And as you drift soporifically along, you think to yourself that this is the first time for about a month your heartbeat has dropped below 120bpm and you’ve experienced real, genuine peace.

Ahhhh. Ssshh, not yet. Ahhhh. And then you practically jump out of your seat because a seagull - a seagull - has just squawked in your ear and woken you up, and you never knew quite how loud seagulls were and no wonder it’s only pensioners who live by the sea because they’re the only ones deaf enough not to be irredeemably damaged by these flying foghorns and where am I and why am I holding a paddle?

DANNY AND NIAMH run Thames River Adventures and have spent the past year taking people out in kayaks onto the Thames, around Hampton Court Palace, Putney Bridge, and some of its upper reaches into Windsor.

In the past few weeks, however, Danny has been granted a licence to take customers out on the capital’s canal network.

Quieter and much less well travelled than the Thames, the canals have been a part of London life for nearly 200 years, stretching from northwest London to Victoria Park in the east. They can kayak on most of it, but the highlights are the stretches they cover at sunrise.

While you might blanch at the idea of scraping yourself out of bed while it’s still dark to sit in a 9ft hunk of orange plastic, you’ll be quickly converted on the water.

Despite the recent temperamental conditions, come the appointed hour, the canal was hazy with the blur of a growing sun and the water was utterly, totally still. Like sailing on a mirror, said Danny, with the air of someone who is still a little giddy to be doing this sort of thing for a living.

After a quick safety talk and a lesson in paddling (grip with the right, twist with the left), I was off. We were taking on the Regent’s Canal, opened in 1816 and designed by the great architect John Nash to link the Paddington Canal with the Thames in the East End, at a cost of £772,000.

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