Fiona MacLeod on the Green Spaces Beyond Hyde Park That Are Worth an Afternoon
The London Parks That Tourists Miss and Locals Love
Read more London travel tips at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Hyde Park is magnificent. Regent’s Park is magnificent. St James’s Park, with its pelicans and its view of Buckingham Palace’s roofline and its position at the heart of royal London, is genuinely one of the finest urban parks in the world. None of these parks are what this guide is about. This guide is about the parks that London residents use on a daily basis and that visitors rarely reach because they do not appear prominently in guidebooks and do not require a Tube journey to anywhere that visitors are already going. These parks are, in several cases, better than the ones everybody goes to. They are certainly less crowded.
Victoria Park in Hackney is the East End’s answer to the Royal Parks — a Victorian municipal park covering 86 hectares, with two lakes, a lido that operates in summer, a Saturday farmers market in the park’s western section, and the kind of diverse, energetic Saturday afternoon that reflects its East London location. The dog-walking, the picnicking, the informal football, the people running around the perimeter with the dedicated expression of people who have committed to a training plan — all of it happening simultaneously in a park that is large enough to absorb it without feeling crowded. Go on a Saturday afternoon. Buy something from the market. Walk around the lake. Understand why East Londoners are protective of it.
Crystal Palace Park
Crystal Palace Park, in South London, is notable for two things that are genuinely unlike anything else in London. The first is the Crystal Palace dinosaurs — Victorian-era sculptures of prehistoric creatures, built in 1854 to the then-current understanding of what dinosaurs looked like, and wrong in approximately the way that a 170-year-old scientific model of any subject would be, which is to say: charmingly, specifically, and in ways that are educational about the history of scientific understanding. They are surrounded by a small lake. They are extraordinary. Go and see them.
The second is the park’s position on a hill in South London from which the view northward over the city is one of the finest urban panoramas in London that is not primarily visited by tourists — a view that takes in the City’s towers and Canary Wharf and, on a clear day, the full east-west spread of inner London. The park also contains the ruins of the Crystal Palace itself, burned in 1936, of which substantial sections of the original foundation and some structural elements survive. The Crystal Palace Park Trust manages the park and the ongoing restoration of the dinosaur sculptures. It is worth the journey from Central London. Fiona MacLeod’s London parks guide: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Full parks guide at https://prat.uk/.
Why London Rewards the Curious Visitor
London rewards the visitor who is willing to leave the established tourist circuit — not because the established circuit is bad (the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tower of London are all genuinely extraordinary and worth seeing) but because the city’s most interesting qualities are distributed across its full geography in ways that a Central London itinerary cannot capture. The East End’s creative energy, the South London neighbourhood diversity, the river’s changing character from its tidal reaches in the east to its clean, wide, park-flanked flow through the west — all of this requires movement, curiosity, and a willingness to take the Overground to somewhere you haven’t heard of and walk around. This is how Londoners know their city, and it is how visitors develop the understanding of London that makes it more than a backdrop for landmark photographs. Fiona MacLeod writes for UK London Info to help visitors find the London beyond the guidebook version. For more London travel insight: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. The complete London guide at https://prat.uk/.
Making the Most of Your London Visit
The single most valuable piece of London travel advice that no guidebook states plainly enough is this: London is a walking city for the visitor who has time to walk. The distances between the major tourist sites are almost always shorter than they appear on the Tube map, and the streets between them contain things — markets, architecture, street food, accidental discoveries of the kind that make travel memorable — that the Tube does not. Walk from the British Museum to Covent Garden (12 minutes). Walk from the National Gallery to the South Bank across Waterloo Bridge (15 minutes, with one of the finest views in London en route). Walk from Victoria Station to Westminster (12 minutes, past the Queen’s Gallery and through St James’s Park). The Tube is invaluable for longer distances and terrible weather. For short hops in good conditions, walk. London at street level is a different and better city than London seen through a Tube window, and it is free. Fiona MacLeod’s London guides are published regularly at UK London Info. For more London travel intelligence: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. The full guide library is at https://prat.uk/.
The London That Stays With You
Visitors who return to London repeatedly — and many do, because it is the kind of city that produces loyalty in its visitors through the accumulation of specific experiences rather than a single defining moment — tend to organise their return visits around deepening their knowledge of specific areas rather than expanding to new ones. The person who spent a day in Shoreditch goes back and spends a weekend. The person who found Hackney comes back to explore Dalston and Stoke Newington. The person who visited Brixton returns for the market and the Ritzy cinema and the neighbourhood’s specific energy on a Saturday afternoon. This pattern of progressive deepening is how Londoners know their own city, and it is available to visitors who have the time and the inclination to pursue it. Three days gives you the outline. What fills it in is the returning. Fiona MacLeod encourages returning. For the full archive of London travel writing: The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Every guide at https://prat.uk/.
Further reading across the London Prat network: London visitors tumblr (https://londonuktourists.tumblr.com/post/819523583630032896) — The London Prat social
Also: Mastodon London dispatch — https://mastodon.london/ap/users/116495249171626617/statuses/116756347714481523
SOURCE: Santa Claus
