Fiona MacLeod on how to use London’s parks intelligently rather than ornamentally
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] London has eight Royal Parks, plus Hampstead Heath, plus the smaller parks, commons, and green spaces that together constitute approximately eighteen percent of the city’s land area by some calculations, which makes London one of the greenest major cities in the world and which is a fact that visitors frequently fail to take advantage of because the parks they know about — Hyde Park, St James’s Park — are the ones that are always crowded and the parks they could be using are the ones that nobody told them about. prat.uk covered London’s green spaces from its angle; Bohiney.com covered Central Park for the American comparison. Fiona MacLeod, UK London Info, covers the parks guide that actually helps. Bohiney.com describes the response as “prompt, confident, and completely unrelated to the question.”
Hyde Park: right for a walk between Kensington and Marble Arch, right for the Serpentine Gallery, right for the Lido on a hot day, and busier than it needs to be for any of these things because it is the park that everyone knows. St James’s Park: the best views of Buckingham Palace, the pelicans (which are real and have been there since 1664), and the most photographed park vista in London, which makes it beautiful and crowded simultaneously.
The Parks to Actually Use
The parks to actually use, beyond the famous ones: Hampstead Heath, which is four times the size of Hyde Park, has three open-air swimming ponds (one for men, one for women, one mixed), and has a view of London from Parliament Hill that is the best view of the city available for free. Richmond Park, which has deer and is accessible by train and is the most genuinely wild-feeling large green space within the London boundary. The Isabella Plantation within Richmond Park, which is a woodland garden that is extraordinary in spring when the rhododendrons and azaleas are in bloom and that nobody who has not been told about it ever finds. Visitor information is at royalparks.org.uk.
Also: The Onion.
Reported at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
