Hyde Park to Hampstead Heath

...where hurricanes hardly ever happen (still thinking about you, Houston!).

Today was parks day, and we really checked off quite a few. Hampstead Heath, at the right, was our favorite, but they were all nice and each one was a little bit different from the rest. We also did some more geo-caching (in Hyde Park and Hampstead Heath, but that's all I can tell you!).

We started with a rather long bus ride to the north side of Kensington Gardens (due to diversions en route) and took a pleasant stroll through that park and adjoining Hyde Park, ending up just in time to see a fortuitous passing of some guards on horseback, in front of what we think was Wellington arch. (There are a lot of arches right around there and we weren't sure which one was which.) [Added 19/9/08: it wasn't the Wellington Arch, but if it has a name, it's not on it. We rode by today on the bus and compared the location with our maps.]

On our way over to the next park in line, Green Park, we walked through a really wonderful plaza of war memorials, which are becoming one of my obsessions. There was a fine old Great War memorial in the square, but I was particularly impressed with the Australian memorial, which is of much more recent vintage and echoes the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. Here is the section of the wall with names, not only of the fallen, but of the places they fell—in particular, the most heartbreaking one for the Aussies, Gallipoli.

Green Park was pretty, and actually has some hills in it (unusual for London, but Hampstead Heath has more and steeper ones) and St. James was very sophisticated, but also very crowded.
Might anyone know what these lovely purple flowers are that we saw just springing up out of the ground in shady areas of St. James and Hyde Park? Hal got some closer shots if that would help identification. Given all the incredibly well-tended gardens, it was a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to see these beauties just popping up out of the grass.

We stopped for an over-priced but filling lunch on Whitehall, right next to the Cenotaph, after St. James', then were pleased to be able to find our bus to the Heath without too much trouble. It was a long ride out there, but from the top of a double-decker you can see so much it's never boring. Especially since we rode through the very interesting little area of Camden.

We had a little trouble finding the park when we got off the bus. The problem with finding things in London is that 1) everything is so built up that it's difficult to be able to see even nearby things until you're right on top of them and 2) there are so few hills that vantage points to see if you're going the right way are few and far between. Once we actually got in the park, we found lots of vantage points, especially at the top of this hill.

We weren't actually finished with sight-seeing after getting back to central London, as we walked around Chinatown and Trafalgar Square and then finished up with another bus ride home, and a quick stop for a beer at a neighborhood pub.

Why was the Heath our favorite of the parks? I guess we liked the fact that it wasn't so completely manicured, but was manicured enough to make walking easy. It gave us just a little taste, maybe, of what London was like long, long, ago, before the buildings obscured all the vantage points. Although the way it is now is still mighty, mighty fine.