Day 5: A Day in Hyde Park (when the sun finally returns)
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Hello all,
The trip report is a bit late this time because I was frankly too
pooped to do much more than fall into the nearest bed last night. So I'm
writing this
Sunday morning while drinking my morning cup of Earl Grey and listening
to Midwest Irish Radio (a radio station that broadcasts over the net
from
Ireland).
Now here begins my tale for Saturday (the first of a 3 day weekend for Britain)...
Goal: Meet with cousin Karen & her hubby Jamie, native Londoners who live in the burbs of Crystal Park. (7 miles away from my hotel but 30-60 minutes journey by train or car). Then spent the day visiting and walking through Hyde Park.
Weather: Believe it or not there is summer in London! We open the curtains to clear skies, bright sunshine and a forecast of 25 degrees Celsius (around 80 Fahrenheit). So we dress for a pleasant spring day back home, which for Grandpa Mohawk means a few layers of muscle shirt, button-down shirt, jacket and an extra fleece sweater (in case it gets breezy). His wardrobe becomes important later.
10am the phone rings and it's cousin Karen on the phone (sounding like a true Londoner with only the slightest hint of American accent... this is what happens when one lives in the country 4 years). She's in the lobby and on her way up. Sadly Jamie couldn't come. Seems his aunt had a spell and he went off to Kent to help out. No one's happy about that, but he keeps in touch via text messaging throughout the day (everyone turns out fine, so no worries).
In comes Karen to our little room looking the spitting image of her mother at that age, so says Grandpa Mohawk. She is ecstatic to see us and we quickly spend the next two hours just catching up and telling our various travel stories. Regaling poor Karen with stories seems to be my forte throughout the day. I do believe I literally talked her ear off. Blame the Irish side of my family. We never could resist the attention of an audience. :)
By the time we set off for the day it is near noon. That morning sun has gotten brighter and hotter. The locals think we're a bit daft for wearing layers and Karen tells me to locals (like Jamie) this is what they call a "sweltering day". Considering it's in the 90's at home and feels like 100, 70's-80's is just right for us.
We decide the best plan for the day is to do as locals and head to the park for the day. We want to walk around Hyde Park which is absolutely huge so we hop the nearest bus. The process is seamless for us now. Just now your route number and direction then flag down the driver as he approaches. He deploys the under floor ramp, opens the door and I drive on. There are no laws requiring chairs be tied down for the journey so boarding and disembarking is a lot easier than back home. (The US could learn a lesson from that and give wheelchair users a true hop on/hop off process of using busses.)
We disembark at Hyde Park Corner and make our way into the park. To our east lies Park Lane, once upon a time a very fashionable district called Mayfair filled with fancy mansions of the various aristocrats. Back in the 1800's, these society folk would walk out their doors, have their carriages and horses brought round or just walk across the lane directly into the park. Now Park Lane is a busy divided thoroughfare lined with tall skyscrapers and office complexes. Sometimes you really do see the importance of historical preservation nuts.
Oh well, we step further into the park and I try, through my history stories, to bring us back to what this place was like in the past, along with appreciating what it is today. This east side of the park is lined with walkways crisscrossing the fields of green, gardens and trees. And it is packed with locals going for a picnic, stripping to their skivvies and sunbathing. There's also a steel drum band setting up by the nearby Serpentine (the park's dammed river now lake). I tell my captive audience that this park was once a royal hunting ground to Henry VIII then turned into a park for the people of the West End. It remains the central gathering place for locals.
It's getting on 1pm now so we stop at the restaurant in the park called the Dell. Each of the Royal Parks has a little cafe restaurant. During the day they serve take away (carry out) at fare prices and at night they are transformed into fancier sit-down restaurants. We get a selection of goat cheese pizza, boiled potatoes, sausage in a blanket and grilled salmon. Definitely a better food selection than your usual American fare of burgers, hot dogs and barbecue. We get seats outside overlooking the Serpentine and enjoy the view of boaters in the lake. Grandpa Mohawk strips off his outer jacket and wishes he'd remembered his sunglasses. After 4 days of rain, we did not expect to need them.
After lunch, we stroll south a bit to the infamous Rotten Row. Anyone who's read my book or books set in Regency times has heard of this path. It was originally called Route de Roi (road of the royals) and led to the king's palace at Kensington. Londoners bastardized the term to Rotten Row and it became the path the fashionable would take their carriages and horses out for a morning or afternoon stroll to be seen and see. (A popular date activity for those 19th century folks.) It remains today a dirt-covered equestrian path well used in the mornings, although you won't see the fashionable trotting about in their horse-drawn carriages. They prefer fancy Formula One convertibles these days. Of course, I can't resist driving my chair onto the path and just imagining I am one of my characters sitting beside my suitor as he guided the horses at a leisurely pace.
After snapping a few photos, I rejoin Grandpa Mohawk and Karen. Seems he's been telling her (or warning her more like) about all the research I've done over the years and exposed him to in preparation for this trip. Whether it is a story in a book or documentary on DVD, I've been educating the man on London history. And now it's Karen's turn.
We stroll down the banks of the Serpentine amazed at all the people enjoying this beautiful summer day. It is a 3 day holiday weekend called Carnival, Karen tells us. The banks are closed Monday, done every official holiday, so it is called a "bank holiday". Karen tells us that Carnival is a festival held in Notting Hill complete with parades, costumes and revelers. She says it is usually "pissing down" rain this weekend. It's quite odd to have all that rain the week before and warm sun now. We tell her that obviously the fates were waiting for her to make an appearance in our traveling caravan. It's getting very warm now so Grandpa Mohawk strips off that outer button-down shirt and his muscle shirt finally makes an appearance. (For those unaware, Grandpa Mohawk only wears his layers when it's winter and/or he's working. When he is having fun, usually in good weather, he dons muscle shirts, metal armbands, leather pants/or shorts and a varied collection of chain necklaces. This is what I lovingly refer to as my "Trendy Grandpa Mohawk" or "Biker Grandpa Mohawk". A fun albeit incongruous change from the stodgy/nerdy Scientist Grandpa Mohawk.)
Halfway
down the Serpentine we see an interesting collection of people all
gathered on the hillside stripping off their shoes and socks. Karen
tells us this is the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. Now I heard of
the thing from tourist tales and they weren't all that impressive. Seems
a great many tourists visit only in cold weather and see this only as a
fountain. It's been very controversial, Karen says. Closed, redone and
finally opened to it's true purpose. And here it is. On a warm, sunny
London day when it can get quite hot under those layers of clothes,
people stumble onto this quite ingenious fountain. It's done in an oval,
like a miniwaterslide with ledges all around. People strip off their
shoes and socks, sit on the banks of the roaring forks and wash their
feet in ice cold water. It sounds odd, but remarkably refreshing and
almost Biblical. Here you have Londoners, tourists, children, adults,
the elderly and wheelchair folks just sitting beside each other and
washing their feet, hands, even faces. It's like the banks of the river
Jordan. Any moment you expect someone to whip out a bar of soap and wash
his or her shirt beside you. The water is clear, fresh and cold enough
to cool your whole body after just a few minutes.
We pick a spot at the bottom where the water is calmest and meet a mom with her two children. The kids have taken a creative approach to the fountain and dipped their baseball caps in. They are quickly soaked head to toe. Karen and I get in the water while Grandpa Mohawk snaps pictures. At first he's hesitant to join in but soon we're convincing him to give it a try. He chooses a shady spot up the fountain where the water really rushes down, strips off his boots and socks and settles in beside us. The children we've met fancy sliding down the rapids and compare the fountain to their favorite waterslides. I of course and just impressed with the ingenuity and purpose of this memorial fountain.
Princess Diana was so loved because she cared about the ordinary people. Now she was a bit of a publicity hound and a fashionable girl but before her life was cut short, when her marriage turned disastrous, all she had was the love of her boys and a rediscovered love of her people. So here we have in her memory a place where everyone can come, cool down on a hot summer day, and just clean their feet like Jesus did thousands of years ago. There's something just profoundly human about that.
After cooling down, we head back along the Serpentine and find a little ice cream stand. We're still up for more walking so we take the long way around the head of the Serpentine in an area called the Long Water. This part of the park is kept in more of a lush, wild landscape to act as a wildlife refuge and keep the historical nature of the park. Not far to the west lie the gardens of Kensington Palace (where Queen Victoria grew up and Princess Diana lived). Grandpa Mohawk stops to see the Peter Pan statue (Barry said it didn't capture young Peter's devilishness enough). Then he pushes us on wanting to see the ornate bridge where one of my wallpaper images was taken. (Leading up to our trip I put a different picture of London on our laptop screen.)
It turns out this "bridge" is actually the border of the Italianate water garden and Pumping House. It's a surprisingly beautiful water garden with 5 pools, fountains and swans gently swimming. The placard etched in the ground says this place was built in 1866. What we're seeing is the height of Victorian grandeur. And grand it is as the water gardens end in a bridge overlook down the Long Water, Serpentine and through the more rustic areas of Hyde Park. On the hill beside dozens of people are sunbathing. Karen tells us that come June when London enjoys it's first real sunny day, people often leave work for lunch, head to the nearest spot of green, strip off their work suits and just get some sun for about 15 minutes.
We head back along the Serpentine's northern bank, stopping to admire the wildlife along the way. There are dozens of birds and squirrels around the place. Eventually we make our way back to the throng at the eastern end of the park. That restaurant we at in earlier is jam-packed. The steel drum band is strumming away. And we decide it's such a nice day we'll just walk back to the south bank.
To satisfy my desire to ride Rotten Row again, we take the eastern length of the path all the way up to #1 Hyde Park... aka Apsley House, the last standing monument to the Regency era. Wellington must have had one stunning view of the fashionable. Of course I can't resist telling my audience more tales of what this park has been used for. When the fashionable weren't strutting around, the common people would come out for nighttime festivals. Once in celebration of Britain's defeat of Napoleon, there was even a staged battle of Trafalgar in the middle of the Serpentine. Now it is home to steel drum bands, sunbathers and Live 8 concerts. The latter Karen and Jamie attended earlier this summer.
The time is near 6pm now. We can take a bus, but the weather is still bright and warm so we just make our back through the two other adjacent parks. Down Green Park, along St. James Palace and Carlton House where the current Prince of Wales and family live, and through St. James Park. There's a beautiful bridge crossing the lake in St. James. From the center you can either look north to Buckingham Palace or south to the Horseguards and London Eye. I think St. James Park has become my favorite just for the vistas. And all of it was designed by John Nash at the behest of the Prince Regent (George IV).
By the time we stroll past Parliament Square and across Westminster Bridge, it's near 8pm and we're all a bit hungry. So we find our way to the South Bank Festival Hall where they have a bunch of trendy new restaurants. We pick Wagamama, a chain of Japanese-style food places. Some of Karen's friends come to London just to dine in this place. I decide to try the chicken curry, a dish I hear as much about as you do fish-n-chips. It's unusual but very tasty. And by the time dinner is finished, we're all a bit exhausted.
Karen hugs us both goodbye and heads home via Waterloo station. (I think she's just eager to get home, put her feet up and relax her back.) Jamie was really bummed he couldn't join us as are we, so we declare plans to meet again before our trip ends. Grandpa Mohawk and I make our way back to the hotel and promptly fall asleep.
Total distance walked: 6.18 miles.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1252614
All in all, a perfect day of visiting, strolling and just enjoying life in the park. I think John Nash and the other designers of these parks would be very pleased.
Now it's time to say adieu. It's near 9:30am now and I have 2 hours to shower, dress and walk to church... (St. George's Cathedral, the first Catholic church in London after the Reformation). The Imperial War Museum is nearby so that's on the table. And at some point we have a trip to the London Eye planned.
So have a wonderful day everyone. We are having a fantastic adventure!
BroganMc:)