Last week I had to start work a few hours earlier than normal, plus I had a bunch of things to organise so I skipped doing a 'walkabout'. This week there was a little sun predicted for the afternoon and with the weather not being quite as cold as it has been I took the opportunity to do one of my outdoor London-to-do's.
For a big city, London has a lot of green spaces which makes living here much more manageable for those who are country-people at heart. It may even be one of the top cities in the world for the amount of green space it has. Gratefully I am blessed with living between two. One being the Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens chunk. One of the green spaces I wanted to visit while here was...
And now I have. It's one of the largest green spaces covering 320 hectares (790 acres) and is located in the north of London. I basically just wandered around the south end of the Heath for a couple of hours and purposefully took my camera for a photographic walkabout. Although it was sunny, it was also gusty sporadically and the ground really was quite mucky. I didn't veer off the paths much and squelched along carefully when I did. Hampstead Heath has a variety of nature features with bush...er...forest for the non-Aussie, open fields, playgrounds and recreational spaces, ponds (and each are labelled as to what kind of pond they are, some of which are swimming) as well as some estate houses and gardens. It's really a very nice area and one of those places you stand in and look all around and comment to yourself, "You'd hardly think I was in London." Not all the paths were tarred. Some were more like beaten paths or mudtrails in the winter season. I wandered around snapping away and fiddling with functions on my camera; miniature (which blurrs top and bottom), colour accent (black and white except one colour I choose), black and white, sepia, vivid and manual. It was fun exploring and looking for artistic compositions. Makes you notice the beauty more. I took loads and got some shots I really like. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. (Click on the photo to view them larger.)
As pre-planned, I stopped for dinner just as the afternoon was wrapping up. I had the most delicious pizza which arrived and was consumed much faster than I'd anticipated leaving me with a whole hour to fill. It's hard to drag out eating in a restaurant when you are dining by yourself so I decided to go window shopping. Er, made it to the next block where I found a Cass Art shop and one hour and £50 later scurried off to catch the overground to work.
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