Hyde Park

 

Hyde Park

IV

So i think the areas people dont think about most are probably the meadow area, you know, they imagine parks are all gonig to be manicured lawns and perfectly set out. The meadow area is a very beautiful area. My personal favorite is actually the area around the bird sanctuary.

 

IV
People don't realize what they've got right on their own doorstep. I mean, when people go away on holiday, not just abroad but different parts of England, they go, oh, it's really great, they've got this, they've got that.But the amount of people who've got parks like this on their own doorstep, and have never actually been to the park, I mean, I think it's just an incredible waste, you know, come try it out.

 

IV

There are 350 acres of hyde park, which gives a lot of diversity, alot of room for different kinds of terrain, so what we have are, uh, we have a lake running through the middle of it, which is the Serpentine. The Serpentine was created in the 1720s, essentially, by Queen Caroline, who was the wife of George II. And when she first got here she was very keen on improving the landscape of London, and she came to Hyde Park and she saw a series of fishing lakes essentially each divided up with different kinds of fish in it, and she thought I can do something nice with this and she turned this whole thing into one gigantic beautiful artificial lake which is what we have now. It is more or less unchanged since her original vision.

On the south side of that you have the horse ride and a much more treed area with a small strip where people can sit and sunbathe in deck chairs.

 

VOX

I like coming down here because its a very relaxing place to be.

 

IV
People walk, talk, you know, have coffee in one of the cafes. More actively they run around, there are running clubs, there's tennis, there's an organized swimming club, the Serpentine swimmers who on Christmas Day jump from this bridge into the freezing cold water and swim to the bridge we can see on the other end. They're mad men and women, they really are. Sometimes if you're very lucky you can even go fishing with a certain license. You can do all sorts of things you'd expect you could do in a park and probably a few more.

 

VOX
Good to find some green open space in this concrete jungle.

 

IV

Hyde park originally if you go back far enough was like all of London, a sort of swampy thorny woody mess. Originally it was used for hunting, you know, lots of deer, and other things you would hunt and eat as a Monarch, and only very gradually did people like you and me get a chance to go in. But we're here now and we can't be got rid of.