Richmond Park

It's been a four day weekend here in the UK. While otherwise generally stingy with the whole public holiday thing, we are somewhat holiday rich this time of year! For Easter, we get off both Good Friday and Easter Monday, and then a Monday bank holiday both the first and last weekends in May. It's not a bad deal. However, it is a bad deal between New Years and Easter, between the last May bank holiday and the August bank holiday, and then between the August bank holiday and Christmas, during which we get nothing. Oh wait, I guess we still have those 5 weeks of annual leave we can use...

Anyways, the weather this past long weekend was a bit lacking. It was essentially raining all day Friday and Saturday before being just grey on Sunday, then we finally got a bit of sun yesterday afternoon. To compensate, we spent Friday painting our bathroom (it's seafoamy now), Saturday running errands and going to the mall, then finally on Sunday we snuck out for a little bike ride and yesterday we went for a long bike ride. Sunday we did a loop along the river through Putney and Hammersmith, and yesterday we went down to Richmond Park via Putney and Barnes.

First, some background. Richmond Park, according to my AA pub, walk and cycle guide (thanks for that, Chris!) (Hi Chris!), I've learned that Richmond Park was originally set aside as a park by Charles I, who took his court there to go hunting/escape the plague (talk about killing two birds with one stone!). Numerous hunting excursions/plague outbreaks have ensured that the park has remained since the 1600s, and today it is apparently the largest urban walled park in Europe. I think the word 'walled' is of key importance there, but at the same time I assure you it is indeed very, very big. The outlined bike ride essentially around the perimeter of the park was 7 miles long. Most of the park is sort of open grassland with several 'glens' of trees and some carefully placed massive hills. The hills allow for some very nice views, as well as some opportunities to hop off ones bike to push it up the hill. In general, the park is quite pretty and features a very nice car-free rail for cycling. Although that being said, we somehow managed to get lost and ended up at a dead end, pushed our bikes up a very big hill only to find we couldn't take our bikes through the gate at the top, and then had to walk around until we found the trail we were supposed to be on.

Secondly, the National Cycle Network. The powers that be have set aside several 'cycle routes' connecting a lot of random places. Yesterday, despite a small detour on the way there when we got lost, we followed cycle route 4 from essentially our house to the park. The routes are sometimes along main roads, such as Kings Road and Putney Bridge, and sometimes along segregated paths, such as a bit along the Thames in Putney and through the wetlands in Barnes. They are remarkably well-signed, if you keep an eye out for them, and they include directional signposts with destinations and the distance in miles. So yesterday we knew we were finally almost there when we saw 'Richmond Park 1/4 mile' on one of these signs. In addition to the national cycle network, London has a number of cycle routes and produces special maps for riding through certain areas showing both exact routes but also things such as 'quieter roads recommended by cyclists'. The maps are available for free from Transport for London and I'm sure very useful if you actually look at them, can then remember all the names of the streets you're supposed to turn down and then find those streets while you are out and about. All easier said than done, of course.