Everyone has heard from Central Park in New York, its probably the only reason most people in that city can breathe. I have discovered London's far better counterpart, Richmond Park. Richmond Park used to be the hunting grounds of King Charles I who installed himself there to escape the plague in London. He was the monarch who walled in the park, but still allowed people to enter and use the park. 2360 acres in size this park has a bit of everything. When I visited it, it was in the throws of autumn and we were surrounded by a sea of gold, orange and brown leaves.
We enjoyed the view and watched people cycling, walking their dogs, fishing, drinking and generally just relaxing and having a nice time. That is what Richmond Park seems to encourage, being happy. Lakes are interspersed through the park, deer wander around freely and the ducks make themselves known to all. This is the kind of place where you can't help but want to go fly a kite. And when the weather is looking fantastic, the sun is shining it seems like a great idea. Well that's what we thought, so we packed up the kite, got ourselves in the mood by singing Mary Poppins' "lets go fly a kite" song and made our way back to Richmond. However, the most important thing to consider when going to fly a kite is that no matter how great the weather may be, how bright the sun may be shining, no kite will fly when there is no wind. We were determined that there might be some wind at some point (I think a green herb may have had an influencing factor on our determination...) so that kite was set up... and lay absolutely still on the grass while we sat next to it, feeling a bit foolish. Families wandered passed us with questioning looks on their faces and we grew slightly more self conscious and eventually gave up kite flying to go climb trees instead! Just goes to show that Richmond Park can never be boring!
The next day we were much more fortunate and a strong wind was blowing, we headed to Old Deer Park this time to finally test our kite flying skills.
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