Seeking out a decent park can, in fact, be like searching for diamonds in coal mines: especially if it is beautiful parks away from the crowds that you are looking for. Whatever area of London you are living in, staying in or wandering through, there are some wonderful walking, picnicking, kick-around and canoodling spots with greenery as a backdrop
St James Park (Central London)
Like Green and Hyde Parks nearby, open spaces here will get crowds regardless of size and this is one of the Capital’s smallest central parks. You can’t, however, beat watching pelicans waddling around in the foreground whilst Buckingham Palace soars away in the background. On the eastern edge is the Winston Churchill Museum. A photogenic lake almost splits the park in half.
- Best thing to do there: Photo-snap Buckingham Palace, pelican-watch or picnic
- Nearest Station: Green Park underground (Victoria and Jubilee Lines), St James’ Park underground (Circle Line)
Hampstead Heath (North London)
This is south-east England’s upper middle class playground of choice. There’s something glorious eccentric, as well as downright beautiful, about North London’s premier open space. The heath has pretty much everything from wild ancient woodland to one of the best views of London from Parliament Hill. There are open air swimming pools (or ponds), tennis courts, a bowling green and a petanque pitch. It attracts its fair share of notable city well-to-do’s too It’s full of lofty Eton accents and surrounded by wonderful cafes, restaurants and millionaires mansions: welcome to the England elite club.
- Best thing to do there: Playing Bowls or taking a dip in Hampstead Ponds
- Nearest Station: Hampstead Heath Overground or Hampstead underground (Northern line)
Northwick Playgolf Park (North London)
You guessed it: even for crazy golf London has a solution. This park in North London is perfectly set up for, well, just that. There is a crazy golf course here as well as a pitch and putt and a main golf course.
- Best thing to do there: play crazy golf
- Nearest Station: Harrow-on-the-Hill or Northwick Park Underground (Bakerloo and Metropolitan Lines)
Clissold Park (North London)
Home of London’s best free festival, Stokefest, Clissold Park at the end of Stoke Newington Church Street, has very much the air of a country village park. There are ponds, an aviary and an endearing animal enclosure with deer and goats in, as well as bowls, a tennis court and a paddling pool. A bit further down Church Street is the eerie Abney Park Cemetery, full of tumbledown tombs amidst gnarled old trees.
- Best thing to do there: Coo over the deer and stroll around the cemetery
- Nearest Station: Stoke Newington overground
Walthamstow Marshes (Northeast London)
This is no small, neat London park: it’s vast and centred around a series of reservoirs which form the early (or late) stages of the Lee Valley footpath. These are the only ancient wetlands still left within Greater London and you’ll be able to spot rare butterflies and rare breed long horned cattle.
- Best thing to do there: Walking the Lee Valley Path
- Nearest Station: Clapton or Tottenham Hale (overground and underground, Victoria Line)
Greenwich Park (East London)
It’s hard to fault the place where the world works out its time from: Greenwich Parks old Greenwich Observatory, with its famous meridian line, stands proudly at the top of a grassy hill dotted with copses of trees and open grassy slopes ideal for ball games. There are great views of London from the top and there’s also a good café to sample. Open air films in Greenwich Park are screened in the summer.
- Best thing to do there: Visit the Observatory
- Nearest Station: Greenwich or Cutty Sark DLR
Putney Heath (South London)
Putney Heath’s stature as a park is helped no end by the proximity of some fine pubs (like the Green Man) just on its periphery. It’s one of London’s most sedate parks, hemmed by grand old trees that give the open green spaces the air of secret forest clearings. You can also wander south onto the wider Wimbledon Common, complete with its own windmill and a windmill museum.
- Best thing to do there: Have a drink in one of the countrified old pubs nearby
- Nearest Station: Putney overground or East Putney underground, District Line
Crystal Palace Park (South London)
This park has a wonderful sense of decayed grandeur: the top half of it still has the elaborate statues and steps from when it was the site of the glamorous crystal palace, one of Victorian London’s greatest assets. These days, you’ll find the national sports centre here with an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Also here is one of the highlights of outdoor London, the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park: Victorian models of all kinds of dinosaurs are secreted around an ornamental lake.
- Best thing to do there: Check out the dinosaurs
- Nearest Station: Crystal Palace Overground
Richmond Park (West London)
This is the big daddy of London parks: almost everyone has heard of it but few ever make the journey out here. In just half an hour from Central London on the overground, you’ll witness the landscape’s complete transformation into enchanting woodland and untamed open heath. At 2500 acres, a big draw is the wild deer that graze here. Besides the seemingly endless walks, in the centre of the park is one of the best-loved London wedding venues, the glam Georgian Manor of Pembroke Lodge. One of London's best places of have a game of golf, the Richmond Park Golf Club, is also here.
- Best thing to do there: Deer-Spotting
- Nearest Station: Richmond, on District Line and National Rail line to Reading
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