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Kensington Gardens & Hyde Park
Princess of Wales Memorial Garden
Hyde Park
Serpentine Lido - Hyde Park
Albert Memorial
Kensington Gardens
Model Yachting on the Round Pond - 26/11/01
The Model Yacht Sailing Association
est 1876 and London Model Yacht Club est.1884
The Round Pond
Kensington
London
The MYSA Kensington was formed in 1876 and we celebrated the 125th Anniversary with a regatta on Sunday the 25th of June, The principal class they sail is the 10-Rater. A modern boat is almost a miniature of Americas cup contenders and the rules of racing are the same as for full sized yachts.
Racing takes place most Sunday mornings between 10.00 and 13.00. http://www.mysa.org.uk/ Princess of Wales Memorial Garden
Teepees, pirate ships, crocodiles lazing on the beach, totem poles carved by Native American Indians all mark out the imaginative Princess of Wales Memorial Garden, in Kensington Gardens.
The £1.7 million playground has some conventional play equipment - swings, slides and climbing frames. It also has, however, more subtle features designed to stimulate children's imaginations.
In the beach cove, concrete, sand-blasted to look like the real thing, carries tiny footprints and imprints of fossils. Submerged in the main pool are plugs which allow children to alter the direction of the water flow. A nearby rock bears the imprint of a mermaid's tail, together with her handprint.
On the pirate ship, a fully rigged, three-tiered, hand-crafted wooden galleon, there is a hidden passage between decks, and children can attempt to refloat the beached vessel by shifting sand out of the hull on a trolley system.
There is the Movement and Musical Garden, where children can create tunes on a variety of interactive instruments; the Tree House Encampment, suitable for wheelchair users; "tree-phones" where children can communicate across the playground. Even the sheep - hand-carved wooden figures that double as seats - are friendly-looking.
An earlier playground on the site was funded by J M Barrie, whose Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens was published in 1906. Barrie lived in the area and walked daily in the gardens. The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground, designed for children up to 12, maintains this historical link, although designers have taken great care not to turn it into a theme park. Images from Thirties' illustrations of Peter Pan are etched into the glass in The Home Under The Ground, where the Lost Boys live, which houses the lavatories and the playground attendant's office. The pirate ship and the crocodile (made of stones from a Welsh quarry) also echo the children's tale. The link, however, is a loose one.
Jennette Emery-Wallis, an associate with Land Use Consultants, the landscape architects for the project, said: "We wanted to create an innovative playground, rather than take the traditional approach of tarmac and play equipment, which tends to be sterile. Everything here is natural; the paths are all bound gravel and the play areas are bark chip. Willow fences divide many of the play areas. The aim is to let children decide in which way they want to play, rather than having the way they play dictated by the landscape."
Those who knew the late princess say that it is a playground that she would have adored. She loved Kensington Gardens and often walked or jogged there. Sometimes she would sit quietly under a tree reading a book, enjoying rare moments of anonymity. "Diana would have loved the complete and unstructured freedom of this playground - it was so important to her in the way she lived her life; the things she fought for," said Rosa Monckton, one of the late princess's closest friends.
"It's wonderful to have a park for children to have proper adventures, rather than stand in queues waiting to go on things. It is about as far from municipal and as close to Swallows and Amazons as you can get. There is something here for all children of all abilities. Diana had a particular affinity with children and she would have loved this for everything it is."
The playground pays some homage to the past. The entrance takes visitors past the Victorian drinking fountain, and the Elfin Oak, a gnarled, partially hollow stump from Richmond Park, carved by Ivor Innes in 1930 with the figures of fairies, elves and animals. Ultimately, the park will be a feature on the seven-mile commemorative walk designed to remember the life of the princess.
Hyde Park Hyde Park was first opened to the public by James I and soon became a fashionable gathering place for the beau-monde who rode round the circular drive known as the ring pausing to gossip and admire each others equipage. Hangings, muggings and duels, the Great Exhibition of 1851and numerous public events have all taken place in Hyde Park and its still a popular gathering point or destination for political demonstrations. For most of the time however the park is simply a leisure ground, a wonderful open space that allows you to lose all sight of the city apart from a few persistent tower blocks.
Located at the tree-less northern corner of the park Marble Arch was originally erected in 1828 as a truimphal entry to Buckingham Palace, but is now stranded on a ferociously busy traffic island at the west end of Oxford Street. This is the most historically charged spot in Hyde Park because it marks the site of Tyburn gallows, the cities main public execution spot until 1783.
Its also the location of Speaker's Corner, once an entertaining and peculiarly English Sunday tradition featuring an assembly of characterful speakers and hecklers - now sadly a forum for soap-box religious extremists. A better place to enter the park is at Hyde Park Corner, the south-east corner where the Wellington Arch stands in the midst of another of London's busiest traffic interchanges. Erected in 1828 to commemorate Wellington's victories in the Napoleonic wars the arch originally served as the northern gate into Buckingham Palace grounds.
By far the prettiest section of the lake though is the upper section known as the Long Water, which narrows until it reaches a group of four fountains layed out symetrically in front of an Italianate summer house designed by Wren.
Serpentine Lido - Hyde Park The pool is open June to September seven days a week from 10am to 6pm. This pool is part of the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park and has a popular "lido" on its South bank with a screened, pay-to-enter enclosure.
"It's great for adults and children as there is a paddling pool, a sandpit, swings and a slide. A children's entertainer performs between 2.30pm and 4pm every day during the summer".
The Serpentine Swimming Club swim from 6.30am to 9.30am daily, including their legendary Christmas Day dip.
"This Lido was part of George Lansbury's inter-war scheme of improvements to public amenities in London. He was responsible for the foundation of the Serpentine Lido in 1931"
The Serpentine Lido
Hyde Park
London
W2 2UH
tel: 020 7706 3422
Kensington Gardens
The western half of the park is officially known as Kensington Gardens and is strictly a seperate entity to Hyde Park, but you hardly notice the change.
Its two most popular attactions are the Serpentine Gallery which has a reputation for lively and often controversial contemporary art exhibitions, and the richly decorated, high gothic Albert Memorial clearly visible to the west.
Erected in 1876 the monument is as much a hymn to the glorious achievements of Britain as to its subject, Queen Victoria's husband, who died of typhoid in 1861. Recently restored to its former gilded glory, Albert occupies the central canopy clutching a catalogue to the 1851 Great Exhibition that he helped to organise.
The exhibitions most famous feature the gorgantuan glass house, the Crystal Palace no longer exists but the profits were used to buy a large tract of land south of the park, now home to South Kensington's remarkable cluster of museums and colleges plus the vast Royal Albert Hall.
read more about the Serpentine Gallery
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