Outdoor places to go on Monday instead of our Bookshop which will be closed
Posted by the Bookshop
On Bank Holiday Monday the Bookshop and Cake Shop will be closed. Fortunately, we've already made you a booklist of titles to inspire you to get outside and stop reading. And here's a list of outdoor places in London to go with them. Now let's just hope it's sunny (although if it isn't, we've got a book for that as well).
If you're reading Herbaceous, we recommend a visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden, which has a beautiful collection of medicinal, historic, edible and useful plants (and even does poetry workshops sometimes).
If you're reading The Wavewatcher’s Companion, try going to Wapping Old Stairs at low tide for a walk along the foreshore of the Thames.
We got a little stuck on Between the Sunset and the Sea: A View of 16 British Mountains, until we remembered Joe Dunthorne's anthology, Mount London, which suggests various adventures in the vertical city. Primrose Hill is probably the easiest, although you could always go looking for ghost hills in Whitechapel.
For those reading Field Notes From a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary, Camley Street Natural Park is a little urban nature reserve tucked away behind Kings Cross. London's cemeteries are also good places to see wildlife. And for a small wild place in the centre of London, there's nowhere better than Phoenix gardens, which is overgrown with all kinds of wildflowers.
For walkers, we suggest you grab a copy of The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs and head north, to the marvellous Parkland Walk, four and a half miles of disused railway that takes you from Finsbury Park to Alexandra Palace, via the ancient woodlands of Highgate Wood.
And your best chance of getting your kids eaten by bears is London Zoo. (They've got a rainforest exhibit too.)
The Bookshop and Cake Shop will be open as usual on Tuesday 26 May.
