Camley Street loveliness
I think I spotted it on a map a couple of years ago. A green Trivial Pursuit wedge of land caught between Kings Cross and St. Pancras stations, both currently at different stages of their (long overdue) olympic makeovers.
A while back, me and Kelly decided to stock up on culture points at a Euston museum. Stalling at the cafe, neither of us could really be arsed 'improving ourselves' indoors on a sunny spring day. We decided the Camley Street Natural Park was a much better option.
Battling through the traffic, tour buses and concrete lorries the entrance to our destination reluctantly revealed itself. For a countryside-reared boy, it looked an unimpressive spit of land (god knows what the girl from Vancouver must have thought) but we gamely waded in. We were rewarded for keeping any initial misgivings to ourselves: it was two acres of loveliness - little paths leading the curious hither and yon into the foliage, dripping with woody odours, bright insects and recent rainfall.
Like a lot of inner-city outdoors stuff, the place was geared towards education. Fair enough when you consider the average London kid might not have had as many cow parsley fights or pet caterpillars as I did. Question cards and information signs were littered about, with stacks of clipboards and kid-sized chairs stacked up in a corner. The sign to the 'mini-beast' led me, guttingly, nowhere.
Even at a cake-filled crawl, we'd done a circuit in under half an hour. Cresting a little bluff halfway round, the skinny fingers of a nearby disused gas tower poked sclerotically into view. A step more revealed heavy plant pirouetting round it and each other, reduced to a tonka toy scale from our perch. It was like being in a Greenpeace video.
Only a couple of weeks later, I got an unexpected second glimpse at the place. I took the new Highspeed one train from St Pancras to see dad in deepest Kent. Killing time by trying to find the flux capacitor under the bonnet I realised we were overlooking that little slice of green again. It's good (in the main) when nature has a chance to sneak up on you.
Battling through the traffic, tour buses and concrete lorries the entrance to our destination reluctantly revealed itself. For a countryside-reared boy, it looked an unimpressive spit of land (god knows what the girl from Vancouver must have thought) but we gamely waded in. We were rewarded for keeping any initial misgivings to ourselves: it was two acres of loveliness - little paths leading the curious hither and yon into the foliage, dripping with woody odours, bright insects and recent rainfall. 
Like a lot of inner-city outdoors stuff, the place was geared towards education. Fair enough when you consider the average London kid might not have had as many cow parsley fights or pet caterpillars as I did. Question cards and information signs were littered about, with stacks of clipboards and kid-sized chairs stacked up in a corner. The sign to the 'mini-beast' led me, guttingly, nowhere. 
Only a couple of weeks later, I got an unexpected second glimpse at the place. I took the new Highspeed one train from St Pancras to see dad in deepest Kent. Killing time by trying to find the flux capacitor under the bonnet I realised we were overlooking that little slice of green again. It's good (in the main) when nature has a chance to sneak up on you.
What's a cow parsley fight?
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