This was intended to be a post about an extremely enjoyable morning hacking holly earlier this week (see below) – but the winter sun on the heath as I walked back from South End Green this afternoon was so lovely that I could not resist including it. And how irrestibile were those mandarin ducks on …
Heath Hands
The 2022 Conker Championship!
Sunday was a very exciting day! The return of the annual Hampstead Heath Conker Championship, banished for two long years by the pandemic. And the figures showed how much it had been missed – over 300 registered competitors and hundreds of spectators. Heath Hands also raised over £300 in donations and sales, launched the new …
Fly With Me – Afghan kite festival on Parliament HIll
It was on the 20th August last year that the chaotic Western withdrawal from Kabul returned Afghanistan to the rigid rule of the Taliban, precipitating the flight of millions. Yesterday, all over the UK, The Good Chance Theatre, Afghan Aid and Afghan artists, actors and sports people came together to celebrate the ancient art of …
Fly With Me – Afghan kite festival on Parliament HIllRead More
Managing the Tormented Heath
Actually, it was introduced to us as the Tormented Slope but Tormented Heath has so much more of a ring to it. In fact, charred slope might have been closer, as burnt to a crisp it certainly was. However, the ‘tormented’ had nothing to do with its scorching and everything to do with the tormentil. …
Set the Handkerchief Tree free!!
Have you ever met a Handkerchief Tree? They are relatively rare trees and in May they produce a profusion of large white bracts which look exactly like freshly washed handkerchiefs. The trees originate in China and were first discovered in 1869 by a French missionary/naturalist, Armand David. He found just a single tree way up …
The shire horses come to the heath
On a packed weekend at the end of February the England National Cross Country Championships returned to Hampstead Heath after two years of COVID – nearly 8,000 runners sploshing squidgely through the deep mud generated by recent heavy rainfall. This was not only extremely hard going for the runners but turned large swathes of the …