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September 02, 2005
Green Highgate
Park Road
Hornsey Sports Fields
Wood Vale
Queens Wood
Muswell Hill Road
Highgate Wood
Archway Road
Bishops Road
The Park
Southwood Lane: Flying Horseshoe???
Graf and Anti-Graf, Highgate-style
Highgate High Street
Waterlow Park
Lauderdale Cafe A true classic, although far too posh to be seedy, is this lovely cafe (run by italians, naturally) in Lauderdale House, a building which can be traced back to the 16th century via multiple conflagrations rebuilds and additions. Perched atop a balustraded plateau looking down on carefully-tended flowerbeds and ancient oaks, it seems more like the sort of establishment you'd find in the gardens of a stately home than in a public park. But this is essentially what Waterlow Park is – part of a National-Trust-worthy estate, but without the awful gift shop and overpriced trying-too-hard cafe full of bad-tempered teenagers in white aprons. It must be one of the best parks in London. All the rainwater from Highgate hill runs down the terraces into a leafy hollow, making it incredibly lush. There's a view all the way across to the Barbican. Yet again the park is a philanthropic gift to the city:
Ex-Lord Mayor Sydney Waterlow intended it as 'a garden for the gardenless'
Statue guarding the steps up to the cafe plateau.
Happily, despite the grand setting, and despite its being popular with celebs and being used for well-heeled wedding receptions, the cafe is comfortingly down-to-earth and does a nice line in confections whose provenance fits the C19 municipal ambiance (the achingly-authentic Tunnocks caramel wafer (also see this) is a particular favourite of mine; with its painfully-frugal chocolate coating and insubstantial wafers which disappear as soon as tasted [correction: see this entry], it's an exotic exercise in confectionary asceticism for the modern consumer accustomed to unlimited gluttony).
There were two magpies and a rook on the lawn; one of the magpies was sneezing repeatedly. I've never seen a bird sneeze before.
Dartmouth Park Hill
Hornsey Lane
Posted by robin at September 2, 2005 08:00 AM