Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, a bit of a stroll, lots to see, pretty views, historic buildings, diverse landscapes, close to public transport, won't take long. So here's a gentle mile crossing a nice park in Kensington, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same.
Let's start at Holland Park station, because obviously that's where you'd start. The adjacent parade is your last chance to grab snacks for at least fifteen minutes so stock up well. Cross the main road at the lights and then turn right at the statue of St Volodymyr, who's been a Ukrainian icon for a lot longer than Zelenskyy. The road ahead is called Holland Park and leads to Holland Park in the neighbourhood of Holland Park, so that's not at all confusing. It's also one of the most up-itself roads in London, lined by stucco mansions, millionaire boltholes and umpteen cars with diplomatic plates. Best escape this overprivileged hellscape and slip through the white arch into the park proper.
Holland Park is not your typical park. It has its own greetings cards, teatowels and honey, even its own jute shopper courtesy of a well-heeled Friends group. It has noticeboards someone bothers to keep up-to-date, including news of Blue Badge tours, bird walks and a Christmas concert. It has eateries serving veal and caviar or sandwiches and tubbed ice cream. And here in this corner it feels like walking into a small Mediterranean garden with palms, an abstract sculpture and a sun-trap shelter because, as I said, Holland Park is not your typical park. Feel free to take either the path or the steps, they both lead to the same place.
The northern half of Holland Park is mostly woodland, so feels more like walking through a Royal Park than something run by the council. But it's also very heavily segregated woodland, with broad dirt paths sweeping between large enclosures reserved for local wildlife. Don't even think of vaulting over the fences because you'll be in contravention of Byelaw No 4, as countless warning signs attest. Expect to pass several well-dressed joggers avoiding the muddy patches and also a heck of a lot of well-fed hounds, because Kensington & Chelsea's dogwalkers don't have a particularly broad range of options.
There are many paths through this woodland but the trick is to end up at the Kyoto Garden, a sanctuary opened by the Prince of Wales in 1991 to commemorate cordial links between Britain and Japan. This manicured enclave is high on the must-see list of many tourists for its Insta-opportunities, featuring as it does a reflective pool, a slab bridge and tasteful oriental features. It's particularly vibrant at present with autumnfoliage and, being November, occasionally photographable without any dawdling visitors getting in the way.
Alas the intended ambience of "quiet and contemplation" was wrecked yesterday by a) a man wielding a leaf blower in the Fukashima adjunct, b) a squirrel terrorising a seated woman by jumping up behind her on a bench and c) the scummy bubbles building up at the foot of the waterfall. Worse, I watched a moorhen swim across the pool with one of the ornamental fish in its beak, then hop up onto the drain cover and peck it to death, before having its meal snatched away by another moorhen who continued the bloodbath on the grass. David Attenborough could have offered a thrilling commentary.
The centre of the park contains the ornamental gardens. Largest is the Dutch Garden, a lovely place to linger but whose beds are bristly tulip-less voids at this time of year. The Napoleon Garden offers the chance to play a giant game of chess, should anyone be up for it, and the courtyard round the Iris Fountain looks nicer when the pool's not drained. That said I was amazed to find a single camellia in bloom by the Orangery, and equally surprised to be assaulted by the smell of roses amid the bushes on the lower terrace.
The centre of the park is also where the buildings are, most notably Holland House, a Jacobean mansion which looked even more impressive before a WW2 bomb destroyed everything but the ground floor facade and the east wing. The Orangery is now used for weddings, and the adjacent ballroom has just reopened as a "turbot steak" and "veal fillet" kind of restaurant called Belvedere. For slightly less mortgageable refreshments try the modern cafe with its empty outdoor seating (n.b. rammed in summer). And if you look down from the opera terrace past the wooden gates, what a view the Lord of the Manor must have had before all those flats were built.
The Kensington end of the park is mostly sports field, but nothing so common as rusting goalposts, it's more flexible than that. This nudges all other visitors into a tree-lined avenue down one side, and it is down because this whole park is on a gentle slope. I thought it summed up the local parkgoing population when a mother strolled past pushing a split-level four-seat pushchair with two curly kids up front and their sibling and a chihuahua in the back. And the park finally draws to a close beside the Commonwealth Institute or, as it's now become, the Design Museum and some very exclusive flats.
The museum makes a great place to end the walk. If you've not been inside since the great transformation the interior will dazzle. If you have been, nothing's changed on the second floor but the exhibition of Yinka Ilori's colourful urban interventions round the first floor balcony is new and excellent. If you have £55 to fritter then two of you could look round the specialexhibitions or you could buy three pairs of Yinka's rainbow socks in the shop. And come on, as nice walks go that was a nice walk, and terribly varied, in a London park that's all things to all people.
