Crystal Palace Park is one of the not-so-hidden gems of South London yet I have been there very few times. It's not quite on my doorstep yet too near to be a destination day out. A sunny Sunday afternoon in May and we headed to Crystal Palace Park. So did many other people, although it never really seemed busy and people seemed aware of those around them and understood that other park users had different needs - kids on scooters didn't career into the elderly and infirm, dogs were under control for the benefit of the nervous, people conducted conversations among themselves and not for the benefit of an audience. This is South East London, not South West that's increasingly infested with people whose main (sole?) hobby is 'showing off'.
Previously run by the Greater London Council and before that the London County Council, Crystal Palace Park is entirely within the London Borough of Bromley. LBs Lambeth, Southwark, Lewisham and Croydon have boundaries on or close to the park and some interest in the surrounding areas.
It contains many of the features you would expect in a large neighbourhood park, and several more besides. For example, a boating lake. For boating purposes it isn't as good as Battersea Park, let alone Regent's Park, none of which are a patch on Nottingham's University Park. But it's nicely landscaped, and I spotted this modern day sculpture.
If you're 'not from round here' and you hear Crystal Palace, you probably think of the football team, or maybe the Great Exhibition of 1851, or the Athletics stadium. But if you are local, you know that Crystal Palace Park is home to The Dinosaurs. The only place in the UK where you can roam among dinosaurs in their natural habitat, and there are few recorded incidents of children being attacked.
The lakes and ponds are pleasantly, if unexceptionally, landscaped
The park is easy to get to, as Crystal Palace station, now served by London Overground as well as Southern, is right next door. We popped into the café Brown and Green, which is exceptionally good and, given its location, decently priced. We had coffee and cake, both of which passed muster - the cake being handmade and fresh. Their website is user unfriendly, a pity, because they have an excellent menu for breakfast, brunch, light lunch and afternoon bites, and their kids' menu seems to have the right balance between tasty and not-too-unhealthy. If I lived locally I'd be in every week - or more often. Stupidly, I took no pictures of the café but I liked this mural near the station.
Crystal Palace Park is unique because not only does it has the dinosaurs but it also has other singular features.
It's called Crystal Palace, as is the station and, unofficially the local area, because Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace was moved there from Hyde Park after the Great Exhibition, although sadly it burned down in 1936. Paxton is commemorated locally with a Primary School, a health centre and a pub. And, in the Park, a bust, somewhat neglected, on the historic but derelict Italian terraces with its vandalised sphinxes. I suspect that LB Bromley doesn't take its custodianship of the park too seriously, given that it's at the corner of their borough away from the prosperous areas, and is probably used more by people from the poorer Inner London boroughs.
Crystal Palace is like a campus for sport. It struck me that the designers of Olympic Park must have been influenced, especially by the bridge next to the Athletics stadium. I know there's a swimming pool there, and I think it's Olympic size and allows for diving.
We stood and watched some beach volleyball. There were signs saying that it is home of the Team GB beach volleyball team. I don't know if these people were Team GB, and, to be honest, I don't think that beach volleyball is any more interesting than the bog standard version.
But, hey, pictures.
There's an Athletic stadium, which has now being somewhat overshadowed by the Olympic stadium in East London - it used to host Diamond League fixtures until recently. There was some sort of athletics going on there, a handful of people and a man on a very loud public address system which boomed out inappropriately across the entire park, imposed on and to be endured by the hundreds if not thousands doing other things, for the sake of the few tens doing this. And the organised sporty types wonder why they're so hated by normals!
There was a triathlon partly taking place in the park, but it was low key, discrete and well stewarded, without the need for all the showing off to all-and-sundry.
We sat for a while on the grass, which happened to overlook the children's playground. Busy, and decorated in primary colours (ie not enforcing artificial gender role differentiation), with some dinosaur theming.
