Item: Hyde Park
Rating: 2
Author: Craig Cross

Where?: Hyde Park · Web: royalparks.org
Opening times?: 5 AM to midnight (Mon-Sun); Visiting hours may change
Price?: Free
Time required?: A typical visit is 1-2 hours, depending on how far you want to walk
Parking:: Nearby car parks
Buses:: 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19, 22, 30, 36, 38, 52, 73, 74, 82, 137, 148, 274, 390, 414, 436; Bus fares
Trains:: The closest station is Marble Arch Central; Train fares

Craig’s review… If you want to fall out with someone then ask them where Kensington Gardens starts and Hyde Park ends because Londoners have been grappling with that question since 1728 when Queen Caroline first split the park in two.

I must admit that I just call the whole lot Hyde Park from Marble Arch to Kensington Palace (anything for an easy life) and reserve the ‘gardens’ part for the actual Palace grounds, but that’s just me. I like to keep things simple. The true border is supposed to run along the road to the east and south of the lake, which means the water has been carved up through the middle.

The eastern half is the Serpentine (Hyde Park) whilst the top part beyond the bridge (the Long Water) is fully inside Kensington Gardens – including the paths on either side. Confused yet? Let’s just call the whole thing the Serpentine and be done with it – there are less contentious borders in the Middle East!

Route du Roi (Rotten Row)

Kings and queens have been messing with this place since it first grew grass. Five hundred years ago the bogs belonged to Westminster Abbey and it wasn’t until Charles I came along that it was opened up to the public. Then William III decided to move his Royal residence to the western end and turned the southern stretch into a private road (the ‘Route du Roi’). You can still see the remnants of it today as a dusty, muddy-coloured track. We’ve given it a new name now (everything has two names in this place) – Rotten Row.

Fifty years later Queen Caroline decided to dam up the Westbourne river that ran through the middle and blocked it up by the Italian Garden, swelling the centre into a giant sea, before letting it escape back underground by that ornamental waterfall in The Dell. The original river resurfaces again in Buckingham Palace gardens and St. James’s Park.

So that’s a little history of the place… now let’s have a walk around it.

Speakers’ Corner and the Reformers’ Tree

I’m starting off by Speakers’ Corner where the world’s worst orators stand on stepladders to shout at the crowds, haranguing them with apocalyptic scripture and raging against Tony Blair (still) Margaret Thatcher (still!) and anyone who’s got more money than them. The Tories and the Royal Family seem to be their favourite targets.

You have to come on Sunday lunchtime to see anyone worth watching but once upon a time you could listen to famous names likes Karl Marx, George Orwell and women from the Suffragettes movement here. If you walk along one of the paths towards the centre of the grass then you can see where men once argued for their own voting rights but being men, of course, we decided to go one better and burn down the surrounding trees. That circular spot with ‘Reformers’ Tree’ written on it was just a smouldering stump by the time we’d finished with it – they had to send out the Foot Guards to quell the fighting.

People are always comparing Hyde Park to a walk in the countryside and there’s plenty of animals along the top edge. Keep an eye out for the bird boxes nailed up on the trunks to attract the birds, and a flat paddock of compacted sand where horses are made to jump over old oil drums and a water puddle of mud.

Pet Cemetery, Victoria Lodge & Buck House

Gravestones inside the Victorian Pet Cemetery

When you reach Victoria Lodge head towards the road gate but look left at the very last second (in that little gap between the lodge and the fence) – what can you see? I can’t see very much today because it’s all overgrown with weeds, but if you peer through the greenery then you might be able to make out a Victorian Pet Cemetery full of tiny toppled gravestones where they buried their cats and dogs 150 years ago.

Buck House by the northern edge of Hyde Park

A bit further along is Buck House – another spooky little place that looks like a haunted house. I don’t know whether it actually is haunted, but – wait a minute – what was that? Did you see that curtain twitching? The last time I walked past here my sandwich started oozing with blood and I was overcome with such a deep dread and terror that I had to sit down and have a beer (several beers, in fact).

Italian Gardens fountains and cafe

Keep going until you reach the beautiful Italian Gardens at the top of the lake – four stone pools with a few spouting fountains. What I like about this place is the sound of falling fountains and the way the sun shines through the spray making rainbows in the water. It’s one of the nicest little gardens in London and you can probably spend thirty minutes of your holiday just sitting here watching the squirrels and ducks.

Henry Moore sculpture & View of Kensington Palace

Henry Moore statue and view of Kensington Palace — Henry Moore statue, and the view of Kensington Palace beyond

Now carry on walking down the Hyde Park-side of the lake until you reach the Henry Moore sculpture. Everything I’ve ever seen of his can best be described as a blob. Sometimes it’s a bronze blob and sometimes it’s a stone blob – this one is a stone blob. It looks like something that Michelangelo might start with before he chiseled it away to reveal a masterpiece, but for Henry this was the final product.

The best thing about it is the view it reveals of Kensington Palace behind. You’ll need some good eyes (and maybe some glasses) but can you see that brown building in the distance? That’s where William III and Mary lived in the 1690s, Queen Victoria in the 1820s (when she was still a princess), and Diana in the 1990s. Now it’s home to Prince William and Kate.

Ducks & Swans on the Serpentine Lake

Tunnel under the road by the Serpentine lake

Carry on walking under the stone bridge and you’ll probably see a couple of hundred swans sunning themselves on the bank. They’re been joined today by another two or three hundred ducks and it’s like trying to walk down busy Oxford Street on Christmas Eve. I’m not even going to hazard a guess at how many pigeons there are. Have you noticed how the pigeons always stay on dry land? They’re like the grandads at the seaside who stay sitting with the sandwiches whilst the ducks go in the sea.

Feeding the birds by the Serpentine lake

They’re all squabbling around the feet of a little old lady at the moment who’s scooping out great handfuls of crumbs from a carrier bag she’s got scrunched up in her trolley, but something has just spooked them all and they’ve taken off en masse – it’s as if an airfield alarm has sounded out and all the pilots have dashed off to their planes.

We humans have a very fixed idea about what animals like to eat, because what happens if you’re a bird and you don’t like bread? If you’re a bird then you get breadcrumbs. Cats get fish, mice get cheese and rabbits get lettuce and if they don’t like those then tough. Dogs are totally different though, because they get served up the same roast potatoes, beef and gravy that we do (at least, they do in my house).

Lido Cafe & Serpentine Swimming Club

That building across the other side of the lake is the Lido cafe and you might be able to see the Serpentine Swimming Club marked out by bobbing bouys in the water. Believe it or not members of that swimming club actually strip off and swim in the freezing cold water but you’ll have to get up early to see them, it’s only open from 5 AM to 9.30 AM (the public can swim in there all day during the summer).

SolarShuttle and pedal boats for hire

Pedal boats for hire on the Serpentine lake

Keep walking until you reach some big boat houses with a load of bright blue bathtubs roped up round the back. You’ve got two options here: if you have an energetic partner with you then you can hire out a pedal boat and get them to do the pedalling.

Alternatively you can have a nice relaxing ride on the SolarShuttle instead, which is supposed to glide serenely across the surface powered only by the sun. But for that to work you actually need some sun. (I’ve been living in London for forty years and I’ve only ever seen the sun twice in my entire life, so good luck with that.)

Serpentine Bar & Kitchen Cafe

I definitely recommend having a cup of tea in the Serpentine Bar & Kitchen because you can sit outside and watch the raindrops falling on the water. From this perspective the lake almost looks like an ocean – it’s vast! And to think that it was just a piddly little river before Queen Caroline damned it up.

Let’s go and find where the original river disappears underground… it’s round the back of the cafe at the top of The Dell.

The waterfall in The Dell — The Dell’s waterfall at the end of the Serpentine lake

If you find the right spot then you can look down on the waterfall toppling over the edge. It must be a good twenty feet tall at least and it’s the closest you’re going to get to the Victoria Falls in London. The view at the bottom is even better when the beautiful red-trunked tree has been washed in the rain.

Hyde Park bandstand

On your way out have a quick look at the bandstand where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers once famously sang a song. These days it always seems to be boarded up behind padlocked metal fences and builder’s netting.

Worth a visit? ★★☆Value for money? n/aGood for kids? ★★☆Easy to get to? ★★★

London Squire book The author Craig Cross owns city-guide.london and has spent the last decade reviewing the capital’s landmarks, attractions and hotels. His guidebook London Squire is available from Amazon. This review was updated on 28th August 2023

Visit Hyde Park for the Serpentine Lake, Speakers’ Corner & Lido Cafe