Highgate Cemetery and the Capital Ring

This morning we travelled to Highgate and as we walked up the street we saw the Dick Whittington Memorial complete with a stone cat on top. Allegedly this was where the discouraged young Dick was on his way out of London when he heard the sound of Bow Bells telling him to turn around and that one day he would be Lord Mayor of London. We walked up the hill and into pretty Waterlow Park, where we had coffee and pastries sitting outside in the sunshine. Absolutely lovely company and location, I felt very happy. From the park we could see over London to the City away in the distance. Onwards we strode into Highgate Cemetery, somewhere that James and I have never been until today. What a beautiful place! Although much grief will have happened there over the years it was so peaceful and serene, the graves sat amid wild garlic, bluebells and cow parsley, and the many trees provided dappled light. There are many eminent people buried here, some of them still very famous. We saw George Michael’s grave, with his birth name, Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, inscribed on it. We saw Douglas Adams’ grave, in front of which people have filled a pot full of pens. Also the graves of George Eliot, Alexander Litvinenko, Jean Simmons, Lucien Freud, Michael Faraday, Beryl Bainbridge, Bert Jansch, and so many others. The Rossetti family grave, including Christina, and Lizzie Siddal, the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Famously DGR buried lots of his poems with her as a mark of his grief, but then decided that they were too good to waste so he went back and dug them up! DGR is buried elsewhere, in Birchington in Kent. The most visited grave is that of Karl Marx; I thought that it was a bit ugly with a giant head and shoulders of Marx on top of the memorial. There were many, many other graves of all shapes and sizes. 
We walked to Highgate Wood to a delightful wisteria draped café that Ally and Cat knew, and we had lunch in its little hedged garden and chatted. The next part of our day was to walk a section of the Capital Ring, from Highgate to Stoke Newington, which was about 11 km. 
The Capital Ring is a 78 mile (126 km) urban walk which loops around Central London, divided into sections and staying within 10 miles of Big Ben. * Opened in 2005, the Capital Ring crosses the Thames at Richmond in the West and Woolwich in the East, and takes in many of the city's open spaces, nature reserves, and sites of specific Scientific interest. Nick, whom we met last night, gave Ally the Capital Ring guide book for his 30th birthday last year, and inspired by this Ally and Cat have walked all 15 sections. We were so pleased that they decided to share one of their favourite sections with us. 
Walking back down through Highgate we soon joined a grassy disused railway track, complete with a “Spriggan” * gazing down at us from one of the arches, and an overgrown station platform. We walked in through Finsbury Park and along New River, and past the reservoirs in Woodbury Wetlands. We walked into Clissold Park past its small lakes, and took a short detour to see the Fallow deer grazing contentedly in their roomy enclosure. One more park, Abney Park, took us to Stoke Newington and its station. What a brilliant walk! Later we had pizzas back at Ally and Cat’s flat and a relaxing evening. 

* The larger “London Loop” is a 150 mile (242 km) circuit around the edges of London.) 

 * A Spriggan is a mischievous skinny sprite, originating in Cornwall.