London has been experiencing some absolutely awesome weather of late and with the long summer days it seemed a waste to simply go home after work or even to go out but still be stuck inside some building. Rita thought it would be a great time to get out to Hampstead Heath.

Its been quite some time since I’ve been to the Heath. In fact it may have been years ago that I came here! My most lasting impression, right or wrong, was of some giant chair. Oh, actually, the chair and the fact that the Heath was a large sprawling mess of uncut grass which was perfectly high enough to … er … have privacy to do … er … whatever you felt like doing! Heh heh.

Since the decision to go the Heath was a bit last minute we hadn’t really made proper plans on how to get there, I didn’t even print a map!, and we kind of met up late because we’d both gone home to get changed and Rita pick up the makings for a picnic. In short this lack of planning meant we firstly got lost trying to find the Heath from Hamstead station on the Northern line and then when we hopped on a bus, purely because it was heading to Jack Straw’s House (it made us laugh), we were dropped off somewhere totally random. We spent the next hour and a half or so trying to make our way to some sort of look out point and we were being directed all over the place. The Heath is not easy to navigate and though it felt like we walked for ages we later found out we hadn’t even moved beyond on eight of the place. The pond was the prettiest thing we saw!

The area we were in had all these trails where it wasn’t always obvious that the path actually lead somewhere. We started walking down a couple but it got quite narrow and treacherous. Quite creepy too in the falling light. The fact we were lost and couldn’t find a hill for a view of the sunset cracked us up however. So close to wetting myself I was laughing so hard!

We finally settled down on a bench to have our dinner at about 9.30! Rita had made some delicious roast chicken baguettes, bought some crisps, fruit and sundried tomatoes with feta. Dellish!