“Do you miss it?” – It’s a question I still hear at least a handful of times a year after swapping the busy London boroughs for a quieter suburban life in Yorkshire. Over the years I’ve honed and refined my answers, often opting to give the questioner a polished but personalised version of the answer they wanted or expected to hear.
Funnily enough, since the Corona Virus pandemic, the question of whether I still yearn for the twenty-four-hour buzz of the capital hasn’t come up! But the truth is, while I’m very rooted in our Yorkshire home on the borders of the Dales, there is and always will be some things I miss from my home town. Urban foxes are usually the first thing that comes to mind and I’m always cursing myself for how much I took them for granted. But it’s the reminiscences of the Royal Parks where I spent a great deal of my pre-Yorkshire life that will often deliver those deep pangs of nostalgia.
Nestled within an ever-changing city skyline, Bushy & Richmond parks offer a space to retreat and regroup. A place to step off that dizzying Ferris wheel of urban life and absorb an older, slower landscape.
I can barely imagine the number of people these green spaces must have swallowed up and spat out again over 2020. I know both parks have been a significant and poigniant backdrop in my life and still are, as visits to Bushy and/or Richmond park are always a prerequisite of any trip down south.
Here are some photos from an early morning photo walk taken around this time last year at Bushy Park.
