Highgate Cemetery and scary stone angels

A lot of the places I go to are because I've read about them in books. Highgate Cemetery was one such place. After I'd read and enjoyed Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, I read her second book, Her Fearful Symmetry. It was set in a flat that backed onto the cemetery and within the grounds. I tried to go there on my last stay in London, but the day I was going it poured, so I put it off, but this time I got the Northern Line up to Archway and walked a bit up a hill and through a lovely park to get there. It was as fascinating as I had hoped and I loved it. It's the burial place for a lot of artists, writers, architects, communists, actors etc. It's in two halves and the part I went around was quite charming. Not particularly well-kept, but not dilapidated, just lovely ramshackle grave markers and lots of wildflowers and weeds. There was a map to identify the most interesting graves and I spent a couple of hours wandering around. The cherry blossoms were floating through the air and it was an amazing experience. (Although last night was the new Dr Who series with an episode about stone angels and I was terrified.)

Douglas Adams, as in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, one of the modern ones

Karl Marx, not the prettiest of memorials, but probably the most imposing

and another modern one, a sculptor - note the DEAD carved out.
I liked this sculptor's one better... I've got the other half of the cemetery to visit next time. You have to do a guided tour for that. I went for a walk to see the flats where the book was set and they are very impressive. I've never been down a street like it anywhere else in London.

Then I walked down the hill to Hampstead Heath and spent an hour wandering around there, watching crazy men swimming in the duck pond (it's not nearly warm enough and it's full of ducks for god's sake). The women's swimming/duck pond/pool, was predictably and sensible full only of ducks. I got the tube into the city and with some time of my day off still left, I went up to Regents Park, which was (wait for it) full of gorgeous flowers and flowering trees. I'll save you from yet more flower photos, but you have only to ask...