Palaces and Dinosaurs
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs
London Cycle Rides; The Highlights of The South East
With her furlough extended for another month, the god-daughter had plenty of time on her hands and she had messaged that this week she was ready for a more challenging ride than the previous ones we’d undertaken in London.
‘Perhaps a small hill or two, nothing too steep. Aren't there dinosaurs somewhere in south London?’, she’d added.
She signed off with an emoji of a dinosaur.
We’d ridden from our meeting place on Blackfriars Bridge to Thamesmead on the traffic-free cycle path of Quietway 14. We’d bumped over the cobbles of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, past the old Royal docks of Deptford, the World Heritage hospital of Greenwich, and the Royal Arsenal of Woolwich with the latte coloured Thames always gliding silently beside us.
We by-passed the town of Thamesmead by taking a well-signed cycle path through a well-groomed park, to Lesnes Abbey. The ruins of Richard de Lucy’s once great church protruded from the grass, and were now a playground for the young, a picnic place for families. We paused at the cafe beside the abbey ruins and the god-daughter saw the dark shape of Lesnes woods rising towards the sky.
‘We are not going up there are we’? she asked full of doubt.
‘Maybe’, I said helpfully. ‘You wanted a hill or two. That’s the first one’.
‘Thank goodness you did not buy me a single speed bike’, she said.
‘Just think of the view that awaits from the top’. I responded.
She paled, drank deep on coffee, ate cake and prepared for the effort ahead.
The climb is not long, and begins easy enough on a soft forest floor, still clearly marked as a cycle path. As it rises through the trees, it becomes a little tougher, and a little rougher under the wheel, until the road is reached. Then it really pulls. Even the bus ground through its gears as it passed us very slowly. Short and sharp, I think one’d say.
The promised view at the top was not to be - unless you count the curving roads of pebble-dashed houses. We stopped briefly to regain our breath beside a garden given over entirely to vegetables. Giovanni was busy on the other side of the wall winding his beans up a cane. He was very proud of his efforts. ‘In 23 years, I never bought no veg’, he said. Once recovered, we resumed our ride towards Crystal Palace, twenty seven kilometres distant. We rode through woods and parks, fields and grand estates. We travelled slowly, gorging on views as encompassing as any city could hope to give. There were horses a plenty, dogs a few and, people rare. Yes, and there were some hills, though fewer than in north London.
‘Where are they, these dinosaurs?’ said a tiring god-daughter. ‘Not up that bloody great hill with what looks like an Eiffel tower on top if it?’
‘Dinosaurs only live on the top of hills’, I explained. ‘So yes, up to the top we go’.
‘Bet they are not real,’ she said. I bet you’re having me on just to get me to the top’.
‘Bloody hell’, she said a few up-hill kilometres later, when coming face to face with a sharp toothed, armour plated giant peering through the loosestrife and reeds. Her grin was not returned by the reptile, which was wallowing in mud and chewing on leaves.
‘Look around here’, I urged as we walked along the lakeside path, ‘there are more of these magnificent and fearsome beasts. There’s an Iguanodon which looks like a giant monitor lizard and there’s a Hylaeosaurus with devilish teeth. See I told you there were dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs’.
‘They are brilliant’, said the sceptic god-daughter. ‘How on earth did they get there?’
‘Walked’, I said unhelpfully.
“Actually they are only 170 years old,’ I said as we ambled towards a cafe.
‘Science nowadays has a better understanding about the size and shape of these beasts, than they did back then. Even so, they are Grade II listed. The only dinosaurs ever to be on a Heritage list’.
‘Good.’ she said. ’s that the end of the hills’?
‘Lunch first, then yes, its all down hill after this’, I replied.
We bought a roll from the Brown and Green Cafe which even hungry dinosaurs would have viewed with distaste, and rode largely downhill onto Brixton. North London gets all the architectural credit - other than Greenwich - which is surprising because the imposing and very grand urban streets of Georgian Camberwell rivals anything that Bloomsbury can offer. Gracious squares, wide tree-lined boulevards, with eye-catching churches at the end of every avenue.
In complete contrast to the grace of 19th century grand terraced housing was a courtyard deep in the heart of Brixton, where Malek and Josh were busy. Malek was painting over a huge multi-coloured mural in turgid green. He had a streak of green paint dribbling from his cheekbone. A few metres along, Josh hissed gold from a spray can at the fresh green. Just a hint of a line. He stepped back. Looked critically, brow furloughed in concentration and advanced again towards the wall. He hissed another line detached from the first. For the next hour whilst we were there, he sprayed lines and shapes here and there along the green wall. It was mesmerising and meditative to watch. Thoughtful, slow, considered.
‘It’ll take over four hours to finish it.’ he said
I asked him how long it would stay on the wall before someone else came to paint over it.
‘Oh, a day or two.’ replied the artist. ‘Then someone will come and create their own piece’.
It reminded me of the Tibetan Buddhist and their sand mandalas. I watched a group once spend a day creating the most intricate patterns with coloured sand and then erase it once it was completed.
‘Nothing is permanent’, I said.
Josh laughed and said, ‘A good lesson to learn mate’.
Ahead, there were llamas to enjoy in Vauxhall and huge containers filled with waving ornamental grasses to weave through in Waterloo. Back where we had started on Blackfriars Bridge, we turned to look up into the dark hills across the southern horizon, where the dinosaurs were still roaming.
‘It’s a shame dinosaurs have to live on the tops of hills’, the god-daughter sighed, ‘but they were definitely the highlight of a great ride’.
‘The best thing for me was that we were in London all day, riding alongside rivers, through woods, across commons and parks and virtually all of it was traffic-free cycling.’
‘Brilliant’, she said, ‘what a city.’
