September Challenge: Walking the Dinosaurs

[rydra_wong]

spiralsheep gave me the Crystal Palace dinosaurs as a challenge.

I'd never visited the Crystal Palace dinosaurs before. Obviously (for "in my brain" values of obviously), the only right and proper thing to do would be to walk there from the Natural History Museum dinosaurs.

Because I am not completely masochistic, I decided to divide the walk into stages, breaking off and picking up from points where I could escape onto public transport.

Herewith, my report.



2.9.11: Natural History Museum to Clapham North Tube station

approx 2 hrs 15 mins

The Natural History Museum was crowded, but I paid a brief ritual visit to the cast diplodocus skeleton and the glyptodon (a childhood favourite), then set off into the wilds of Kensington, winding my way round the backsides of various hospitals.

It was ridiculously sunny, and I spent a certain amount of time wondering if I should have brought sunscreen.

As I walked through Sumner Place, I looked up and saw a zeppelin (advertising, maybe?) in the sky, which I took as a good omen.

In a building site, there was a square stairwell, with stairs wrapping round a central liftshaft, standing on its own; I wasn't sure if it was part of something being built, or demolished.

Albert Bridge was closed, so I walked along to Chelsea Bridge, admiring the pagoda across the water in Battersea Park.

This is where I hit some of the areas of London I really don't know, and I was surprised by how nervous it made me.

12.9.11: Clapham North Tube station to Forest Hill train station

approx 1 hr 50 mins

It was an odd, sunny, humid day, filled with ominous clouds that didn't turn into anything.

Plato Road was rapidly followed by Spenser Road, Shakespeare Road, and Milton Road.

I took a break for coffee and the loo in the lovely Brixton Space Bar cafe on Brixton Water Lane, where I was served by someone as androgynous as myself.

Herne Hill Books was disappointing (posh and short on books); New Leaf Books (scruffy charity shop) was not. I snagged a copy of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram, which looked interesting.

I'm almost incapable of passing a bookshop, I acknowledge it.

I passed Brockwell Lido, but had no swimming costume with me, alas (I'm a lido fan -- had I but known!).

I ended my walk with lunch at the Horniman Museum, where I visited the stuffed animals in their natural history collection.

The only time I've visited the Horniman before, I was helping wrangle a group of kids and teens with autism and challenging behaviour as we went round the aquarium, a situation which tends to preclude taking in one's surroundings in a leisurely manner.

So I wandered in the dim light of the gallery, admired the giant stuffed walrus and its "Please do not touch the walrus" sign (which I felt was overly optimistic; I suspect that many of the bare patches in its fur were the result of the loving hands of small children over the decades).

I found a slow loris and a potto, which automatically makes for a good day.

And I noted that the stuffed felis silvestris really, really hates you.

19.9.11: Forest Hill train station to Crystal Palace dinosaurs

approx 1 hour

I got a little weird at the beginning of this walk and decided that I had to start from Forest Hill train station, not Forest Hill tube station, even though they're the same place.

But arriving on the tube would have made it the tube station, not the train station, and then it wouldn't count.

My brain has rules.

I started off walking shortly behind a woman who was having a very, very bad day, but not as bad as the person on the other end of her mobile phone, who was being torn to shreds at great length.

The gist of it was that she was in her forties and wasn't going to fucking take it any more, a point of view I could respect.

Walking about half a block behind her, I got to see an interesting range of expressions on the faces of people she'd just passed, covering everything from nervous amusement to stunned horror.

Bird In Hand Passage is one of the best street names I've ever encountered.

To reach Crystal Palace Park, the map directed me down Jews Walk (an instruction that, under the circumstances, I felt I could comply with).

Shortly afterwards, I got my first look at one of the TV transmission towers -- I think the Crystal Palace one, not the Croydon one, but I could be wrong; later, in the park, I got badly disoriented before I realized there were two.

There was a sign pointing the way to "Zen", but small script underneath said it was something to do with Barratt Homes.

I entered Crystal Palace Park via "51 Gate", also and equally bafflingly known as Fishermans Gate.

The maze was closed for unknown reasons.

But there was a mysterious amazing metal thing, which subsequent Googling established was a concert platform, which Wikipedia says (without citation) is "known locally as the rusty laptop":



On the day, I had no clue what it was, whether it was a building of some kind or Art, and, most importantly, why there was a moat preventing me from climbing it.

Having become somewhat lost in the park, I fell in with two sturdy English walking ladies (of the sort I aspire to grow up to be), who knew where the dinosaurs were.

I explained what I was doing, with some fudging; rather than try to explain flaneurs, I merely said that I'd promised a friend to visit the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, and decided to walk there from the Natural History museum.

"It's what my students would call a framing device," one of the women commented, then asked if I'd been to the Horniman on my way (and when I said I had, whether I'd seen the walrus). They wondered aloud what my next project would be …

And then I reached the dinosaurs.











After surveying the dinosaurs, I found my way to Crystal Palace station, where there were two last surprises -- turning a corner to see this:



And then a persistent ladybird that settled on my shoe as I sat cross-legged on the platform, and refused to fly away home; I finally had to pick it off and toss it into the air to prevent it from coming on the train with me.

It was a good walk.

Comments

[weofodthignen]

Oooooh, pretty dinosaurs :-) Well done, and thanks :-)

[tree]

now, if i ever visit london, i know where one of my touristy jaunts will be. thank you!

[spiralsheep]

What an adventure! Thank you for sharing your report.

There's a children's book about the same walk you did (but in reverse):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_Don%27t_Die

http://www.jrsaville.co.uk/Places/England/London/P4120123w.JPG

I've only seen the dinosaurs once since they were restored (there was an adorable fox cub playing in their midst, much to the delight of the child I was accompanying). When I was a kid they were overgrown and visiting them felt like a real adventure to me even though I was used to the countryside. I also love the Crystal Palace transmitter, which features in many fine South London views, and the statue of Guy the Gorilla. ALL the children I knew had been photographed with Guy the Gorilla, usually sitting between his forearms!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11561957@N06/5624815190/

Oh, and my favourite prehistoric animal when I was a kid was not dissimilar in shape to your glyptodon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosauria

[rydra_wong]

... now I am deeply confused. Because I could swear I've never been to Crystal Palace before, but I think I recognize the Guy the Gorilla statue (and I'm not thinking of the London Zoo one, because Google Image search tells me that one looks quite different).

Mysterious.

[spiralsheep]

I think that statue has been photographed so many times, and is in so many (South) London family photo albums, that it's become a minor feature in the consciousness of Londoners generally. A sort of psychogeographical inclusion through a process mimetic reproduction (one way or another). It also regularly turns up on lists of best/favourite London statues.

[marymac]

I didn't believe someone who told me there were dinosaurs. I should have known. Awesome.

[rydra_wong]

19th-century concrete dinosaurs, even!

[marymac]

Oh that just made it even cooler. Our public art is so very defective in comparison.