Apple Tree Yard and a Pavilion

As you may remember, I just read a novel by Louise Doughty called "Apple Tree Yard." She named it for a street near St. James Palace in London that really exists. I was curious what Apple Tree Yard looked like, so I began a walk there yesterday morning, taking the tube down to Green Park.

There is no apple tree in Apple Tree Yard, or even a sign that there ever was an apple tree. There's no tree at all, in fact. It's a dead-end street surrounded by big buildings. In the book, a fateful assignation occurs between two characters in one of the doorways. (Way too many people around for that to happen in real life, it seems to me.)

But there is an interesting monument to Sir Edwin Lutyens, the designer of New Delhi, who apparently presented his plans for the new city in Apple Tree Yard. Why this would be true I'm not sure -- perhaps there was a colonial government office or architecture firm there back in the days of the Raj.

From there I got a coffee and walked to St. James Square. If I've ever been in this park before, I don't remember it. It was exciting to find a little corner of London that I'd never seen. I sat on one of the benches with my coffee and wondered who on earth Gulielmus III could be. I thought maybe he was some obscure Saxon king from antiquity, but no -- turns out that's a Latin rendering of the English name William III. I had no idea!

From there I walked through Green Park to the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, and then on into Hyde Park itself.

Near the Serpentine I and a group of other people had to pause for this gaggle of geese to cross the path and get in the water. None of us were sure what to do until the woman in front of me blazed a trail right through them, and I followed suit. By the time I got to the other side they were mostly all in the pond.

I wanted to check out this year's Serpentine Pavilion, an annual construction associated with the adjacent Serpentine Gallery. This year's pavilion is called "A Capsule in Time" by the Bangladeshi firm of Marina Tabassum Architects. According to a nearby plaque, it's inspired by architecture in the Bengal Delta, where structures are ephemeral in an ever-shifting landscape of land and water. The pavilion itself only exists for five months in the summer, and apparently part of it can move.

Here's an interior view. There's a cafe and bookstore at one end, so visitors can get a drink and relax beneath the shady canopy.

I kept walking across the park and decided (ambitiously) that I would walk all the way back home. I wound through the part of the park where I used to walk a very puppyish Olga when we lived in Notting Hill, long ago, and then up along Queensway and through Maida Vale and Kilburn.

Here's a pub I passed on the way. I blogged this place before, many years ago, when it was being refurbished. I've still never been there, and it was closed when I passed late yesterday morning. (Too early for a beer anyway!)

I also passed the vast housing estates in South Kilburn that are being redeveloped by Brent council. The project seems to be moving at a snail's pace. A year and a half ago I visited a couple of vacant structures there, Exeter Court and Hereford House, and photographed the graffiti. Those structures are still standing and look exactly the same, except now there's a more secure perimeter fence around them so you can't get as close. At the time I wrote that new homes were supposed to be developed on the site by 2026. Clearly that's not happening -- the current plan, if I'm reading it right, says they'll be finished in 2029.

Anyway, from there I walked up to West Hampstead. By this time I was super-thirsty -- temperatures were in the mid-80s (F) again yesterday. I stopped at a grocery and bought a cherry Coke, which is not something I would ever normally drink, but I was craving both sugar and liquid and let me tell you, those chemicals were good.

Just before I got home I bought a hunk of watermelon at our local produce shop, and Dave and I enjoyed it in the garden last night. All told I walked about seven miles, according to Google maps.