While no keen gardener and certainly no Alan Titchmarsh in disguise, I for one was very excited to go on this special Beyond the Map London ‘exclusive’ walk last weekend. Curated by our very own Rob and Ginny, this Walk is only available for one weekend a year – so very exclusive.
As anyone who has participated in one of our Beyond the Map London Walks and Tours will know our Walks and Tours are not ‘sightseeing as you know it’ – far from it! Our Walks and Tours require you to solve brain-teasers, work out puzzles, use What Three Words, undertake Tasks, and take specific photographs to record your fabulous day.
So we all assembled at the designated public house, The Hereford Arms and our chief curator Ginny gave us our instructions , placed us into teams and we duly set-about being tasked as the scribe, the google operator and me – of course the safety officer!
Then off we went to locate our SIX Secret Garden’s from the plethora of many in this wonderful Capital. We were required to work out the best route to visit them all, and in doing so ensuring that our route would eventually take us to our final meeting place – Hyde Park, where a posse of deck chairs awaited us to allow us to rest our weary legs (and brains!).
An added twist to our adventure was we were tasked with purchasing several picnic items from various countries (French, Spanish and Lebanese) along the way – to look forward too once we collapsed into our deck chairs.
What a sight for sore eye’s having walked c4 miles, c5000 Steps, answered c20 questions and brain-teasers and sorting our picnic – we all arrived into Hyde Park to the meeting place which was pinpointed using What Three Words.
As for these secretive gardens well simply breath-taking , tranquil and peaceful as you can see
To know some very famous people lie in rest here and there, the odd huge non-native tree dominates one or two of these nicely manicured spots and we actually have our own native tree. I didn’t know that – did you ?
As I said at the beginning, we were a large group of walkers that day but don’t take my word for it, visit our TripAdvisor page and see what Sallyann, Belinda and Georgia have to say as well.
If you would like to learn a little more about me personally, and my journey via a Prostate cancer diagnosis to Beyond The Map London please check out my LinkedIn profile here.