Photos of London: Hilly Fields in the Snow

Hilly Fields in the Snow, a set on Flickr.

On Friday, when the snow began falling on London — something that is not even necessarily an annual occurrence in the UK — I took a tour by bike around Brockley, my home in south east London, and also visited Ladywell, Lewisham and Greenwich, taking photos as the first snow fell.

I posted the first set of photos yesterday, and was planning to post the second set, featuring Greenwich, today, but then it began snowing again, more heavily than before, and I spent this afternoon on another photographic trip — first of all, taking my son sledging in Hilly Fields, the hill-top park in Brockley that is one of my favourite places to visit, and then cycling through Brockley and on, via New Cross, to Deptford, capturing one of my favourite urban environments in the snow.

This set, the 73rd in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, features the first part of today’s journey — the sledging in Hilly Fields, which is always packed out when the snow falls. I hope to post the other sets soon, although I also have other sets to post from my recent visit to the US, and, in particular, of New York, which is as visually mesmerising as London, and which, between appointments dealing with the ongoing disgrace that is the prison at Guantánamo, I had the opportunity to get to know better than ever before.

In the meantime, as the snow still falls, and as I prepare to go out on my bike once more to take some night photos, I hope you enjoy these glimpses of winter parklife in London. Hilly Fields is rarely as busy as it is when the snow falls, and it’s also wonderful to see children and their parents out in force, enjoying pastimes that nature provides, and which have been enjoyed for hundreds of years, as a refreshing alternative to the corporate toys that take up most of our free time — my camera and my computer included, of course!

Admittedly, it is possible to splash out on top-end sledges and toboggans, but, as one teenager demonstrated, if you don’t have a sledge, you can also use an estate agent’s sign — which to my mind, is a distinct improvement on its intended use!

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.