London is one of the world’s greenest cities. And with over 20 percent covered by trees, it’s also home to the largest urban forest on Earth. We catch up with Kassondra Cloos, author of newly-released guidebook An Opinionated Guide to Wild London, to talk wild urban spaces, the joy of untamed nature, and why paddling London’s canals is a must.
In her intro to An Opinionated Guide to Wild London, travel journalist, author and Adventure.com’s news and gear writer Kassondra Cloos admits she was “surprised to learn that England’s forests are better off today than they were 700 years ago.”
Despite efforts to pave over green spaces or build where birdlife should be thriving, Wild London highlights the places and communities who have been determined to keep their slice of nature intact, often campaigning and fundraising to achieve this. While the book is predominantly an excellent guide to London’s wild, green spaces, it’s also something of a love letter to the city the author has called home for five years. And ultimately it’s a book of hope.
It’s an old saying, but it always rings true: If we don’t use it, we lose it. So if you’re a Londoner, or you’re visiting London, make an effort to visit some of these gorgeous pockets of green in the capital. From serene gardens smack-bang in the middle of central London to local parks that those of us in the ‘burbs would never imagine could make it into a book, there are some truly unexpected treats in this pocket-sized guide.
We caught up with Kassondra Cloos to find out what inspired her to seek out London’s wild green spaces and why being in nature can be such a simple, yet transformational, act.
You say you didn’t expect London to be so ‘wild’ in parts. What made you see London with different eyes?
Kassondra Cloos: The truth is, I didn’t even realize cities could be this green before I came to London. I arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic, so with not much else to do, I just went walking all day long. In fact, my publisher, Hoxton Mini Press, has a guide to London’s green spaces, and that was the first thing I bought when I moved here.
I decided I wanted to check off all the parks in the book, so I pinned them onto Google Maps. That way, whenever I was somewhere new with some time to kill, I could see what was nearby. In my first week, I visited the Terrace Gardens in Richmond, which a friend recommended, and then I walked home to Shoreditch in east London—along the Thames, through Chelsea and Green Park and past Buckingham Palace and through The City. I walked about 21 miles, and I thought, this is an amazing city.
Did every place in the book need to fulful certain criteria?
Kassondra Cloos: My personal goal was that it should feel untamed. For example, Greenwich Park and Regent’s Park have grounds teams that manicure them and plant flowers, but even those parks have corners where it feels like nature is in charge.
And that was it. I wanted people to go to places where it felt like nature was in charge. Not somewhere curated for their delight, but a natural chaos that had been encouraged to persist for the benefit of the birds, bees, insects, and hedgehogs.
Annoying question, I know, but do you have any favorites—and not because they’re ‘nicer’ than any other, but because they’re special to you?
Kassondra Cloos: People have asked me this question many times—and each time, I give a different answer. Camley Street Natural Park is really special because it’s so unexpected—you’re a few minutes from King’s Cross Station and you feel like you’re in the forest.
If you come from a place that’s very mountainous or woodsy and you don’t live in a big city, then maybe it’s not quite so ‘wow’ to you. But if you’re in the city and happen upon Camley Street, it’s magical. I felt transported the first time I went there.
Phoenix Garden is another one, on a former WWII bomb site. It’s tucked away between Soho and Covent Garden, but even so, you’re probably not going to accidentally end up there. It’s rarely empty, but it always feels peaceful because there are lots of little corners that you can tuck yourself away in.
In the City’s historic financial sector, St. Dunstan’s is a favorite. It’s close to the Sky Garden, which is a pretty touristy spot, but St Dunstan’s is an old church renovated into a garden and it’s so scenic. There seems to be an unspoken agreement to be chill and reverent there, so while you’ll see lots of people taking pictures, it’s never chaos.
Reading the book as a Londoner, I was surprised to see my local park, Grovelands, in a north London suburb. And places like Welsh Harp/Brent Reservoir which I see the sign for during nondescript ring-road drives, or Hainault Forest, near where I grew up. How did you come upon these more ‘out of the way’ places?
Kassondra Cloos: Before I started workshopping the list with my editor and her team, I looked at London on Google Maps and clicked on every green space I could find. I put pins on whatever seemed interesting, then I’d zoom out to see where there weren’t enough pins—and find more places. I started off with around 130 places so I had to cut—a lot—for the final 64.
It was hard because yes, I wanted to include places people know and love, but I also wanted to highlight places no one’s heard of or would have to go out of their way for. And I wanted to make sure that wherever you are in London, you could look at the map and say, “Ah, that isn’t that far.”
Sometime, weeks fly by and it’s easy not to engage with nature on a daily basis, especially those of us who live in cities. What do you—and what could all of us—gain from finding these wild, green spaces?
Kassondra Cloos: It’s so easy to forget that nature is all around us. It wasn’t until I started working on this project that I found Camley Street Natural Park—and yet, how many times did I walk by it and wonder, “What is that?”
Even during research, I’d sometimes find myself speeding through a place, then think, “Wait, stop. You’re meant to absorb what’s around you.” So I’d put my phone on airplane mode, look around and feel more connected to the space.
Of course, nature can’t remove the cause of any stresses, and the woods can’t change the circumstances of your life, but being outside would often completely change my mood if I consciously made myself more present and put away distractions. If you stop and listen to the birds, it brings you into a different state of mind. It’s a real shift, and a welcome interruption from whatever trajectory you’ve been on.
Did you learn a lot by engaging more? For example, did you become something of a birdwatcher or discover a penchant for something niche, like moss?
Kassondra Cloos: It’s funny you ask that because yes and no. I didn’t know very much about specific birds before this project, and during the early stages of my drafts, my editor would ask for information such as what birds you can find in each place. I realized a lot of places are home to the same birds, so I’d go looking for different species to make sure I wasn’t talking only about kites and herons everywhere. I learned that the Bittern is the loudest bird—you can hear it for miles.
For Hornchurch Country Park, I even spent a while researching a single beetle, as there were so many birds in the entries and we needed something else. I came across this iridescent beetle called the swollen-thighed beetle or the false oil beetle and I ended up on a big deep dive on it. It didn’t make the book though!
Of the green spaces outside London, which place did you particularly love?
Kassondra Cloos: One of the hardest to reach is Titsey Place in Surrey, south of London. That was an adventure as I’m not accustomed to driving on the left—plus the roads are windy and narrow, so you tuck in to the side of the road whenever another car’s coming. It felt like we were driving up the side of a mountain.
Then you get there, walk along the trail, and you have these pastoral views that are classic England—sweeping countryside, very green and pleasant, sheep on hills in the distance. It’s magical. Well worth the detour if you can.
Which other cities have surprised you for being so green?
Kassondra Cloos: It’s funny because when I try to think of cities that are surprisingly green, I end up listing every city I’ve been to. Because ever since I’ve realized how green London was, I started seeking out these places in other cities, too, and seeing all of them completely differently.
There’s nature everywhere if you’re willing to look for it. Gothenburg and Stockholm are incredibly green cities with tons of parks. Berlin has so many lakes and ponds. Oslo is amazing—you can go cross-country skiing from the metro. There’s one spot where you can take the metro to the top of the hill and sled down.
I’m less familiar with the green side of US cities because I haven’t spent as much time seeking that out, post-urban nature revelation. But I’ve heard lots of good things about Chattanooga, the new National Park City.
You’ve often kayaked through London. How does being on the water change how you experience nature in the city?
Kassondra Cloos: I had this corridor I’d paddle up and down near my home in east London, which was near the Lea River and the Lee Navigation. I’d start near the Princess of Wales pub, in Clapton, then either paddle north towards Tottenham, which is the scenic, wild side of the Lee Navigation, or south towards Hackney Wick, which is more urban. It’s very cool—north of Clapton, you’ll see herons, swans, and ducklings.
In Hackney Wick, you can visit The Milk Float, which is a bar and café on an old boat. They have a paddle-by window where you can order a hot dog (or a pint) from your kayak, and I just found that very charming. I made so many friends paddle the canal with me, even and especially when they were visiting London from abroad.
It’s such a different experience to experience London’s canals from the water because there’s no traffic. If you walk along the canals through the city, it’s lovely, but they’re often narrow and you have to dodge cyclists or runners or people with dogs. But you can have all of the benefits of the canal with (almost) none of the chaos if you’re paddling. Occasionally, you have to get out of the way of a narrowboat, but more often than not, the only thing you have to dodge are swans. They’re very scary.
Some of the wild spaces in the book have great backstories, of transformation, rewilding, restoration. Which stories really stayed with you?
Kassondra Cloos: Rainham Marshes is incredible. It’s way out east, on the banks of the Thames, and it used to be a military training ground. When I visited, I came across a sign that said it was used as a decoy bombing site during the Blitz. They lit bonfires to mimic the aura of city lights, to try to trick German pilots into dropping their bombs there, instead of over London. I was flabbergasted by that.
You’d never know it now. It’s been open to the public as a bird reserve for about 20 years and it’s well-designed with boardwalks around ponds and reservoirs that birds love. You might see old training apparatus from its military days, but it’s bird heaven, and free to visit. They have a wonderful visitor center, great staff, and lots of interpretive signs. It’s very beginner-friendly if you’re new to birdwatching, so you can join a walk or tour and find out more.
Did you meet any interesting people during your research?
Kassondra Cloos: When I left Rainham Marshes to walk to Hornchurch Country Park (about 5 miles), I took a wrong turn and ended up in an industrial part of town, by a landfill. And it turns out that birds are very attracted by landfills, because some feast on decaying food, and predator birds will feast on them. I came across a guy who seemed to be doing a survey and recording sounds, and he taught me a lot.
His name is is David Darrell-Lambert and I found out he’s an ornithological surveyor. He was so passionate about his work and it was fascinating to learn about his career. He wrote a book about birdwatching in London back in 2018—way before it was cool—and he’s an incredible photographer.
Does the greening of our urban spaces give you hope, especially amid so much talk of we’re losing our green spaces?
Kassondra Cloos: It does give me hope, because London, as an example, has gotten greener over time. It was maybe halfway through my research when it clicked for me that so many interpretive signs I’d read said, “This used to be [something else]. And today it is [this lovely place].”
A lot of parks and nature reserves around the city are new, opened up within the last 25 years, like the London Wetland Center. Woodbury Wetlands is also fairly new. And recently, canals in East London have been cleaned up so you can paddle them, and birdlife has returned.
So many of these projects were spearheaded by people who just loved where they lived and wanted to make it greener and more accessible for themselves and their neighbors, so they worked hard to protect an area from development or to actively rescue and rewild it. If you go to the website of Selsdon Wood Nature Reserve, they’ve got an extensive list of every plant in the woods, curated by local people. Seeing how often that’s happened throughout London gives me hope that other cities can replicate that.
Now you’re moving back to the US, what will you miss about London?
Kassondra Cloos: London became this incredible, massive green place to me. I could watch foxes tromp along the back garden fence from my bedroom window—I’d even wake up early in the morning to watch them as I love them so much. I think they’re beautiful and special, and London does not appreciate them enough. Ryan Gosling recently said this in an interview and I think six people sent it to me—I could not agree more. Watching foxes steal take-out containers from trash bins is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
I’m actually heading off soon to a nature retreat in New Hampshire, close to home here in Rhode Island, and it’s similar to the Unplugged retreat I mention in the book. So I suppose you could say I’ve been inspired by what I’ve experienced in London, to repeat it on the other side of the pond.
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London-born-and-bred with a Ugandan-Indian heritage, Meera Dattani is Adventure.com's executive editor and an award-winning freelance travel journalist. Her stories center on food and cultural heritage, wildlife and conservation, and soft adventure, often through a lens of decolonizing and modernizing travel writing. Her work has been published in National Geographic Traveller, BBC Travel, Condé Nast Traveller, Olive magazine and many others.
