Activities
The Heath is home to a range of activities, including 16 different sports. It is used by walkers, runners, swimmers and kite-flyers, and is regarded as the home of cross-country running in Britain. There is an annual 5000 metres run through the Heath organised by Umbrella, and until February 2007 Kenwood held a series of popular lakeside concerts.
The West Heath is regarded as one of the most notable night-time cruising grounds in London and this has led to a problem with used condoms and other litter. George Michael has revealed that he cruises on the Heath, an activity he then parodied on the Extras Christmas Special.
Swimming takes place all year round in two of the three natural swimming ponds: the men's pond which opened in the 1890s, and the ladies' pond which opened in 1925. The mixed pond is only open from May to September, though it is the oldest, having been in use since the 1860s.
Facilities include an athletics track, a pétanque pitch, a volleyball court and eight separate children's play areas including an adventure playground.
Read more about this topic: Hampstead Heath
Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure.... Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon.... The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness.”
—Henri Lefebvre (b. 1901)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do—I just did it.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)