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It is amazing to think that there is somewhere so peaceful and beautiful as Regent’s Park in central London. I often go there on a lunchtime, particularly in the spring and summer, when it is full of flowers and wildlife.

Today, walking through the Inner Circle, I saw a peacock in the flower beds. Not doing much - just strolling around and pecking at the ground. This was obviously a wild bird, though, as it was a long way from the zoo. The place was infested with squirrels, too, mainly chasing each other around up and down the shadier parts of the trees, and stopping stock still when they saw you, presumably because they thought it would make them more difficult to see.

This summer, it’s been home to a small MSN-sponsored maze in the shape of the MSN butterfly. There are posters all over the place bigging it up, but it is so nondescript from the outside that it’s easy to mistake for a regular hedge.

Anyhow, today I found it.

Search this unique butterfly-shaped maze to find an amazing butterfly exhibit at its centre. When your physical search is complete, log onto the MSN Search Pod located in the maze to continue your search through cyberspace for more activities, entertainment and fun.

That’s how the Royal Parks website describes it. I didn’t find any butterflies in there, but I did find the search pod. It had been vandalised; someone had smashed the screen.

Fortunately there is plenty else to see, and there is a metal sculpture exhibition by hat designer David Shilling going on at the moment. Great aluminium tripods are standing tall in the grassy areas, while silver shark fins seem to have infested the lakes and waterfalls. Some of the tallest sculptures are 40ft high, and look so precariously delicate that they could snap with the slightest breeze. My favourite, though, is the torn sheets of metal shown above. It was so bright and reflective in the light of today’s scorching sun.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 6:25 pm and is filed under London, Picture story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.