Visiting Richmond Park was on my list of things to do in London since I've heard you can see there free roaming deer! How cool is that? The park is situated within borders of London in a rather rich area called Richmond. The difference between Richmond and other poorer areas of London is visible with a single glance. Classy shops, clean streets, expensive cars and houses, and foremost elegant people with even more elegant dogs ;) Since I've spent most of my time here in East London, and most of my life in rather grey Poland, it wasn't hard to spot this! Also add to that all the narrow streets with lovely cafes, intriguing pubs and restaurants and it all gets really enchanting, especially with Autumn colors and weather! Yes, I know, some of my friends probably wouldn't really appreciate foggy and drizzly Autumn weather here, but I did! The only problem with Richmond is that it is quite far from the city center, but oh well, sometimes we need to sacrifice our commute time to live in such a good place, and it seems people indeed do that!
Richmond Park was founded in 1634 as a deer park and is one of the largest Royal Parks in London. What is really amazing when you're there is that the deer aren't at all afraid of people walking their dogs, running, cycling and doing other sport activities. I was finally motivated to visit the park by one of my friends. There was few of us and seems we were really lucky, because we actually saw a deer fight! From my very quick research on the
Internet it looks like the reason why deer fight is quite obvious.
Deer typically fight in order to state that they are the dominate buck in the area and although it may seem like they are trying to hurt one another, it is more of a playfull competition.
It indeed looked more like there were playing with each other rather than fighting, although we preferred to keep a safe distance and not get too involved in their private matters ;)
Curious detail of this trip was spotting quite a lot of parrots! Not dead parrots like from the
Monty Python sketch, but real wild parrots! I found an interesting article about it
"The tropical birds who have made their home in Surrey". Where do they come from? Seems no one is quite sure, but their numbers are growing, mostly thanks to mild winters. Well, my parrot friends, I've heard that this year in the UK we'll have hell of a winter, so keep warm and don't fell off the trees! We don't want you to end up like Monty Python's Norwegian Blue!
