Hyde Park
Three hundred and fifty acres of Royal Park in the middle of London, free, with a lake to row, a soapbox at Speakers' Corner and room to lose the whole city.
The lowdown
Hyde Park is the great free escape in the middle of London, three hundred and fifty acres where you can walk for half an hour and forget there is a city around you at all. It has been open to the public since 1637 and Londoners have been protesting, swimming, riding and sunbathing in it ever since.
Down the middle runs the Serpentine, the lake you can row on or just sit beside, and on the north-east corner is Speakers' Corner, where anyone has stood up and said their piece since the 1800s. Add the rose garden, the memorials and the long tree-lined avenues and you have a whole free day in the centre of town.
It joins straight onto Kensington Gardens, so you can wander from Hyde Park Corner all the way to Kensington Palace without leaving the green. It is the kind of free that you stop noticing is free, which is exactly the point.
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