Opinion : Is Hughenden Park worth visiting?
The other day my good self wanted to relax. What could be better than a nice walk in a local park?
Naturally my first choice would be to visit the magnificent Higginson Park in Marlow. As everyone knows Higginson is one of the best parks for miles around with many excellent facilities, nice views and the lovely River Thames running past.
However yours truly remembered reading the news article that appeared on this site a few weeks ago entitled ‘Hughenden Park given prestigious Green Flag Award‘.
Previous visits to the park in Hughenden have not really been very enjoyable for me with burnt out litter bins, a desperate lack of facilities and yobbos on bicycles ruining the time yours truly spent there.
But one can’t live in the past, times change and things change too. If Hughenden Park has just been given a ‘Purple Flag’ it must have improved so why not go and take a look I thought?
Soon my good self was trundling along the Hughenden Road in my trusty motor heading towards the park. Pulling into the little car park on the left yours truly was feeling quite optimistic about my visit.
With my car locked your humble servant headed into the park. The park is certainly a large open space and the tall mature trees are most spectacular.
Unfortunately the path was covered in dead material from the nearby trees and needed a jolly good sweep to get the path clean, as shown in the picture below.
Walking along the path the little bridge over the stream came into view. Just before the bridge I noticed two new noticeboards, one has a map and useful information about the park. Sadly a flyer had been attached at the bottom of the shiny new noticeboard in a shabby manner with brown parcel tape as shown below.
However the other noticeboard appears to have ‘gone damp’ and the notices have fallen down to the bottom of the board making them unreadable as shown below.
Quite honestly the noticeboards are a disgrace. You would never see ‘taped flyers’ adorning a notice board in Higginson Park. I’m also left wondering why the noticeboards are located so far in the park rather than being at the entrance by the car park, as shown in the picture below (the Hughenden Road is in the far distance).
A few feet further down the path was the quaint bridge but sadly the stream had dried up making the bridge look a tad pointless as can be seen below.
Yours truly would have continued walking through the park however for some reason the path ended just beyond the bridge as can be seen below.
Not wanting to get my nicely polished shoes muddy I decided to sit down and eat the picnic that yours truly had brought. Of course to sit down one needs a bench.
Luckily there happened to be one close to the bridge. Sitting there I was treated to the view of the bridge, dried up river, spectacular scenery and a red dog poo bin.
However the nearest litter bin was on the other side of the bridge rather than being close to the bench where I was sitting. If my good self had wanted to have thrown anything away in the bin I would have to cross the bridge to get to the bin while leaving my lunchbox exposed on the bench.
Surely the bins should be close to the benches where people are likely to eat and make litter? They are in Higginson Park.
Several people were lurking in the area looking at my good self on the bench, they too were carrying what appeared to be picnics. Why aren’t they finding a bench to sit on I wondered? Then looking around I realised why, it’s because there are no other benches in that part of the park!
Can you see a bench in the picture below?
Or in this picture :
Or this one :
Or this one :
Or this one :
Here it is, the one and only bench in that part of Hughenden Park :
By George! Higginson Park in Marlow is full of benches yet Hughenden Park has just one in the part of the park my good self was in.
Shabby notice boards, dried up rivers, paths that need sweeping, paths that only go as far as the bridge and dog poo bins placed in the view of anyone sitting on the one and only bench! I’m flabbergasted Hughenden Park has a been given ‘Purple Flag’, which incidentally was nowhere to be seen….
I’m going to Marlow next time yours truly wants a picnic in a park, it’s far better there.
What do you think?
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