Autumn Colours: Hampstead Edition

So I'm sure I'll grow tired of these wonderful colours around me soon. In fact I don't think I'll have a choice, the leaves are definitely starting to disappear. A brilliant yellow vine that I've been admiring as I pass it on my way to work lost all it's leaves the other day.  I think I'll have to move on to Christmas lights to get my colour fix. 

One of the non-swimming ponds in the Heath

Hampstead had it's Christmas fair last weekend and the lights here were switched on then.  They normally get some celebrity to do the actual switch on, so I was kind of hoping for Ricky Gervais, since he lives around here, but no such luck, some comedian I'd never heard of who's about to go on tour got the honours.  I have to say though having been to a few English Christmas markets recently, they really don't have anything on the German markets.  The German ones are very much all about Christmas, they sell Christmas decorations, mulled wine, Christmas goodies, there's usually ice-skating rinks and a random Santa Claus wandering round, oh and the glorious, glorious food!  In England it's more just a normal market that happens to be on at Christmas time.  At the Hampstead market they even had sideshow attractions, because nothing says Christmas more than getting ripped off by carnival folk.

Even the water was orange!

Now while England may not do a good Christmas market I'm still hopeful for their light displays.  I haven't gone out investigating these yet, so that's something I'm going to try and do over the next few days.  Hopefully they make up for the, quite frankly, disappointing Christmas markets.


All these pictures were taken up on Hampstead Heath, not at the market, and though it may seem as if they were taken at twilight it was only 3pm at the time, but then I suppose that is dusk at the moment here.

This photo seems washed out on the laptop as compared to the iMac, maybe I need to calibrate my screens?

Couldn't resist a bit of sepia

You've seen this one before :)

The leaves are nearly gone now

The last ones are still clinging on

View across from the Heath

To me this is a typical English park view, green grass, people, church in the background and the autumn leaves

Thank goodness for evergreens to keep some colour around