Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Highgate

No, the title of this isn't a crossover with FF8, it's where I went earlier today - with a couple of visiting Americans I had a fun walk from Archway station up to Highgate cemetery, then across Hampstead Heath to Belsize Park station.

If you've never been to Highgate cemetery I highly recommend a visit - it's mostly famous for being where Karl Marx is buried, but what it really is is a snapshot of London over the last couple of hundred years. A whole area near Marx is dominated by various radicals, revolutionaries and dissidents, notably including the grave of Farzad Bazoft, a journalist working for the Observer who was executed on Saddam Hussein's orders in 1990 after being convicted on trumped-up charges of espionage. There are a lot of Iranian and Iraqi dissidents as well as various other radical thinkers there, all buried just across the way from Karl himself. I bet they have some great discussions.

Other areas are dominated by London's Polish community, others by the Chinese and Korean communities - you can probably find every country on the planet represented somewhere in its winding paths and shaded groves. Well worth a visit, and it's well worth supporting the Friends of Highgate Cemetery who look after it. It's still a working cemetery - there were plenty of fresh graves there when we visited today.

Some photos from the cemetery are here, and some more general photos from the walk are here.