BLUE BRIDGE, REGENT’S PARK

OCTOBER 23, 2026

                                                                    BLUE BRIDGE AND DUCK IN REGENT'S PARK

This week I would like to show you one of my favorite spots on Earth, Regent’s Park in London.     I captured this image on a warm winter’s day during my third trip to London with Fran in 2009. I fell in love with this park in 1976 during my first year’s stay in London, when I realized that my bicycle commute to my job in a pub could with just a small diversion, run almost entirely through the park. There are few bicycle rides that can compare, especially since a ride through London at that time was basically risking life and limb every few intersections. While I rode through the park I became the apex predator, with only other cyclists to worry about. This image is one of my London photographs in my latest book, "Urban Fragments."

One London’s Royal Parks, the land was originally “requisitioned by Henry VIII when he dissolved the monasteries in the Fifteenth Century. A few hundred years later Regent’s Park became the crown jewel of one of London’s greatest planning schemes of the Victorian era. John Nash led a development team that conceived an entire new section of London that was centered around a grand street that ran north from Central London, bordered by blocks of grand townhouses with a unified design vocabulary. The fact that this scheme worked just as well with horse-drawn cabs of the 1840’s as with all of the various transportation devices that served London ever since points out how strong the basic idea served this new portion of the city. Regent’s Street concluded at a massive new park of 410 acres that is so large and beautiful that it has several sections that are actually parks unto themselves. A world-class Zoo, a canal, a series of university buildings, lakes, over a dozen private villas that host mostly Arab potentates, and a hidden university all co-exist in the park without impinging on the other sections of the park. All this along with some of the most beautiful promenades and gardens like the ones that I biked to work oh so many years ago.

Another thing that makes Regent’s Park special for me is that it borders a whole series of neighborhoods that constitute a London that is not overwhelmingly for tourists. These neighborhoods range from edgy to very posh without the overwhelming wealth of Knightsbridge or Sloane Square. While there are several commercial streets, these are predominantly residential neighborhoods where real people live their lives.

The Blue Bridge spans one of the sections of Regent’s Park Lake in the western section of the park. The wooden structure is supported by an iron arch that has always been painted blue and has given the bridge its name. Like many thousands of people I was struck by the overall ambience and pleased when the duck made an appearance to complete the scene. The only post-processing I engaged in was to slightly increase the saturation of the blues, because this is the Blue Bridge after all.