Camley Street Natural Park: a marsh among the tracks of King's Cross, London

At King's Cross, behind the international station of St Pancras, there is a gate on Camley Street that most passengers do not even notice. Step through it and within a few paces the noise of the trains fades: ahead of you opens a pool of water fringed by reeds, a meadow and a strip of woodland. These are the two acres (a little under a hectare) of Camley Street Natural Park, an urban nature reserve squeezed between the Regent's Canal and the railway tracks.

History of the site

The land tells an industrial story. For much of the nineteenth century there was a coal depot here linked to the railway, which unloaded and sorted fuel for the city. Decommissioned and left abandoned until the 1970s, the space was handed over in 1984 to the London Wildlife Trust, which opened it as a park in 1985. Nature, left to its own devices, has colonised the ballast: today the site is home to more than three hundred species of higher plants, from the orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii to hazel, hawthorn and birch.

Flora and fauna

What you actually see depends on the season and on patience. The setting is organised into three habitats — wetland, meadow and woodland — that attract wildlife surprising for central London: amphibians in the pond, insects among the long grasses, at least six species of mammals and a good presence of water-linked birds, such as the moorhen, the coot and the reed bunting. Along the canal you may happen to spot herons standing sentinel or, with luck, a kingfisher flying low over the water. The wilder corners, such as the area left to rotting dead wood that shelters insects and fungi, are designed precisely for biodiversity, not for picture-postcard looks.

The pond

The educational heart of the park is the pond with its pond-dipping platform: a wooden walkway from which, net in hand, you fish out and observe aquatic invertebrates. It is an activity designed for school groups but understandable to anyone who bends down to look. After a long closure for works between 2017 and 2021, the reserve reopened with a new visitor centre and a small café, opened in 2022, which also serves as a resting point. Tours must be booked for groups and school visits; otherwise you simply walk in and stroll.

Getting there

The reason it stays overlooked by tourists is simple geography: it is a few minutes' walk from one of the busiest transit areas in the United Kingdom, and yet it does not appear on the itineraries. To get there, get off at King's Cross St Pancras (metro and national and international trains), head down Camley Street alongside the canal and follow the sign to the entrance gate. The Somers Town bridge, opened in 2017, connects the area to the Gasholder Gardens, so the visit can be woven into a wider walk along the Regent's Canal. Admission is free and the park is open every day; for up-to-date opening hours it is worth checking the London Wildlife Trust website before you go.

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