Hampstead Heath ponds

• UNDER the cloak of Covid-19, the City of London Corporation has crept up and robbed us all of something so precious and life-affirming.

Hampstead Heath has been clobbered and left with what they nowadays call “life-changing injuries”.

I am a great believer in exercise in the open air.

I bought an Evans tourer 41 years ago and began commuting by bike (not in Lycra I might add) and when I moved to Kentish Town 26 years ago I added to that a morning dip in the ponds, every day, summer and winter.

I call it my daily appointment with Dr Heath, and he has certainly helped me to stay on top.

I thought I had retirement sorted. It’s not just the swim itself but the whole experience that is such a tonic.

That, very sadly, has gone now.

When you stand on the dam between the boating pond and the men’s pond on a beautiful summer’s afternoon and look one way and see scores of people out on the bank enjoying the sunshine and having fun, and then look to the other side and see it eerily still, and quiet and joyless, something must be terribly wrong.

What has been gained at the sacrifice of so many people’s recreation? Is this what success is supposed to look like?

STEPHEN ROWLINSON
Countess Road, NW5