Queen’s Park

Queen’s Park holds a very dear place in my heart. Hidden amongst the Brighton buzz, it lays peacefully and perfectly laid out for playful families, adorable couples, independent singletons and big groups of friends.
I’ve found it’s perfect for running. There’s enough hills to make it challenging, and enough scenic changes to make it interesting — with a big pond and a scattered arrangement of trees.
Kids love it, adults love it and I love it.

Queen’s Park is exquisite in all seasons. It has a bit of everything to suit everyone.
The play park has loads to offer the kids as far as swings and slides go and lots of patches for parents to set up camp and have a natter. The café is in the centre of the play park and sells yummy cakes + sarnies, well earned cups of tea and ice lollies.
It boasts a huge duckpond, with an island in the middle — home to some rather large geese. Be wary if you’re feeding the ducks! I’ve been chased by the geese several times and I’m still as frightened as I was when I was 3! I’m a bit of a big girls blouse though…
There’s a huge bit by the clock tower — perfect for football and picnics. There are tennis courts, a wild herb garden and a dog walking section.
Getting onto the dog walking section, there is a huge row going on with the dog walkers of queens park (check out their facebook page!) and the council at the moment about the amount of space there is for the dogs. They want the old bowling green to be handed over to the dog section to make it a larger space. It’s getting heated! I enjoy coming here with my pooch every morning, whatever the weather it feels magical. It’s an extremely beautiful and peaceful place to be.
My sons favourite part of the park is the rockery. He spends hours in there exploring and making houses in the caves, playing hide and seek.
I feel very lucky to have this place just on my doorstep.

Queens Park is always a welcome break from the bustle of the city and located just enough out of the centre of town to keep it a Brightonian affair. Depending on your location, you may have to stomp up the Hanover Hill to get to the park, but it’s well worth the exertion.
The place is bordered by a load of mature trees and there are also a number with benches built around them in the park proper. This is a really nice way to have some seating comfort, whilst maintaining a sense of the natural park. Further exploration reveals a children’s play area, a number of hard tennis courts and a quaint duck pond (it used to be a punting lake and was drained and refurbished a few years back)
Being close to a number of nice Hanover pubs also goes in this park’s favour and you can easily spend a day in the sun, or the shade then stroll across the road for a pub dinner and a pint. You will usually find a mix of muesli munching Hanover residents, families and hippie types. This means that the place tends to be more relaxed than areas like the level, or even Preston Park. Certainly a good spot to keep in mind, should you want a low-​fi day in the sun.

This is one of my favourite parks in the city. Its really beautiful and doesn’t seem to get as crowded as some of the others. They have a really nice little lake/​pond which features a nice little rockery garden too.
We used to play tennis there pretty regularly and the courts were always in fine condition and didn’t cost much at all for an hours play.
Its the perfect place to go for a picnic and enjoy the summer months.

I had a really weird experience last time I was in Queen’s Park. It was New Year’s Day 2009 and I had hopes of walking off my wretched hang over so took myself off to the park for a stroll. What confronted me when I arrived was bizarre. Someone had, in their New Years revelry, filled the pond with shopping carts and rubbish bins! Ok so that alone just sounds like a big old destructive mess, but the pond had frozen over night, creating quite an amazing spectacle! I was torn between self-​righteous indignation and ‘ugh, the youth of today’ thoughts and thinking it actually looked like a pretty cool art installation.
Anyway, enough with the storytelling. Queen’s Park is a beautiful park bordered by Hanover on one side and Kemp town on the other. It’s not massive, but it’s perfect for a leisurely Sunday stroll before heading to ‘Home’ for brunch or the pub for a roast. As well as the aforementioned pond (which is usually quite normal and lovely looking) where you can feed the ducks, there is a wildlife garden, where a local herbologist holds workshops for anyone interested.

This is a really pretty park with a perfect location for those toward the Kemp Town end of the city centre. It’s usually not too busy, except at weekends in the height of summer where you’ll be hard pushed to avoid some kid’s football. Lovely place for a bbq with friends though — an great alternative if the beach is really busy or windy. You’ll find a kid’s playground, a café, tennis courts, a lare grassy park with two garden areas, and a big lake with swans and ducks. I came here in the snow last winter which was amazing — the park was the busiest it’d ever been but was big enough to have plenty of snow for all! Although get prepared and buy a sledge — bin lids don’t slide well!

Where most parks in Brighton are more of the gladed area between two suburbs than a big open space, Queen’s Park offers a nice, big, rambling area to walk and relax, with plenty of open features and relaxed spaces to enjoy a summer’s day. A perfect place to take kids and dogs, as well as sit and soak in the sun.
Queen’s Park has everything you’d hope an expect for from a park: a nice big marbled gateway, lots of long, windy paths, a huge kids playground, plenty of grassy sports areas at the back, and a lovely little gladed glen in the middle, with many hidden paths, water features and the like where adults can walk and relax and kids can play adventure. There’s really everything here, and it never seems to get that busy: I suppose the culture of going out walking and relaxing is passing a little for the perch in front of the computer/​TV generation. Still, if you remember the days where a ramble in the park was fun, give this one a try: Queen’s Park is one of the nicer ones in Brighton, and one of the best equipped with nice touches.