High up in North London, set into the slope between Highgate Village and Hampstead Heath, Highgate Cemetery (highgate-cemetery.org) is the resting place of some of London’s most prominent former residents, including Karl Marx, George Eliot and Douglas Adams. It’s a beautifully atmospheric place, ripe with birdsong and trailing roses. While the primary paths are bright and well maintained, the routes between the graves beneath the trees are tangled and fretted with broken stones dating back as far as the 1830s. The East cemetery is open daily, but the grander West cemetery can only be visited as part of a guided tour. If you make your way down to the bottom of the precipitous Swain’s Lane, you can restore your appetite for life at the excellent Bull & Last (thebullandlast.co.uk), a pub and dining room beside Hampstead Heath famous for its Sunday roasts.
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