The name is suggestive of some happy-skippy place out of a Rupert Bear story rather than its actual, rather gritty Manor House setting. But this Victorian-era reservoir, reopened by national treasure David Attenborough a few years ago as an urban nature reserve, has been a godsend recently. A boardwalk runs around the reedbanks; the former coal house is now a decent café with great bacon butties; the wide-open scudding skies are fabulous at sunset. It’s a brilliant example of rewilding and now birds of all feathers flock here – check the list posted weekly by the entrance and see if you can spot anything more exotic than moorhens and swans. Kingfishers, snipe, herons and terns; dragonflies, bats and butterflies. From here you can look south to the spires of Stoke Newington and across to another reservoir for wild swimming and sailing. Tower blocks loom nearby – this is no bucolic escape but an essential city pocket of otherness.
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