Clarkes Gardens

Years back when I was yay high, Clarkes Gardens was home to a delightfully miserable-​looking petting zoo filled with scruffy, stinking farm animals that you weren’t allowed to pet because they’d have your knuckles for elevenses. Fat, unhappy ducks and mismatching sub-​species of goat would live behind the chain-​link fence, looking like somebody had just flung them over and legged it. I never saw anybody caring for these beasts. Further back in a yard cluttered with crumbling farmyard outhouses, lived a pot-​bellied pig. I saw him once and never again.
Now the animals are gone. The fence still stands but you can’t see three inches past it because of the tangled Jumanji of weeds that has thrived untouched by goat teeth. It looks unnervingly like the raptor enclosure from Jurassic Park. Yes, the one they lower that cow into.
The rest of Clarkes Gardens is more pleasant though, with meadows and trees and stuff. Further back it gets a bit rough, with the stark trees plunging into a ravine, through which trickles a grim brook. If you fancy a stroll in the sun, stay near the front gates. If you want to know what post-​Rapture Sherwood would look like, venture further in.