Sport and Recreation
Barnet FC is the local football team, currently in Football League Two - the fourth tier in English football. They play at the Underhill Stadium. They first reached the Football League in 1991 as champions of the GM Vauxhall Conference but lost their status 10 years later with relegation, only to return four years later - again as Conference champions. Barnet also has a Non-League football team London Lions F.C..
Barnet Cricket club and Old Elizabethans CC have merged to form one club in Barnet and currently play their games at Gypsy Corner. Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers is a local athletics club. Chipping Barnet has a King George's Field in memorial to King George V. Old Court House Recreation Ground is a park in High Barnet.
High Barnet is home to an Odeon cinema, the Barnet Museum, the All Saints Art Centre, the traditional annual Barnet Fair, which was chartered in Medieval times, the Ravenscroft local park and Barnet recreational park, a now disused well that was frequented by, among others, Samuel Pepys, and many restaurants and public houses.
Cuisines on offer include Italian, French, Indian, Chinese and south east Asian. Amongst the most popular restaurants are branches of Pizza Express, Brasserie Gerard Prezzo, and Emchai (south east Asian cuisine). High Barnet also has a number of coffee/snack outlets, both independent ones such as The Coffee Bean and Oasis, as well as branches of Starbucks and Costa Coffee.
A small nightclub operated for a few years in the 1980s in the premises now occupied by The Misty Moon pub. The public houses and bars in High Barnet include: The Misty Moon, Toby Carvery, The Kings Head, The Monken Holt, The Black Horse, Ye Olde Mitre Inn, The Hadley Oak, The Nelson, The Sebright Arms, and The White Lion. The large number of inns in Barnet was a matter of note in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist; it was here that Oliver met the Artful Dodger.
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Famous quotes containing the words sport and/or recreation:
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“Playing snooker gives you firm hands and helps to build up character. It is the ideal recreation for dedicated nuns.”
—Archbishop Luigi Barito (b. 1922)