London Elephant Parade

This summer, London has been taken over by a herd of elephants. Not literally, obviously, because it probably would have made the news. These elephants are part of Elephant Parade London 2010, and will be auctioned off next week to raise money to help in the conservation of the endangered Asian elephant.

For the past few weeks, we've been on an elephant hunt. With 259 elephants in total, we have our work cut out for ourselves. Luckily, three of the elephants live in Greenwich, so we checked those off our list without breaking a sweat. After a lot of walking, we've managed to see 45 elephants, a paltry 17 percent of those on display.

But it's been a blast looking for elephants, particularly on a one day during the half term when we made it our mission to see as many as possible. All of the elephants will be on display together this weekend at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, but frankly, if you claim that you've seen all the elephants by seeing them all in one place, that's cheating. The elephant auction will be held on 3 July.

Without further adeiu, here are our favourites:

Thing One's favourite, No. 127 called Gloria:

Thing Two's favourite: No. 57, called Help!

(Green! His favourite colour)

My favourite was not my namesake, which is in front of the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank, but the one pictured above, No. 45 New Map of London. I do love a map, even if it's on an elephant.

Hunt them while you can.