Bayswater… a great part of town on the northern edge of Kensington Gardens, part of Hyde Park and an area very popular with young singles, couples, tourists, transients, people stepping off planes at Heathrow and trains at Paddington; full of bars, cafes, pubs, shops, the odd DIY store. Connected thanks to Bayswater tube station (District and Circle lines) and Queensway (Central line) and the myriad lines at Paddington, including not least, the new, brilliant, shiny, Elizabeth Line; we had to wait a long, long time for the Elizabeth Line to be ready, it was years late, but now, apparently, it’s carrying record numbers of people and it provides one in six of all UK rail journeys, no less!
Partly thanks to the Elizabeth Line, there has been a lot of regeneration of the Paddington area, next to Bayswater (they both have the W2 postcode). Plenty of new and very modern office buildings and apartment blocks and a very pleasant walkabout area along the Grand Union Canal, with barges tied up, along with floating bars, cafes and restaurants.
You can tube, bus, walk, Uber, or hop, skip and jump to Bayswater from Paddington. It actually sits between Paddington/Lancaster Gate and Notting Hill, W11. It’s not quite as internationally famous at Notting Hill because I don’t think there have been Hollywood films made about it, but plenty of people around the world seem to turn up there, particularly those tourists whose wallets don’t stretch to The Dorchester in Park Lane or the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. You could describe it as an affordable alternative for tourists who are not in the Mayfair bracket. So, as people like to say, so, soooo, Bayswater has plenty of small hotels (Paddington has too) which don’t cost the earth. As for rooms, flats and houses to rent, W2 is probably at the upper mid-market level. The apartments tend to be conversions within Georgian and Victorian houses, purpose built Edwardian or post-war blocks or recently-built upmarket blocks.
Whiteley’s, which was originally a big department store, then converted in the 1990s into quite a nice galleria of shops, is now being rebuilt to provide a mix of residential and retail. It’s by Kensington Gardens Square, famous because I lived there once. But I notice there is no blue plaque outside my flat building, number 42. Although this is one where Thomas Hardy lived, up the road. So what was soooo good about Thomas Hardy (apart from Far From The Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and his countless other novels of brilliance)?
Queensway is the sort of ‘High Street’ of Bayswater and is a busy thoroughfare and where the tube stations are. It leads directly north from the Kensington Gardens, and offers a range of experiences, including cafes, shops (not surprisingly always plenty of luggage shops), Queens Bowling and Ice-Skating and the Grosvenor Casino, where I went a couple of times many years ago. In case you were looking for a fail-safe roulette system, take my advice and put your chips on the day’s date. Just keep putting on, and around the same number, every time, and I guarantee it will come up (before or after Christmas). No, seriously, I have used the method successfully (if by success we mean, it successfully evacuated my wallet and dissuaded me from gambling again).
Back to other amusements: there is the famous Khan’s Indian restaurant in Westbourne Grove – it used be the place to go to but there are now many other Indian restaurants and I’m sure they’re all worth a try if you are in the mood for ‘Five poppadoms, a Bhindi Bhaji, pilau rice, and 25 pints of lager’.
I’ve got to mention the Porchester Baths, a real part of the fabric of London, now, I see, renamed Porchester Spa and poshed up considerably, but I retaining its wonderful interior design features – a real classic bath house. I recall, many years ago, going there and imagining the clientele to be ex-cons planning their next heist. I guess it’s more boutique these days. As I write this, I really do fancy getting over there for a swim, a Turkish Bath and a massage. It’s a listed building and was built in the 1920s and has a wonderful, grand architectural features, actually more Art Deco than Art Nouveau, so at the time, must have been considered to be super-modern and avant-garde. The swimming pool is stunning. Without getting too carried away, I’d say it’s probably the most stunning spa this side of Baden Baden.
Westbourne Grove runs perpendicularly to Queensway and takes you inexorably towards Notting Hill and Portobello Road street market, which must be one of the best street markets in London, with its mix of antiques, bric-a-brac, old clothes, street food and all manner of curiosities.
On the way there, you will be moving into the hedge-funder and model environment, a heady mix of young bankers wearing mocassins (no socks), Ray Bans (even when it’s cloudy), driving Porsches and accompanied by very tall, very thin, young women, frequenting the more upmarket fashion shops, those incredibly stylish, minimally-designed clothes shops that weirdly seem to have what seems to be a ridiculously small number of garments on rails, presumably on the basis that they are so expensive that the shop only needs to sell a couple of items a day and then they can pack up and go home and watch TV.
Interspersing these fashionista outlets are suitably expensive cafes and restaurants. But wait, hold on a minute, let’s walk back towards Bayswater, away from the uber chic section of Westbourne Grove, and get into a good, old-fashioned builder’s merchants, Lords it’s called, where you can sort yourself out with a monkey wrench, some WD40 and a couple of lengths of four by two. If it’s not to your liking, and the worst has happened, you’ll be relieved to hear that Kenyon’s, Funeral Directors, has a branch a few doors down. I do recommend them, so helpful, so courteous.
One more thing. If you don’t know the area, you probably wouldn’t stray over to Westbourne Park Road, but do bear in mind there is a really nice pub restaurant called The Cow (used to be a very boozy Guinness pub) and diagonally opposite The Westbourne, both super popular with the cognoscenti.
When you’ve blown your wages at the spa, casino and The Cow, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s the One Pound Shop back in Queensway… so you see, they think of everything in W2.
