Escorts in Central London, W1, WC2 and SW1: who is close, and how soon
Nine in the evening under the screens at Piccadilly Circus: the curved wall of light at full brightness, a crowd on the steps of the fountain, buses nosing round the corner, and two people stepping off the kerb who turn east, away from all of it. Within a few streets they will be in a bookseller's alley, then a lamplit court barely wider than their shoulders, then down a slope of steps and gardens to the river. That is the walk below, and it is the best argument there is for spending an evening with central London escorts on foot: the middle of the city is the part of it most worth walking, provided you leave the main roads.
On the ground
Central London in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW1K 4HR, WC2R 0EZ, W1J 9BR, W1B 1JA, SW1X 7RL, SW1A 2BD.
Nearest stations
Walking timeOxford Circus, 5 minutes. Piccadilly Circus, 5 minutes. Tottenham Court Road, 5 minutes. Green Park, 5 minutes.
Getting there
W1, WC2, SW1Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Central London
Who works here
On the board in Central London
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Central London tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Setting out from the Circus
Start at the fountain. The winged figure on top, whom everyone calls Eros, is in fact his brother Anteros, cast in aluminium by Alfred Gilbert and unveiled in 1893 as a memorial to the Earl of Shaftesbury, and it was one of the first statues ever made in that metal. Piccadilly Circus station is underneath, and Green Park, Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road are each close enough to start from instead.
Leave by Coventry Street, heading east, and let the noise carry you as far as Leicester Square. Cross the square past the marble Shakespeare at its centre and come out on the far side at Charing Cross Road. The walk proper starts on the other side of that road.
Note 03
Cecil Court, the booksellers' passage
A few steps along, on the far side of the road, a narrow pedestrian street runs through to St Martin's Lane. This is Cecil Court, a single row of Victorian shopfronts on each side, most of them antiquarian booksellers and dealers in old prints and maps, their windows lit and crowded. The young Mozart lodged here with his family in 1764, and the street still has the feel of somewhere London forgot to modernise.
Take it slowly. It is short, the windows are the point, and it is the first place on the walk where you can hear each other without raising your voices.
Note 04
Goodwin's Court, and the lanes behind
Cross St Martin's Lane and look, a few doors up, for a gap between the buildings: an opening so narrow it is easy to walk past. Goodwin's Court runs through to Bedfordbury between a row of bow-fronted Georgian shopfronts, with old lamps on brackets along the wall. At night it is the quietest few yards in the West End, and it looks much as it must have done two hundred years ago.
It comes out on Bedfordbury, and here the walk forks. Left, New Row leads into Covent Garden, if the evening wants a table and a crowd. Right, the lanes run down towards the Strand and the river, and that is the way this walk goes.
Note 05
Down to the Strand and the Duke's streets
Cross the Strand by Charing Cross station, where the tall stone cross in the forecourt is a Victorian replacement of 1865 for the medieval Eleanor Cross, and turn down Villiers Street. The streets around here were laid out on the grounds of York House after George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, sold it in the 1670s, on condition that his name and title be kept.
Villiers Street and Buckingham Street still carry them, and a small sign on York Place records that it used to be called Of Alley, the one word of his title nobody could make into a proper street. It is a good piece of London to tell someone on a walk, because the evidence is on the walls around you.
Note 06
The water gate the river left behind
At the foot of Buckingham Street stands the York Watergate, a heavy stone arch built in 1626 as the river entrance to York House. When it was new, the Thames lapped against its steps. Then the Victoria Embankment was built out into the river in the 1860s, and the gate was left stranded inland, in the gardens, a long way from the water it was made for.
Walk on to the Embankment itself and the river opens in front of you. From here the Golden Jubilee footbridges, one on each side of the Hungerford railway bridge, cross to the South Bank, and halfway over, with the whole lit curve of the river on both sides, is as good a place as any to finish.
Note 07
Other ways to walk it
Reversed, the walk climbs from the quiet of the river up into the lights, which suits an evening that begins with a drink by the water and ends at a table. From the Embankment, Westminster is a walk south along the river; from Bedfordbury, New Row leads into Covent Garden; and from the Circus, the streets north of Shaftesbury Avenue are Soho.
In the middle of town, count on roughly an hour between the office's go-ahead and her knock, longer at rush hour, with her exact timing posted in the chat and every length on the rates. Tell the office if the evening starts on foot; she arrives dressed for the evening you describe.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Central London
Asked most often
Central London, asked and answered
Does the walk work in the other direction?
Where exactly does Goodwin's Court begin?
What is the stone gateway standing in the gardens by the river?
Can the walk end on the South Bank instead?
One zone either way
Next along from Central London
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.