Escorts in Holland Park, W11 and W14: who is close, and how soon
'When it rains in Holland Park, the park drops out of the evening and the houses take over,' says Sylvie, who answers the office's messages. 'The gates shut at dusk, the woodland paths go soft, and what is left is some of the best-sheltered streets in west London: deep porches, wide pavements under plane trees, and a few rooms nearby that were built to be looked at from the inside.' She is right, and this page is about those wet evenings: what works under cover, how the place looks in the rain, and how a night here ends when nobody wants to go out again. Holland Park escorts are booked the same way whatever the sky is doing, and on a wet night allow about an hour between the office confirming and the bell, longer when rain thickens the traffic, with the exact time in the chat and the figures on the rates.
On the ground
Holland Park in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW11 4UL, W14 8NL, W2 4DU, W8 4PT.
Nearest stations
Walking timeHolland Park, 1 minute. Notting Hill Gate, 7 minutes. Shepherd's Bush, 8 minutes.
Getting there
W11, W14Travel 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 Holland Park
Who works here
On the board in Holland Park
The six prints above are a first shortlist for Holland Park tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
The park in the wet
Holland Park is some fifty four acres of woodland, lawns and formal gardens round the ruin of Holland House, a Jacobean mansion, and on a dry evening it is the obvious walk. In the rain it closes in on itself. The gates shut at dusk in any weather, and the woodland paths under the trees are the first to turn to mud.
If the rain comes in daylight, the Kyoto Garden is the exception worth making: a Japanese garden given to the park in the early 1990s, with a waterfall and a koi pond, and at its best in fine rain, when the stones darken, the maples drip and the water in the pond goes still and grey.
Note 03
Porches built for bad weather
The streets round the park were built with weather in mind. Holland Park, the street that gives the district its name, is a double line of large Italianate villas of the 1860s, each with a deep pillared porch, and Holland Park Avenue runs wide along the north side under its plane trees.
In the rain the cream stucco turns grey and the porches become the point of the architecture: a taxi at the kerb, a few steps under cover and a door. On a wet night the district is at its most private, the curtains drawn and the pavements empty but for the odd umbrella.
Note 04
A tiled hall on Holland Park Road
The best room to be in on a wet afternoon is Leighton House on Holland Park Road, the home of the painter Frederic Leighton and now a museum. At its centre is the Arab Hall, a domed room lined with Islamic tiles, many of them brought back from Damascus, with a fountain set into the floor. Water falling indoors while rain falls outside is the whole point of a visit.
Other studio houses of the same era stand nearby, built by artists who settled round Leighton in the late nineteenth century, and the whole street is a short dash from Kensington High Street under a decent umbrella.
Note 05
Under the opera's canopy
In the summer season Opera Holland Park performs in the park under a large canopy raised in front of what survives of Holland House, the mansion bombed in 1940. The canopy is what makes an English summer workable: when a shower comes over, the rain drums on the roof above the audience and the singing carries on beneath it.
The ruined front of the old house makes the backdrop, which is at its most dramatic when the sky behind it has turned dark and wet. It is the one kind of evening in which the park itself stays part of the night.
Note 06
West to Shepherd's Bush, under a roof
Beyond the western end of Holland Park Avenue, by Shepherd's Bush, Westfield London is one of the largest covered shopping centres in Europe, and on a day of steady rain it gives a long walk without an umbrella: shops, restaurants and a cinema under one glass roof.
Across Shepherd's Bush Green, the Shepherd's Bush Empire opened as a music hall in 1903, spent decades as a BBC television theatre and is now a concert venue, a good wet evening in a room that holds its sound. To the south, the Grand Hall at Olympia stages its exhibitions under a great roof of iron and glass.
Note 07
When nobody wants to go out again
Some wet nights are better spent in. Every booking on this board is at the guest's own address, a hotel room or a private flat or house, so a rained-off evening loses nothing: escorts in Holland Park come to you, and the rain stays on the other side of the window.
The neighbouring districts share the weather and the same sheltering streets: Notting Hill to the north east, High Street Kensington to the south east, and the wider sweep of Kensington beyond it, with the same porches, the same plane trees and the same wet stucco.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Holland Park
Asked most often
Holland Park, asked and answered
Is the park worth walking on a wet evening?
Where can we go that is properly under cover?
Does the opera carry on in the rain?
What is the Arab Hall?
Can the whole evening stay indoors?
What do the villas look like in the rain?
One zone either way
Next along from Holland Park
escorts in High Street Kensington
W8Same ladder, same honest hour, one zone further across the map.
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.