Escorts in Lancaster Gate, W2: who is close, and how soon
Lancaster Gate is the piece of W2 that faces the park: a short run of the Bayswater Road with the Paddington streets at its back and Kensington Gardens across the traffic, where the grass and the water begin almost at the kerb. Few London addresses put this much open ground so near a front door, and for escorts in Lancaster Gate, and the guests who book them, the gardens decide the shape of an evening more than any street does.
No name on the board lives at Lancaster Gate itself. The nearest home zone is Paddington, a few streets north, where three live, and three more are in Knightsbridge on the far side of the park. The office's working figure is roughly an hour from its confirmation to her knock, more in the evening rush, and each length with its figure is set out on the rates.
On the ground
Lancaster Gate in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW2 2TY, W2 4RJ, W2 1EE, W1H 7DL.
Nearest stations
Walking timeLancaster Gate, 1 minute. Queensway, 6 minutes. Paddington, 7 minutes.
Getting there
W2Travel 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 Lancaster Gate
Who works here
On the board in Lancaster Gate
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Lancaster Gate tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Through the railings: fountains first
Cross from the station side and the first thing through the railings is the most formal water in either park: the Italian Gardens, a terrace of stone basins, urns and fountains at the top of the Long Water. It is the one corner of Kensington Gardens designed to be looked at rather than wandered through, and it earns a slow circuit before the paths take over.
Beside the basins stands Queen Anne's Alcove, a stone seat under a carved hood that was made for Kensington Palace and moved out to the water's edge in Victoria's reign. It faces the Long Water and is still the best seat in the gardens for two people who want to sit out of the wind and watch the light go. Swans and herons work the margins of the water here, and on a still evening they are most of the company.
Note 03
A lake that used to be a river
The water in front of Lancaster Gate is older than the terraces behind it. In the 1730s Queen Caroline, George II's queen, had the Westbourne dammed to make one long curving lake, and it is still a single body of water under two names: the Long Water on the Kensington Gardens side and the Serpentine in Hyde Park, parted by the stone bridge George Rennie built in the 1820s.
The river itself has gone from sight. It turned foul as London spread over its banks, the Victorians piped it underground, and the lake has been fed from other sources since. What survives is the name, in Westbourne Grove and Westbourne Park to the north, and a good part of the local story: Bayswater is usually traced to Bayard's Watering, a spot where horses once drank from the same stream.
Note 04
Gates, dusk and midnight
The two parks keep different hours, and an evening here goes better for knowing them. Kensington Gardens opens early and locks at dusk, which in midwinter comes before most offices empty; Hyde Park, on the other side of West Carriage Drive, stays open until midnight all year. That drive, running down from Victoria Gate on the Bayswater Road and over Rennie's bridge, is the line between the two.
So a summer evening can begin at the Italian Gardens and drift south along the Long Water with hours of light in hand, while a winter one belongs to the Hyde Park side, where the north bank of the Serpentine is still open after dark. Just inside Victoria Gate, behind Victoria Lodge, is one of the odder sights in London: a small Victorian cemetery for pets, begun in the 1880s, its rows of tiny headstones visible through the railings.
Note 05
Lancaster Walk and what stands along it
From the Bayswater Road the straightest way into the heart of the gardens is Lancaster Walk, an avenue running south under the trees towards the Albert Memorial. Along it you pass G. F. Watts's Physical Energy, a bronze horse and rider straining forward, and from the crossings of paths nearby the grass falls away east towards the water.
By the Long Water stands Henry Moore's Arch, pale travertine blocks set up as a gateway that people walk through for the pleasure of it. At the far end of the avenue the Albert Memorial rises in gilt and mosaic, with the Royal Albert Hall facing it across Kensington Gore. The whole route is flat and green from end to end, and in the long light of June it fills the time before dinner better than any bar.
Note 06
Fitting the gardens to the evening
The gardens work best as the hinge of an evening rather than the whole of it: a drink, the Long Water in the last of the light, then a table in Bayswater or up on Queensway, and back. In the dark months the order turns round, and the walk becomes a short turn along the Serpentine from Victoria Gate after dinner, with the lit terraces of the Bayswater Road behind you.
She comes to your hotel or flat as she would anywhere, and the park is simply the walk you take together, so it is worth saying in your first message that you would like one; the office bears it in mind when it looks at who is free. Lancaster Gate escorts come to guests on either side of the water, and from the southern and eastern edges of Hyde Park the same lake is simply seen from the other bank.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Lancaster Gate
Asked most often
Lancaster Gate, asked and answered
Which gate still lets us into the park after dark?
Are the Long Water and the Serpentine the same lake?
What are the tiny headstones behind the lodge at Victoria Gate?
Where does Lancaster Walk come out?
One zone either way
Next along from Lancaster Gate
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.