Escorts in SE1, the South Bank: who is close, and how soon
Low tide on an autumn evening, and the Thames has drawn back from the wall below the Queen's Walk far enough to bare a strip of shingle, while the plane trees along the path catch the light of the lamps. That riverside walk, named for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 and running the whole width of the postcode from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge, is the green thread that holds SE1 together, and the gardens behind it hang off it like beads on a string. Nobody on the board lives south of the river, so escorts in SE1 always begin with a crossing: allow an hour or thereabouts for her to come over the water once the office has confirmed, longer when the bridges are slow, and look to the chat for her exact time and to the rates for each length.
On the ground
SE1 in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameSE1 9QU, SE1 9PD, SE1 0UG, SE1 9SG, SE1 7PB.
Nearest stations
Walking timeLondon Bridge, 3 minutes. Borough, 5 minutes. Southwark, 8 minutes. Waterloo, 10 minutes.
Getting there
SE1Travel 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 SE1
Who works here
On the board in SE1
The six prints above are a first shortlist for SE1 tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Gardens behind the river wall
At the western end, Archbishop's Park was once part of the grounds of Lambeth Palace and is now a public park beside it. Next door, the old church of St Mary-at-Lambeth has become the Garden Museum, and its churchyard holds the tomb of the Tradescants, father and son, royal gardeners in the seventeenth century who brought home plants from their travels that English gardens still grow. Jubilee Gardens, laid out beside the London Eye for the same jubilee as the riverside walk, is the one lawn that most visitors to SE1 actually see.
Further east the green gets smaller and older. Red Cross Garden, tucked off Redcross Way in Borough, was laid out in 1887 by Octavia Hill, the housing reformer who later helped to found the National Trust, as an outdoor room for the tenants of her cottages. Potters Fields Park runs down to the water at the foot of Tower Bridge, and in Bermondsey, Leathermarket Gardens keeps the name of the trade that once filled every street around it.
Note 03
Fitting the green into an evening
The riverside walk is a public path, open at every hour, and it is the part of this postcode's green that suits an evening best: dinner on the south bank, then the walk along the water with the north bank lit up opposite, west towards Westminster Bridge or east towards the Tower. The smaller gardens behind it are at their best in daylight, so they belong to a booking that starts in the afternoon, when Red Cross Garden or the Garden Museum makes a quiet opening before the evening proper.
For the western gardens the nearest neighbour is Waterloo, for the eastern ones Bermondsey, and in between, Southwark has the long Bankside stretch of the river walk. SE1 escorts cover all three, and the question worth settling before the evening is simply which end of the water it should face.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for SE1
Asked most often
SE1, asked and answered
Which garden is nearest the London Eye?
Is the river walk pleasant after dark?
Is there anything green in Bermondsey?
One zone either way
Next along from SE1
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.