Blog

Longer pieces about indoor London. Where to go when it is pouring, what is worth the money, and the places most people walk straight past.

• Eight indoor places in London that will not defeat a pram: Lifts that exist, floors you can turn on, and somewhere to sit down afterwards. The rainy day criteria change completely once you are pushing something.
• Nine warm places in London for when the rain turns cold: August rain is an inconvenience. November rain is a different product entirely. These nine are picked for heat rather than interest, which turns out to be a better filter than it sounds.
• Seven places to be hungover in London, ranked by how much dark they offer: The requirements are narrow: dim, seated, warm, quiet, and nobody asking you to make a decision. It turns out London is quite well set up for this.
• Eight places in London where you can sit for hours and nobody will ask you to leave: The coffee shop economy has quietly made sitting down a purchase. These eight have not got the memo, and most of them are free.
• Nine London bars where you can lose at something indoors: Darts, ping pong, axe throwing and virtual clay pigeon shooting. The whole competitive socialising business, judged on the only measure that matters here, which is whether you arrive dry.
• Seven places worth leaving London for, all of them indoors: There is a point in a bad week of weather where the answer is not another London museum. It is a train, and somewhere with a roof at the other end.
• The West End is the driest night out in London and nobody says so: Three hours indoors, a bar, a cloakroom and a roof that has held since 1663. Theatre is the most weatherproof evening this city sells, and it is marketed on absolutely everything except that.
• Eight places that made me think: this would be a great date: I have been married a good while. Nobody needs me to find a date venue. The instinct has not got the memo.
• Eight small London museums that probably should not exist: A jar of moles, a surgical theatre in a church attic, and five thousand fans in Greenwich. All indoors, all real, none of them the British Museum.
• Your mate has flown in, it is raining, and London's reputation is now your problem: Five places that make London look like the city they were promised, none of which involve standing in it.
• Nine free places in London where nobody queues: Everyone knows the British Museum is free. Everyone also knows what the queue looks like at eleven on a wet Sunday. These nine are free too, and largely empty.
• Seven cool, dark rooms for when London hits thirty degrees: This is a website about staying dry, which makes it a website about weather, which means it also has to deal with the other thing London is spectacularly unequipped for.