9 Outdoor Dates for the End of Summer in London
The last warm evenings of the year, and what to do with them. London in late August has a particular quality. The parks are worn thin from three months of use. The light turns amber around seven and the air cools by ten. Almost every outdoor programme in the city is now in its final fortnight, which lends the whole thing a useful urgency. You either go this week or you wait until next May.
Here are 9 ways to spend the evenings that are left, from a floating lido in the Docklands to a car park roof in Peckham.
Rooftop Cinema Club in Peckham
The rooftop of the Bussey Building on Rye Lane. Wireless headphones, deck chairs, and double lounge seats if you book ahead. The programming runs from new releases to films people have seen a dozen times, and there are monthly television watch parties for anyone who would rather commit to two episodes than two hours. Screenings run most nights of the week, which makes it a good midweek option when weekend tickets have gone. The Stratford site at Roof East has street food stalls if you want to eat on the roof itself.
Bussey Building, 133 Rye Lane, SE15. Also at Roof East, Stratford, E15.
The Roof Garden at Queen Elizabeth Hall
Still the most quietly good drink on the South Bank. A brutalist rooftop planted with more than two hundred species of flowers, plants and fruit trees, with a bar in a converted shipping container serving wine, beer and cocktails made with things growing a few feet away. It was set up as a joint project with the Eden Project and Grounded Ecotherapy, who work with people experiencing homelessness and in addiction recovery. There is a lawn, a view of the river, and no pressure to order anything at all. Walk five minutes along to Forza Wine at the National Theatre afterwards.
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1. Open until the season ends.
Sunset from Frank's Cafe
Peckham's rooftop car park, up the pink staircase, open for its final weeks. The point of Frank's has never been the drinks list. It is the fact that you are standing on the top floor of a multi-storey with the whole city laid out in front of you and an art installation somewhere behind your shoulder. Go for the hour before sunset. Campari and soda, a bag of crisps, no plan. It closes for the year in autumn and there is nothing quite like it in the interim.
Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park, 95a Rye Lane, SE15.
A swim in the Hampstead Mixed Pond
The mixed pond on Hampstead Heath is open from spring through to October, which makes it one of the few outdoor swims you can still do together in September. It is a natural pond. There are ducks, weeds and a temperature that concentrates the mind. Strong swimmers only, and the changing facilities are functional rather than pleasant. Swim, then walk up to Parliament Hill and dry off looking south over the city. The Ladies' Pond at Kenwood and the Men's Pond at Highgate stay open year round if you want to keep going through the winter.
Hampstead Heath, NW3. Bookable and drop-in sessions.
An early swim at Eden Dock
London's newest outdoor pool is a fifty-metre lido floating in Eden Dock, ringed by the glass towers of Canary Wharf. The dock water is left untreated and rated excellent for bathing, sitting at around twenty degrees in August. Six lanes, so it is a place to swim rather than splash, with two glass-fronted saunas alongside. Book the first slot of the day and get in at six while the towers are still lit above you. Public booking opens a week ahead.
Sea Lanes, Eden Dock, E14.
The last night at Regent's Park
The Open Air Theatre closes its season on the nineteenth of September. The amphitheatre sits inside the park itself, so the light fades over the course of the first act and the birds are audible between lines. Book a picnic slot before the performance and eat on the grass. Bring a jumper, and something waterproof that is not an umbrella, which staff will ask you to put away. Performances continue in light rain.
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, Inner Circle, NW1. Until 19 September.
Free theatre in Greenwich
The Greenwich and Docklands International Festival is London's largest festival of free outdoor performance, running from the twenty-first of August to the sixth of September. This year's programme is titled WE MOVE. Work takes place across south-east London in parks, squares and streets rather than venues, which means you can build an afternoon around it and walk between pieces. It is free, so there is very little at stake if something is not for you.
Various locations, south-east London. Until 6 September.
Open House, and the walk between buildings
The Open House Festival runs from the twelfth to the twentieth of September, its thirty-fifth edition, opening buildings across all thirty-three boroughs for free. The usual advice is to book the ticketed tours the moment they release. The better advice is not to bother. Pick a neighbourhood, look at what is opening within a mile of it, and spend the day walking between drop-in sites. Half of the pleasure is the streets in between. In north London, the Estorick Collection in Canonbury Square opens both days of the first weekend.
Across all thirty-three boroughs. 12 to 20 September.
The river, all month
Totally Thames runs through the whole of September, with art installations, river walks and mudlarking events along both banks. The Great River Race on the twelfth is the one to plan around: several hundred traditional rowed boats moving upriver from the Docklands, best watched from a bridge or a stretch of the north bank with a coffee. It is free, it lasts most of the day, and it gives an otherwise ordinary Saturday a shape.
