AboutLondon Laura – July 2025
Last month, I shared my London wish list for my next trip, as well as open-air entertainment tips and recommendations for new openings. Did you try any of that? I’ll be back in London this month, so let’s see how much of that I get through.
Hot in The City
The recent heatwave has got me thinking about where to go to escape the city's heat. I could suggest you go swimming outside at London Fields Lido or Hampstead Heath Ponds. There’s a beach out west in Ruislip and there’s clean, heated, all-year outdoor swimming near Covent Garden at the Oasis Sports Centre.
There are also lots of fountains and splash parks these days, or you could go for a shady woodland walk in Epping Forest or Lesnes Abbey Woods.
But I thought it would be better to actually be inside when the temperatures have been at ‘risk to life’ hot. We won’t go through the whole “It feels different in London” and “But it’s much hotter where I live” comments. Just know that 30C/90F is hard to cope with in the capital. The advice is to keep out of the sun at the hottest time of the day, between 11am and 3pm. This is such an issue that the Mayor of London has produced a Cool Spaces map for places to get relief from the heat. The map mostly has libraries and community centres so it is very ‘Londoner-focused’ but not all are necessarily appealing places to be.
Thinking back to the summer of 1990, it was hot when I moved to London. The coolest places I found then were the freezer section of the supermarket and the V&A. I enjoyed one a lot more than the other. This was back when you had to ‘donate’ to go in the museum. As I hadn’t yet got a job, I ran the gauntlet regularly to get past the persuasive welcome staff at the entrance.
Nowadays, all large galleries and museums have air-conditioning making the National Gallery, Tate Modern, the Natural History Museum, etc a good choice for staying cool and enjoying culture.
Many of the smaller museums have A/C too. The Bank of England Museum is good as is the nearby Guildhall Art Gallery. The Postal Museum has the double-win of the cool museum and Mail Rail which doesn’t get the high temps of the London Underground.
The Ice Bar is now permanently closed, but the bars and restaurants in quality hotels are great on hot days.
If you fancy being sporty, you could go skating at Lee Valley Ice Centre or Queens in Bayswater. And my daughter went to Lane 7 Bowling near Victoria and thought it was cooler than outside so whether that means it has A/C or not, we can’t be sure.
If you prefer a more passive idea, many of London's theatres now have air-conditioning and cinemas do too.
Shoppings Malls are a big thing so you’ve got Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City as the obvious choices. Canary Wharf has five malls and there’s the upmarket choice of Battersea Power Station.
Back to culture, remember churches are always cold inside, so it’s a good time to visit Westminster Abbey or St Paul’s Cathedral.
And for a place that is always icy cold (as it’s under the Thames!), take a walk through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Connecting Greenwich and Island Gardens, be aware the lifts at each end aren’t always working but you can check the status before heading there.
What’s Happening This Month?
More Than Human opens at the Design Museum on 11 July. Bringing together art, science and radical thinking, this exhibiton asks how design can help our planet thrive by shifting its focus beyond human needs. And Somerset House has Virtual Beauty from 23 July exploring the impact of digital technologies on definitions of beauty today.
You can see where royalty entertain as it’s the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace from 10 July when we get to wander around the state rooms. And The National Portrait Gallery has the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award from 10 July celebrating the best in contemporary portraiture.
Future of Food is a new free exhibition at the Science Museum from 24 July looking at how food must change to protect the planet. And on 26 July, Jeremy Deller’s performance The Triumph of Art reaches Trafalgar Square outside the National Gallery.