London

The Heights
When the pointless bustle of Oxford Street becomes too much, it’s time to rise above it all. Cloudspotters should head for The Heights Restaurant, Bar and Lounge on the fifteenth floor of the Saint Georges Hotel, Langham Place, for its perfect rooftop view. Sip on something long and cool and watch a layer of altocumulus clouds – patches of white or grey cloudlets – fan out over the city below. Like endless loaves of bread, the rounded clumps appear to brown in the glow of the evening sun. The classic shape of an altocumulus resembles a flying saucer – so much so that they have been identified as UFOs.

The Heights, Saint Georges Hotel, 14-15 Langham Place, Regent St, W1 (020 7580 0111).

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A cumulus cloud (credit: Michael Rubin)

Tower 42, on a rainy day
Pierre Condou’s restaurant and bar planned for the top of Centre Point looks set to be the ultimate destination for chic cloudspotters, but it won’t be opening for a year or so. In the meantime, cloudspotters with money to burn should head to the champagne bar at the top of Tower 42 –the tallest building in the City. Raise your bubbly to the cumulus congestus clouds –low-lying, flat-bottomed types with tops like cauliflowers – rising majestically as they release their wet cargo.
Tower 42, 25 Old Broad St, EC2 (020 7877 7777).

High-altitude condensation trails (credit: Jim Townsend

Parliament Hill
Hampstead Heath is a prime location for cloudspotting, not least because it was here that John Constable, one of Britain’s best cloud painters, made his series of sky studies in the 1820s. Constable saw the sky as ‘the chief organ of sentiment’ in his landscapes. He loved clouds so much that for two years he dispensed with the ground altogether, painting the heavens from near his house in Well Walk, NW3. On a summer afternoon, you can see a spectacular vista of clouds from the top of Parliament Hill, topped off with the contrails from aeroplanes. It’s not smoke that produces the graceful lines, but water vapour from the exhausts, and the only thing that makes them different from clouds is that this vapour is man-made.

The London Eye
The best time to go up is first thing on a foggy autumn morning. Get there early, and you may be lucky enough to rise through the misty veils at ground level and emerge into the clear, over a magical terrain of cloud. This is the stratus – a low, grey layer or patch of cloud with diffuse edges. Fog is just a stratus cloud that has chosen to join us on the ground, and it always looks its best from above.

Guy’s Tower
If you spend a lot of time looking at the sky in a busy metropolis, it’s only a matter of time before you get run over. Try and make sure this happens somewhere near London Bridge, so that you’ll be taken to Guy’s, the tallest hospital in the world. The top levels are, alas, set aside for labs and research – instead, you could book the Roben Suite, a function room on the twenty-ninth floor available for private cloudspotting parties. Grab it when the forecast is stormy, and witness the power of a cumulonimbus – enormous, with low dark bases that pour out heavy showers, thunder and lighting, and tops that can reach so high the cloud is taller than Everest.
Guy’s Tower, Guy’s Hospital, SE1.

A nimbostratus cloud(credit: David Foster)

The Royal Academy
When the sky offers you nothing more than a grey, overcast, drizzly nimbostratus cloud – a thick, grey, featureless layer that every Londoner recognises and even the most ardent cloudspotter finds hard to love – inspiration must be sought elsewhere. Cloudspotters should visit the Royal Academy’s Jacob van Ruisdael exhibition (until June 4). The seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artist was the first to master truly realistic clouds. His billowing stratocumulus (clumps or rolls of cloud, with well-defined bases, showing strong variations in tone – from bright white to dark grey) and cumulus clouds rising majestically above the dykes and dunes had a huge influence on Turner, Gainsborough and Constable. And hopefully by the time you’ve finished marvelling, the gloom will have lifted outside.
Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 (020 7300 8000/www.royalacademy.org.uk).

A rare cirrus 'wave cloud' (credit: Jeffroy Rathbun)

Friends Meeting House
When you spot cirrus in the sky – the highest of the cloud types, delicate white streaks or bands formed from falling ice crystals – head for The Quaker meeting house in Winchmore Hill. It’s not particularly high, nor does it afford uninterrupted views, but the garden is a most appropriate place for cirrus contemplation. And near the swing, you’ll find the grave of pharmacist Luke Howard. An amateur meteorologist, Howard gave a lecture to his local scientific society in 1803, in which he proposed a Latin system for classifying cloud formations. His system was swiftly disseminated and for a while, Howard became world-famous as the man who named the clouds. Sit beside him, recite his poetic terms – cumulus, stratus, cirrus, nimbus – and wonder why such an important man was ever buried in an unmarked grave.
Friends Meeting House, 61 Church Hill, N21 (020 8886 5980).

‘The Cloudspotter’s Guide’ by Gavin Pretor-Pinney is published by Sceptre at £12.99. For more cloudspotting info, visit www.cloudappreciationsociety.org.