Top ten Easter activities in London

With GoBoat in Paddington, you can hire and self-drive your own boat make your way across London’s canals. Depending on how good your steering skills are, you’ll be traveling past London Zoo, through Regents Park and Camden Lock. Prices start at £79 for 1 hour. Sound good? Each GoBoat can have a micro crew of up to six people. Your days as a lonely sea captain are over. 

There are a lot of places that do great hampers. Hampers you have to order to your home. Boring! 2021 is the year we act like debauched emperors. 2021 is the year we have all of our food and drink sent to the park, where we will be LEGALLY hanging with a group of six. Here are our top picks for green-space groceries you can have sent straight to your little patch of grass. 

Londoners are, for the most part, obsessed with lidos. As soon as March 29 hit, Instagram seemed to be flooded with people documenting their ‘first London Fields swim of 2021’. One of our favourites, Hampton Pool in south-west London (famous for its midnight swims) is now open for bookings every day at 8am, so get up early and snag a timeslot. Places will get booked up quickly because, as I say, you lot love this stuff. Insatiable. If you’ve got any questions, there’s an enquiries form on their homepage.

You’ve either been to Kew Gardens multiple times, or you’ve lived in London for years and couldn’t face the journey. There doesn’t seem to be an in-between. But with a grand stretch of four days ahead, you have a chance to make the trek to the big botanical gardens. Watching seeds germinate has been our main pastime this year, now it’s time to learn from the pros. 

We know that the local petrol station will be doing three ‘famous brand’ Easter eggs for £7 when you buy 20 litres of fuel. And we know time is now meaningless, so you might as well get those cut-price choc eggs on Easter Monday. But those offers aren’t for you. They’re for useless, badly organised people. These exotic – even sometimes challenging – Easter confections are the real, sweet, deal. And not an egg pun in sight. Click through to find an egg to call your own. 

Don’t neglect your alcohol intake. Get a cocktail delivered.

The Easter holidays can feel like a poor cousin of Christmas. It’s not a time you normally associate with cosy movie sessions, but Easter films do exist. While it doesn’t have a canon to match all those Christmas classics, there are a bunch of Good Friday goodies to enjoy. We’ve picked out a few for every taste to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime and other spiritually-enhanced streaming sites. 

One of the perks of Easter is that it becomes socially acceptable to eat hot-cross buns for four-days straight, in the name of Christ. You could obviously nip down the supermarket or your local artisan bakery and get yourself a half-dozen. Or you could push the Bun Boat out a bit. Try something different. That’s where we come in. Feast your eyes on this lot.

Extremely interesting Easter treats to order now.

One of the few upsides of lockdown has been the huge number of top-quality eateries now doing home delivery. Up until a year ago you had to actually put trousers on to visit these places. Now you can eat their food semi-naked. As soon as it gets too chilly to snack outside in the park, you can set your sights on a restaurant-worthy takeaway. Break out a table cloth and make a night of it, or just plonk the food on your lap and eat straight from the container. The choice is yours. 

Note: Barbecues are currently suspended in London Fields and Waterlow park. Rules cotinue to change, so always double check the current status before carting your food to the park. 

Don’t have a garden? Don’t let that stop you from organising a micro-bbq with five friends. Most of London’s green spaces are reserved for picnics only, but there are some major parks and local gardens where you’re officially allowed to fire up the BBQ. 

Foraging always sounds like a wholesome Sunday activity, but when you live in a big, largely grey, city it can be easy to feel a bit like: What the hell would I even go looking for if I went foraging here? So, as we head into spring, we decided to ask Amanda Brame, the horticultural director at iconic restaurant/garden centre Petersham Nurseries for her top tips on snacks you can easily find in London’s woodland, hedgerows and fields – and what to make out of them once you’ve completed your harvest.

Best walks to walk in the city.