We read the auction houses’ own pages on 13 October 2026.

Christie’s, 8 King Street

The address is 8 King Street, St James’s, SW1Y 6QT, where Christie’s has been since 1823. The firm is older than that: James Christie held his first sale in London on 5 December 1766, which makes it the world’s oldest fine art auctioneer.

Weekend opening is the part worth a phone call. The house says it is often open for weekend views but that hours vary by auction, so ring the saleroom on 020 7839 9060 rather than turning up on a Saturday and hoping.

The access detail is unusually good, with one current exception

Christie’s publishes a fuller access list than most museums: accessible toilets, a gender-neutral toilet, braille toilet signage, a hearing loop, baby changing facilities, and street-level access via 4 to 7 King Street. Wheelchair access covers the majority of the main galleries, including the King Street Gallery, Great Room, Ante Room, West Room, East Room and Augusta Gallery, and can be arranged for the St James’s, Duke Street, and Upper and Lower Ryder Street galleries.

It is also dog-friendly, which is rare for a building full of art.

The exception: when we checked, the lift to the first-floor galleries was undergoing maintenance, with alternative access available on request at reception or by contacting client services on 020 7389 9060 beforehand. If the first floor matters to your visit, call ahead until that work finishes.

Bonhams has two London salerooms

New Bond Street at 101 New Bond Street, W1S 1SR, and Knightsbridge at Montpelier Street, SW7 1HH. Bonhams does not publish opening hours on its locations page, so treat the viewing dates on each individual sale as the authority.

Sotheby’s publishes no locations page at all

Sotheby’s site has no working locations index: the paths that would hold one return 404, and its London presence appears only through sale series rather than an address and opening hours. That is not a reason to assume you cannot visit, but it does mean you have to work from a specific auction’s viewing dates instead of a building’s hours.

How to use them

Viewings generally run for a few days before a sale, so the calendar rather than the building decides what is worth seeing. A collection on view at Christie’s can hold works that will then disappear into private hands for a generation, and the admission is nothing. Christie’s also runs a pre-sale storage facility at Park Royal, 7 Central Park, NW10 7FY, which is not a public gallery.

Where to go next

Free museums and free things to do cover the rest, and Mayfair covers the streets around Bond Street.

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The pool sits 52 floors up and the hotel calls it the highest in London and Western Europe. We read its own pages on 13 October 2026.

The hours split by age

Adults have the pool from 6am to 6pm. Children swim only between 9am and 11am, and again between 3pm and 5pm. Both of those windows sit inside the adult hours, so the pool is never children-only, but outside them it is adults only.

The 6pm close is the thing to plan around. A pool that shuts at six is no use after dinner or a late afternoon of sightseeing, which is when most people imagine using it. The Sky Sauna keeps the same 6am to 6pm hours. Only the Sky Gym runs 24 hours.

The spa

Treatment rooms offer ELEMIS facials and massages, alongside manicures, pedicures and hairdressing. The hotel publishes a spa brochure and takes bookings separately from the pool. It does not publish treatment prices on the page itself.

Where it is in the building

31 St Thomas Street, SE1 9QU. The hotel starts on level 34 and spans 18 floors of the Shard, which puts the pool near the top of the occupied height. London Bridge station is directly below.

The free shuttle nobody mentions

The hotel runs a complimentary shopping shuttle to Oxford Street. For a hotel at London Bridge that is worth knowing, and it appears only in a facilities list rather than anywhere prominent. Other listed services include a 24 hour concierge, butler service in suites, a house doctor on call, in-room spa treatments, a foreign exchange counter and a London black taxi service.

All rooms and suites are non-smoking, and parking is listed as a paid facility without a rate.

What is still not published anywhere: check-in and check-out times, children’s policies beyond the pool windows, pets and cancellation terms. Babysitting and child care are offered, along with special menus for children, but no age rules. For a room in this building, confirm all of them at booking.

Where to go next

The Sky Pool at Embassy Gardens is the one you cannot swim in at all, and the Pan Pacific runs comparable children’s swimming windows.

The Shard covers the viewing gallery in the same building, and rooftop bars the rest of the view.

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Spa treatments run 10am to 8pm, and spa reception is open 8.30am to 8.30pm. We read the hotel’s own pages on 13 October 2026.

What is downstairs

The spa spans over 2,300 square metres and is designed to echo an old underground station. It holds 13 treatment rooms, a flotation pod, cryotherapy, a Turkish hammam and the fitness centre, plus an Alchemy Bar where British botanicals are blended into something you take home.

The programmes are the unusual part: structured multi-day plans for Sleep, Yoga, Detox and Fitness, built around a wellness screening that measures biomarkers before anything is booked. The sleep programme works from data off your own sleep tracker. This is a hotel spa organised like a clinic rather than a pampering menu.

The members club is not open to the public

Six Senses Place, the first of its kind anywhere, is the social and wellness club on the upper floor. The hotel’s own wording is that it invites members and hotel guests. Some coverage has suggested day visitors can enter too, but the hotel does not say that, and it publishes no day pass, no membership price and no visitor rate.

If you are not staying and not a member, assume you cannot get in until the hotel tells you otherwise. The spa has its own email and phone line, which is the route to ask.

Where it is, and what it sits in

1 Redan Place, W2 4SA, inside The Whiteley, the restored Bayswater department store, with Notting Hill a few streets away. The hotel opened in 2026 with 109 rooms and suites and 14 branded residences above. Whiteley’s Kitchen, Bar and Café runs from breakfast to late drinks and is pitched at neighbours as much as guests.

What the hotel does not publish anywhere: check-in and check-out times, pool hours or age rules, children’s policies, pets, parking and cancellation terms. For a stay at this level, get those confirmed when booking rather than assuming.

Where to go next

AIRE Ancient Baths is the spa you can book without staying anywhere, and spa days covers the rest.

The Peninsula and the Pan Pacific are the other new luxury hotels with serious pools.

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Set that against the rest of London. A capsule hotel charges £10 to £20 for early check-in and £20 to £30 for a late checkout. Most four and five star hotels hold you to 3pm and noon. A 6am arrival means you can land at Heathrow on a red eye and go straight to a bed, which is the single most useful thing any London hotel can offer and almost nobody does.

We read the hotel’s own pages on 13 October 2026.

Where it is

1 Grosvenor Place, SW1X 7HJ, on Hyde Park Corner beside the Wellington Arch, with Kensington Gardens a short walk away. It is a new building, finished to sit alongside the heritage terraces around it, with interiors by Peter Marino.

The pool is four floors down

The 25 metre indoor pool is on Lower Level 4, in a subterranean chamber with mosaic walls and overhead light panels that shift through the day to imitate daylight. It is heated, has underwater speakers, and serves food at the poolside.

Its hours are 7am to 9pm, Monday to Sunday. That is narrower than the fitness centre, which is open 24 hours, so an early swim before a 7am start is not possible even though the gym is.

Afternoon tea

The Lobby serves all-day food and the signature Peninsula afternoon tea with live music, under hand-painted de Gournay murals. The hotel does not publish the sitting times or the price on its own pages, so both need a call on 020 3959 2888.

Families

The hotel runs a Family Moments offer giving 50 per cent off a connecting room. Beyond that it publishes no age policy, no cot or extra bed charges and no rules on children in the pool or spa, which at this level of hotel usually means asking rather than assuming.

The same is true of pets, parking and cancellation terms: none appears on the hotel’s own pages. For a stay at this price, get all of them confirmed in writing when you book.

Where to go next

Capsule hotels are the other end of the scale, and Pavyllon is the Michelin starred room a few minutes away at Hyde Park Corner.

Sea Containers and the Kimpton Fitzroy publish fuller policies than this one does.

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We checked all four on 13 October 2026. None of them amounts to a closure announcement, because nobody has made one. But if you are trying to book a table, there is currently nowhere official to do it.

What happened to the company

Fairgame was founded in 2019 by Richard Hilton and ran two London venues, in the City and at Canary Wharf. In December 2025 it was acquired by Tenpin Entertainment, backed by Trive Capital, in a deal that marked the exit of BGF, which had invested in 2022.

Acquisitions often park a brand’s old domains while a new site is built, so the dead websites are not proof of anything on their own. What makes the picture consistent is that ten months later the acquirer’s own location list still does not mention the brand it bought.

What it was

An adults-only fairground: carnival games played on a card you top up, with street food and bars around them. Visit London gives the Canary Wharf address as 25 to 35 Fisherman’s Walk, E14 4DH, and lists nine games. Listings described sessions of about 75 minutes with prices running roughly £13 to £37 depending on how much food and drink came with them, and a strict 18 and over door policy.

Treat all of those figures as historic. They come from listings rather than from the operator, and the operator currently publishes nothing.

What to do if you have a booking

If you hold a reservation or a voucher, contact Tenpin rather than any Fairgame address, since it owns the business. Do not assume a third-party listing showing availability is current: several aggregator pages still carry opening hours for the Canary Wharf venue, and none of them is sourced from the operator.

We will update this page when a working site appears, or when someone confirms the venues either way.

Where to go next

The Cube is the nearest equivalent still trading in Canary Wharf, and activity bars and crazy golf cover the rest of competitive socialising.

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From 1 October to 30 April, both are open to dogs everywhere. The beach that turns you away in August welcomes you in November, which is the opposite of how people plan a trip.

We read the councils’ own pages on 12 October 2026, so the rules below are live now, in the dog-friendly half of the year.

Thanet, beach by beach

Thanet District Council publishes the clearest list of any seaside authority near London, and it splits its beaches four ways for the 1 May to 30 September season.

No dogs at any time: Minnis Bay main area at Birchington, Viking Bay at Broadstairs, Margate Main Sands, and Ramsgate Main Sands at the harbour end.

No dogs between 10am and 6pm: Botany Bay, Joss Bay and Stone Bay at Broadstairs, and West Bay and St Mildred’s Bay at Westgate. Arrive before ten or after six and these are yours.

Dogs on leads between 10am and 6pm: Louisa Bay at Broadstairs, and Westbrook Bay and Walpole Bay at Margate.

Dogs any time, all year: Grenham Bay and Epple Bay at Birchington, Dumpton Gap and Kingsgate Bay at Broadstairs, Foreness Point, Sacketts Gap and Palm Bay at Cliftonville, Fulsom Rock at Margate, and Eastcliff and Western Undercliff at Ramsgate. On the promenades beside these, dogs should be on a lead.

The council is open about why: a dog ban during the bathing season is a condition of its Blue Flag and Seaside Awards. The rules sit inside Public Spaces Protection Orders, so they are enforceable rather than advisory. A replacement order went out to consultation in August 2026, with the seasonal exclusions kept and a new year-round restriction proposed at Birchington, so check before next summer.

Brighton, in summer

Brighton and Hove allows dogs on only certain beaches from 1 May to 30 September, and the council marks them with signs at each beach entrance. The permitted stretches are in front of Hove Lagoon, south of the bowling greens between beach huts 212 and 153, in front of and east of Hove Lawns Cafe, and in front of the Peace Statue and Meeting Place Cafe running east to the large groyne with the life ring.

Note the shape of that: the dog-friendly beaches are the Hove end, not the central Brighton seafront by the pier. Dogs should be on leads on the promenade through the exclusion zones.

Getting there

Thanet is the closest proper sand to London by fast train. Visit Thanet, the area’s tourism body, gives approximate high speed journey times from St Pancras of 75 minutes to Ramsgate, 85 to Broadstairs and 90 to Margate. Individual services vary by fifteen minutes or so either way, and no operator publishes a single official figure, so check the specific train rather than the average.

Which to pick

With a dog in summer, Kingsgate Bay or Dumpton Gap in Broadstairs, or Palm Bay at Cliftonville, since they are unrestricted all year. Without a dog, Margate Main Sands and Viking Bay are the big sandy ones, and their dog ban is precisely why they stay pleasant in August. In winter, it makes no difference at all.

Where to go next

Day trips from London covers the rest, and London’s lidos cover swimming without leaving town.

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So the honest answer is that it has gone, without anyone saying so. We checked on 12 October 2026.

What it was

Minecraft Experience: Villager Rescue opened on 4 April 2025 at Corner Corner in Canada Water, a then-new multi-use venue about ten minutes from central London on the Jubilee line. It was timed to land with the Minecraft film.

The format was a 45 minute guided quest for groups, led by two characters called Tobin and Dayo, using what the show called an Orb of Interaction. No prior knowledge of the game was needed, which was the point: it was built for families rather than players.

What it cost, and the rules it had

At launch, tickets were £20 for under-15s and £24 for anyone aged 16 and over. Children aged 0 to 2 went free and needed no ticket. Anyone aged 15 or under had to be accompanied by at least one person aged 18 or over.

The entry rules were stricter than most family attractions: no food or drink, no umbrellas, no bags larger than A4, and no prams or buggies inside the exhibition at all. If a version of this returns to London, expect the same.

If you have a ticket or a voucher

Resale listings for the London show have appeared at higher prices than the original, one at £34, and at least one reseller states plainly that it cannot refund, change or cancel that booking. Given the operator no longer lists the city, treat any London listing you find as something to verify with the seller before paying, not as evidence the show is running.

Where it might come back

The operator says it is “spawning around the world soon” without naming further cities. There is no announced London return. The sign-up on its site for future cities is the only pointer it offers.

Where to go next

The Cube and the Crystal Maze are the running game experiences, and The Traitors is the newest.

Things to do in the rain covers the rest of the indoor options for families.

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The other rule that catches people is that you must arrive 30 minutes before your session starts, not at the start time. We read Flip Out’s own pages on 12 October 2026.

You cannot wear your own socks

Grip socks are compulsory, and they have to be the park’s own: Flip Out says guests must use Flip Out grip socks when bouncing, and that you will not be able to bounce without a pair. Some session prices include them and some do not, so check which you are buying rather than assuming. Sessions start from £7.

No jewellery, and no sharp objects such as belt buckles or clothing studs, are allowed on the trampolines. Comfortable clothes or sports gear are what the park asks for.

Who has to come with you

Children of 11 and under need a parent or guardian on site at all times. All under-5s must be accompanied by an adult in the arena itself, although the park is clear that the adult does not have to bounce. For groups and parties, the ratio is one adult per ten children.

Every guest needs a signed waiver for insurance. For anyone aged 12 to 18, a parent or guardian completes it, and usefully, that person does not have to attend. So a group of teenagers can jump without a parent present, provided the waivers were done first.

The other big operator, and its quieter sessions

Oxygen has rebranded as Oxygen Activeplay and now runs RedKangaroo and Boost parks under the same rules. Three of its policies are worth knowing because they differ from Flip Out’s.

SEN Peaceful Play sessions. These reserve the whole park for guests with special educational needs and disabilities, at reduced capacity and with a quieter atmosphere. It is the only accommodation of its kind either operator publishes, and it is bookable rather than something to ask about on the day.

No filming. Oxygen asks that filming and video recording are not carried out in the park at all, including of your own child, because of the number of other families around. If you were planning to record a birthday party, that is the rule to check first.

No upper age limit, and adults must wear grip socks too. Open Play is for ages 4 and over, and adults are encouraged to jump rather than watch, on the same terms: a ticket, a waiver and the park’s own grip socks.

Oxygen’s general hours also split by term. In term time it runs 9.30am to 1.30pm and 3.30pm to 7pm on weekdays, and 9am to 7pm at weekends. In school holidays it is 10am to 6pm on weekdays and 9am to 6pm at weekends. It says hours vary between parks, so check the individual one.

On access, Oxygen is honest rather than reassuring: features vary by location, and it warns that viewing platforms, party rooms and upper levels may have limited wheelchair access depending on the building. Contact the specific park rather than assuming.

Refunds depend on when you booked

Within 24 hours of paying, you can cancel for a full refund. After that you can only move the booking to another date, with no refund. Book inside 24 hours of the session itself and there is no refund at all, only a date change or a credit note.

Hours change in term time

At the London E6 park, on Barking Road, the timetable splits in two. In term time it is closed on Tuesday and Thursday entirely, and opens at midday on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, running to 7pm. In school holidays it opens at 10am seven days a week. Saturdays are 10am to 8pm all year, and Sundays 10am to 7pm.

That midweek closure is the thing to check before travelling: a term-time Tuesday trip to this park is a wasted journey.

Where to go next

Things to do in the rain and discounted days out cover the rest of a wet half term.

The Cube and the Crystal Maze are the indoor games for older children.

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So if you have been meaning to go up the hill in Greenwich, you have until 1 November. We checked the museum’s pages on 12 October 2026.

There is still a planetarium, in a different building

Royal Museums Greenwich has put a new planetarium experience into the National Maritime Museum, at the bottom of the hill, as part of its Astronomers Take Over programme. That is the working answer to where you can see a planetarium show in London while the Observatory is shut.

The National Maritime Museum is free to enter, which the Observatory is not, so the substitute is also the cheaper option.

What is closing, and when

The Observatory is open 10am to 5pm daily with last entry at 4pm, until 2 November. The planetarium itself has been closed since September 2025, so a visit now gets you the Meridian Line, the historic buildings and the view, but no show.

Trade and local coverage reports a full reopening expected in 2028, with the Meridian Courtyard returning first in summer 2027 and tickets for it going on sale in January 2027. Those dates are reported rather than published by the museum, which gives no reopening date at all on its own pages, so treat 2028 as an expectation and not a commitment.

The age rule, for when it returns

Planetarium shows at the Observatory did not admit under-5s, and all children under 14 had to be accompanied by an adult. Ted’s Space Adventure was the exception, a live show aimed at children aged seven and under. Expect something similar when the new planetarium opens, and check before booking for a young child.

Where to go next

Greenwich Park surrounds the Observatory, and the Cutty Sark is at the bottom of the hill.

Free museums covers the National Maritime Museum and the rest.

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The 2026 National Service of Remembrance is on Sunday 8 November. No ticket or pass is needed. Everything below comes from the Government’s own guidance, read on 12 October 2026.

The timings

From 8am Whitehall opens, with police security checks to clear. From 10.30am the detachments form up at the Cenotaph. From 10.50am participants process out. At 11am the two minute silence is marked by the King’s Troop firing from Horse Guards Parade, and the service begins. At 11.25am the service ends and the Royal British Legion detachments march off past the Cenotaph.

Where to stand, and the screens

You watch from the pavements along Whitehall and Parliament Street. Video screens are placed north of the Cenotaph, and there is a further screen to the south on the corner of King Charles Street. If you cannot get near the Cenotaph itself, those screens are the fallback rather than a lost morning.

Accessible viewing

There is an enclosure for wheelchair users on the west side of Parliament Street, near King Charles Street, with an accessible toilet nearby. Places go on a first come basis and each person may bring one carer or guest. Since it is not bookable, the 8am opening matters even more if you need that space.

Bags and drones

Large bags are discouraged, and the guidance is specific that bags with multiple or complex openings will slow you through the security check. Drones are strictly prohibited at all times across the area and the surrounding roads.

Nearby stations will be busy before and after the service, and the guidance points to Transport for London and National Rail for the day rather than naming a station. Questions about the march past go to the Royal British Legion directly.

The rest of the year

Outside Remembrance Sunday the Cenotaph stands in the middle of Whitehall and is free to see at any hour, with traffic either side of it. It is a short walk from Westminster, Charing Cross and Embankment, and sits between Downing Street and the Churchill War Rooms, so most people pass it without stopping.

Where to go next

The Churchill War Rooms are a few minutes away, and Changing the Guard is the other free ceremony worth timing a morning around.

Free things to do covers the rest.

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