It might be a case of blink and you’ll miss it, but every once in a while summer does actually come to London. You can hear the whispers in the air at the school gates, the excitement building as the mercury hits 20 degrees (yes that is considered summer here!) and when that magical moment occurs, London comes alive. The parks fill with sunbathers and happy picnic-ers, restaurants and bars spill out onto the pavements and Londoners walk with a smile. London in the summertime is such a fun place to be.
Since it opened around 4 years ago, our go-to place for some fun in the sun has been Granary Square on the banks of the Regents Canal in King’s Cross. Once a vast industrial through-route of empty goods warehouses and cranes, King’s Cross has now been transformed into a vibrant, bustling destination. The main attractions are without a doubt the 1000 plus choreographed fountains outside Central Saint Martins. Our children love nothing more than riding their scooters straight through the water or dashing in and out of the jets, whilst ignoring our pleas of ‘don’t get too soaked before lunch!’
The square is surrounded by some great restaurants, with plenty of outside chairs and tables to sit and soak up the animated atmosphere. On selected weekdays there’s the fantastic Kerb street food market across the road on Kings Boulevard, offering a variety of mouthwatering take away options. Then theres the innovative Skip Garden Kitchen, which blends so cleverly into the surroundings that you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve stumbled onto a building site, but a very cool one at that! And not forgetting the famous Ruby Violet ice cream parlour, a family favourite just around the corner from the square.
Tucked away between the buildings to the north east of the fountains you will find the (not so secret) – secret, table tennis tables. We recently visited here with friends and everyone wanted to have a go. They are housed in a beautiful, vaulted, industrial space, with plenty of room to run or scoot around. It was the perfect spot to contain our gang of over-enthusiastic, under-coordinated ping pong-ers whilst we waited out an unwelcome downpour.
We really love splashing in the Granary Square fountains on a hot summer’s day but there are lots of other interesting things to do and see around the area even if the weather isn’t great. Below are a few of our top suggestions:
To Do:
To Eat:
Have you visited the fountains? We’d love to know what you think of this cool corner of London.
Granary Square, Kings Cross, London, N1C 4AA
Kate xx
Comments (2)
Just across the road the children’s section of Pancras Square library is also fantastic during a downpour and we always also pop to Camley Street nature reserve for pond dipping if we’re going to Granary Square – a little oasis of calm just across the canal!
We love Camley Street Amy, great shout!