NOT the Royal Wedding please…

Canary Wharf is likely to be fairly deserted on Royal Wedding day and offers some breathtaking contemporary perspectives (image credit below)

Some people will queue all night for the best view of the Royal Wedding.   Others, I suspect, will want to get as far away from it as possible.

But with London in Royal Wedding mania mode, “escape” may not be as easy as it sounds.  There are a few ‘alternative’ events – but the trouble is, if you go to an “anti-Royal Wedding” event, it’s just another way of paying attention to it: better in my view to avoid it entirely!

So here are a few suggested ways to spend the time profitably (and don’t forget that with the extra bank holiday, you’ll have 4 full days to occupy).

Epping Forest will be one of the loveliest locations to isolate yourself from the Royal Wedding celebrations should you wish to do so (image credit below)

• How about a lovely long London walk? Epping Forest will be at its springtime best and there are no TVs or radios to keep up the saturation wedding coverage.  Hornbeam, ash, oak and beech shade the paths, ferns curl in the undergrowth; sometimes, you can see the deer step like ballerinas daintily through the drifts of dead leaves.  A train to Chingford via the tube to Liverpool Street will get you there easily.  If you fancy a really challenging walk, the Three Forests Way links Epping, Hainault Forest and Hatfield Forest.  It’s 60 miles in all and you could walk it over the weekend.

• Wander the streets of the Square Mile.  Not a single street party has been planned – and it will probably be deserted.  While most of the fine City churches and livery halls will be closed, you can discover some of the alleyways and hidden churchyards and gardens.  And while you’re there, you might want to recall that this was a staunchly Puritan and Parliamentarian-voting area in the 1640s; the Lord Mayor sat on the court that condemned Charles I to death (though he didn’t sign the death warrant), so he definitely wasn’t a Royal Wedding fan!

• Head out of London for the day to Cambridge.  This was always the ‘opposition’ university (Oxford was Royalist, Cambridge was for Parliament).  You’re not really there to register a protest, though – you can tour the colleges, go punting on the river, walk along the Backs, and have a beer in the courtyard of the fourteenth-century Eagle pub (where the discovery of DNA was announced, by the way).

• You can go to the seaside (assuming the recent warm weather lasts which is never a given!).  Every resort has its fans – Brighton, with its Royal Pavilion like a camp version of the Taj Mahal; Hastings, with a charming old village as well as the Art Deco seafront (and it has a May Day festival with Jack in the Green, Morris dancing, and lots of beer); or head for Eastbourne to walk the chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters.

Brighton Pier won't be entirely immune to the Royal Wedding festivities, but at least you can escape by taking a dip in the sea if it's a warm day!

Whatever you do, if you’re trying to avoid the Royal Wedding, don’t go anywhere near Westminster!

Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, St James’s, and Westminster itself will all be packed.  Much safer, if you want (or need) to be in Central London over the weekend, to stay in the City or Docklands, or take the opportunity to discover one of London’s out-of-centre hotels.  You might consider the Andaz London near the East End or the hotels in stunning Canary Wharf - or you could even stay a little further out.

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• The Chiswick Moran Hotel is handy for Heathrow, with clean, modern styling that’s far from the usual image of the ‘suburban’ hotel.

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The Chiswick Moran hotel is stylish and a safe enough distance from central London to avoid all the festivities in the centre

• The Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green – this gritty London district is about as far from royalty as you can get.  I’m not sure if a member of the royal family has actually been in the vicinity since the Queen Mother visited the East End in the Blitz!

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Finally, if “avoidance” is not enough…LondonTown.com has compiled a guide of some great alternative Royal Wedding events which will no doubt allow you to gently poke fun at the whole shooting match!

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Photo credits: Chiswick Moran Hotel, Loz Flowers’ photostream, Jim Linwood’s photostream.

Tagged as: Andaz Hotel, Chiswick Moran Hotel, Town Hall Hotel