How to keep cool in London this summer

It is absolutely baking this summer with temperatures rising over 30ºC (86ºF for my expat friends – as a sidenote, I’ve always thought that thinking in Fahrenheit makes everything seem warmer. Logically it doesn’t make any sense but 86ºF is just more than 30ºC).

Let’s be quite frank here, London doesn’t really do baking hot so well. I’m not complaining at the sunshine, hold back those pitchforks people, but being stuck at a desk without a lovely sea breeze, soft sandy beaches or beautiful waiters waving palm fronds to keep you cool, it just doesn’t really work. There isn’t really air conditioning because we don’t ever expect to have good enough weather, and then there’s the tube. Let’s just not go there.

Thankfully we do have one of the greenest cities on earth, and all these trees create little valleys for that incessant rainfall to collect (well, something like that anyway, biology was never really my strong point). London is crisscrossed with a myriad of Rivers; obviously there’s the Big Daddy Thames, the canal network, hidden rivers and a surprising range of open-air places to take a cooling dip. Just be aware there is a high chance of chest hair…

Hampstead Heath bathing pools where both men & women’s pools have been swum in since Victorian times:

The newly opened, and fantastic looking Olympic Park Swimming Pool:

The Serpentine, where crazy people also swim during Winter:

Act like a London River Rat on Regent’s Park boating lake:

Or just hide under a cluster of trees with good friends and a picnic.

For the more epicurean less sports minded, thankfully there is relief to be found in your very own kitchen; Guilt Free ‘Ice-Cream’ made with low (not no)-fat yoghurt, flavour and a little time: