Angel escorts for N1 and EC1V, where Islington leans into Clerkenwell

What the evening is usually built around

Sadler's Wells sits on Rosebery Avenue, about twelve minutes downhill from the station, and it changes programme often enough that a regular visitor can go a dozen times a year without repeating herself. It is the reason a good number of Angel bookings start at half past six rather than eight. The Screen on the Green is two minutes from the station on Upper Street, a cinema that has been showing films on that spot since 1913 and now has sofas at the back and a bar at the front, which is a combination nobody expected to work and everybody now defends.

Camden Passage runs off the bottom of Upper Street, a narrow lane of antique dealers that empties of stalls by the evening and fills instead with small restaurants and rooms with eleven tables in them. It is two minutes from the station and it is the answer whenever somebody asks where to go when they do not want anywhere large.

Rooms on either side of the postcode line

N1 0UY is the nearest large hotel, standing where Upper Street bends towards the gyratory, and it is a two or three minute walk from the station. South of the line, EC1M 5RJ and the townhouse at EC1V 4JJ are ten to fifteen minutes down St John Street, small, deliberately odd and much loved by guests who dislike lobbies. Another sits on Charterhouse Square at EC1M 6AH, a quiet Georgian square that most visitors never find, about eighteen minutes on foot or six by car.

Companions visit all of these, and flats above the passage, and the warehouse conversions in Clerkenwell that have no hotel name at all. No hotel here is a partner and none has ever needed to be. She arrives as a guest, quietly, and reception is not part of the arrangement.

Four stations, and the escalator

Angel on the Northern line is two minutes from Upper Street and has the longest escalator on the Underground, which takes a while and which most people here have stopped treating as a novelty. Essex Road, a National Rail platform, is ten minutes north east. Old Street is twelve minutes south and carries the Northern line and National Rail. Farringdon, fifteen minutes south west, is the interchange that matters for anybody arriving from further out: the Circle, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines, the Elizabeth line and National Rail all stop there.

The practical consequence is that Angel is easier to reach from the City and the west than Islington is, and slightly harder to leave late, since the Northern line is the only tube at the door. Buses down St John Street run all night, and a car to the middle of town takes fifteen or twenty minutes outside the evening peak.

Who books an Angel evening

A fair share of it is people who have finished work a mile south and would rather not eat in the City. They come up one stop, want somewhere with low light and small tables, and are perfectly happy for the evening to start at eight rather than six. The other share is dance: guests who have bought tickets on Rosebery Avenue months ahead and want somebody who will not need the plot explained to her.

Two hours at £500 covers a film and a table in the lane. Three at £700 covers a performance and dinner after it without anybody watching a clock. Send a finishing hour rather than a start time if that is the easier end to fix, and the desk will work backwards from it.

Companions anchored at the bottom of the hill

Cindy, Molly and Violetta all work Angel and the streets either side of it. Cindy builds her evenings around Rosebery Avenue and allows twenty minutes for the walk down. Molly meets people at the top of Camden Passage rather than inside anywhere, because she thinks the lane is the point. Violetta takes the cinema on Upper Street first and dinner afterwards, and is straightforward about the fact that she is currently taking dates for her return.

Ten minutes uphill, Bianka, Milena and Tina cover the same ground from the Islington end. Everybody else on the list travels in, usually inside thirty five minutes.

Where Angel leads

Straight up the hill, Islington is the same street with a longer name and a theatre at the top. West across the canal, Camden Town is fifteen minutes by bus and a completely different noise. South west, the goods yard and the towpath at Kings Cross are ten minutes, and the platforms under the Barlow shed at St Pancras are a minute or two beyond them, which makes an Angel evening easy to fit around a train.