Camden Town escorts for NW1, from the lock to the last set on Parkway

The hour Camden gets its pavements back

The useful hour is somewhere between half past seven and nine, once the day crowd has gone and before the late crowd arrives in any number. Chalk Farm Road empties first. The lock keeps a handful of people leaning on the railings a while longer, and the towpath under the bridge, lit for most of its length and far emptier than the road above it, becomes the pleasantest way to get from anywhere in NW1 to anywhere else in NW1.

The halls are why most guests come north at all. The Roundhouse stands on Chalk Farm Road, roughly ten minutes above the station, an old railway engine shed with a circular room inside that no newer building has managed to imitate. The Jazz Cafe is four minutes the other way on Parkway, small enough that the back of the room is still the front of it, and it keeps late shows going when the rest of the district has shut. Cecil Sharp House, ten minutes west on Regent's Park Road, has been the headquarters of English traditional music for ninety years, and on the right night a hundred strangers dance badly and very cheerfully in the same hall.

Rooms by the water, and rooms that only sound as though they are

Hotels, serviced flats and private addresses are all visited on identical terms, and we hold no arrangement with any hotel anywhere. A guest receiving a visitor is ordinary business at any hour of the day, and that is the whole of the matter.

In Camden proper one hotel sits at NW1 7BY, on the water within a few minutes of the bridge, and an old coaching house stands on Parkway at NW1 7PS, on the corner of the park. Beyond those two the honest answer is that Camden is short of rooms. WC1H 0HT and WC1H 8EG are both described as Camden hotels by people who have never walked it; neither is. They sit a mile south on the Euston Road, two stops down the Northern line or twenty five minutes on foot through Mornington Crescent.

Residential bookings are common here and cause nobody any trouble. Send the street and the building rather than the postcode by itself, since a good deal of NW1 has canal on one side and railway on the other, and a map is not always honest about which bridge you are meant to cross.

Lines, walking minutes and the way home

Camden Town station is two minutes from the High Street and carries both branches of the Northern line, which is why it turns one way only on busy weekend afternoons and is perfectly calm by eight. Camden Road, six minutes east, is on the London Overground and is the faster route towards Highbury. Chalk Farm, ten minutes north, is the station for the Roundhouse and usually the emptier platform. Mornington Crescent, also ten minutes but south, is the one to use if the High Street is doing its worst.

Getting away afterwards is rarely a problem here. The Northern line runs through the night on Fridays and Saturdays, buses along the High Street run every night of the week, and a car into the middle of town takes about twenty minutes at eleven against something far less predictable at seven, when the bridge over the lock behaves as it always behaves.

What people ask for in NW1

Three shapes of evening, more or less. There are guests staying at the lock who would rather have somebody who knows which room has the good sound this week than somebody who knows which bar has a rope across the door. There are people who live within fifteen minutes of here and want an evening that ends with a walk rather than a taxi. And there are visitors who have come up from the middle of town for one gig and discovered that Camden after the gig is better than Camden before it.

Late starts work well. An evening that opens at nine here is a normal evening rather than a short one, because the rooms that matter are still filling at that hour. If you are working to a doors time, send it rather than a start time, since support acts in this postcode run late as a matter of habit. The booking page sets out how a request is confirmed.

The women anchored here

Angelika, Michelle and Tiffany all give Camden Town as their ground, which makes them the shortest journey to any NW1 address. Angelika comes up from Mayfair and likes the canal side of the road on the way back. Michelle prefers a late start and a long finish, and will be in the room before the doors rather than halfway through a first set. Tiffany keeps to the quieter streets between the station and Primrose Hill, and knows what is on at the folk hall before anybody asks her.

One stop north, Danielle and Lucy are in Kentish Town and reach Camden in about four minutes. Two stops south, Luna works the Euston Road and takes NW1 bookings without blinking. Everyone else on the list travels here on the same terms, most of them inside half an hour.

Where NW1 hands over

North up the road, Kentish Town is one stop and a different crowd, quieter and with better chips. West across the bridge and along Regent's Park Road, the park and its Inner Circle start about twenty minutes on foot from the lock. South down the Northern line, Euston and the platforms at Kings Cross are eight and ten minutes respectively, which is why so many Camden evenings begin with a train. East, past Camden Road station, Islington is fifteen minutes by bus and belongs to a different kind of night altogether.