What you are looking at
Parliament Hill rises at the south eastern corner of Hampstead Heath, a long grassy ridge a little under a hundred metres above sea level, and from its crest the whole middle of London is laid out in front of you. The towers of the City gather to the left, the Shard stands apart beyond them south of the river, the BT Tower is the slim cylinder nearer and further right, and on a clear evening the cluster at Canary Wharf shows in the east. On the summit a metal panel names the landmarks for anyone who has lost track.
The view that matters most is the one you almost do not notice. A straight line from a marked point on the summit to the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, more than six kilometres away, is one of the handful of protected views written into London's planning rules, and nothing may be built that would block it. That is why, in the middle of a skyline that has changed out of recognition in twenty years, the dome still sits clear and pale among the towers, exactly where Wren's contemporaries would have looked for it. A second protected view runs from the same hilltop to the Palace of Westminster.
Why dusk, and which dusk
The view faces south, which means the sun goes down to your right while the city in front of you changes colour and then starts to glitter. The best half hour begins shortly before sunset and ends a little after it, when the sky above the towers has gone deep blue and every office floor that has somebody working late shows up as a line of light. In high summer that is late in the evening and the hill is full of people who had the same idea. In winter it comes early, around the time most people are leaving work, and you may have the crest nearly to yourselves.
The best evenings are the clear ones after rain, when the air has been washed and the far edge of the city stays sharp. Haze flattens everything and low cloud can hide the tops of the tallest towers altogether, so if the weather is doubtful it is worth deciding on the day rather than a week ahead.
The way up from Gordon House Road
Gordon House Road runs along the southern foot of the heath between Gospel Oak station, on the London Overground, and the lido near the Highgate Road end. Several paths climb from it to the crest, and the widest and most obvious one takes the most people straight to the benches along the top. On a fine summer evening every one of those benches is taken and the grass around them is crowded with picnics, phones and at least one guitar.
The better approach is to start from the lido end and take one of the narrower paths that curls up the eastern flank of the hill. It is a gentler climb, it gives you the view gradually rather than all at once, and it brings you out on the crest a little way east of the main cluster of benches. From there the panorama is identical, the grass is quieter, and nobody minds two people sitting on a coat rather than a bench. Allow fifteen minutes from the road at an easy pace, which leaves breath for conversation.
Coming down in the dark
The heath never closes. Most of it has no gates at all and people walk across it at every hour, but it is also unlit, and once the last of the light has gone the paths become very dark very quickly. The sensible habit is to leave the crest while there is still some colour in the sky and take the main paths back down to the lit edge along Gordon House Road or Highgate Road. It takes ten minutes and the city stays in view most of the way.
Wear shoes chosen for grass, not pavements. The hill is steeper than it looks from the bottom, and a dewy slope in the half light is no place for smooth soles. If the weather turns, the walk is simply dropped and the evening moves straight to a table; nobody on this site will insist on a view that is not there.
Tables ten minutes downhill in NW5
The eastern foot of the hill opens onto Highgate Road, and within ten minutes' walk are two of the best pubs in north London. The Bull and Last, right by the heath, is an old inn with a kitchen that takes itself seriously and rooms that suit a long meal as well as a quick one. The Southampton Arms, a few minutes further south, is small, plain and resolutely old fashioned, with a changing list of ales and ciders and almost nothing else to distract from them. Beyond them Highgate Road runs down into Kentish Town, which has plenty of later kitchens if the evening is still going.
Parliament Hill belongs, strictly speaking, to the heath rather than to any one village, but it is reached just as easily from the lanes of Hampstead on the western side, a twenty minute walk over the heath by daylight, and the heath paths east lead up towards Highgate. Deciding where to begin is mostly a question of where you are coming from; the guide on which heath entrance to name sets out the easy meeting points on every side.
An evening built around the light
This is the natural shape of the unhurried evening, the booking on this site for company that should feel easy and unplanned, however carefully it was arranged. Two hours at £500 gives you the climb, the half hour on the crest and a drink at the bottom. Three hours at £700 adds a proper dinner and a slow walk afterwards, and anyone who has done the shorter version once tends to book this one the second time. Tell the desk the evening and roughly when the sun sets that week, and Verity will suggest a meeting time that puts you on the top for the good part.
Nora, anchored in Hampstead, has walked the heath often enough to find her way between the ponds without a torch; with her long honey blonde hair she is one of the four on the blondes page. Lucy works from the Kentish Town end and likes to finish exactly where this guide does, at a table near the top of Highgate Road. Jasmin, also in Hampstead, prefers an early start and will happily take you across the heath from the village side instead.
Cross filed: most of the names on this sheet also sit in the brunettes drawer of the moodboard.