Notting Hill is usually buzzing, so when should you visit it if you'd like to have it all to yourself? The answer is New Year's Day! Yes, walking around London's Notting Hill on the 1st of January is a delightful experience and could be a perfect fresh start to a new year. What to expect? Here's an Insta reel that sums up the visual highlights and a vivid description of my stroll through the picturesque streets of Notting Hill on New Year's Day: Surprisingly serene. Every yea

Twelve streets and mews across Kensington, Chelsea, Primrose Hill, Notting Hill and Paddington, with their history and when to see wisteria, blossom and red creeper.

The London streets, parks and churchyards where I found magnolias in bloom, and when to catch them before the petals drop.

Every year I forget how sudden it is. One week the city is doing its usual grey, wet, six-o'clock-and-already-dark routine, and the next there are magnolias going off like fireworks on residential streets and someone's sitting outside a pub in a t-shirt looking mildly surprised at themselves. London doesn't ease into spring. It sort of flinches into it. I took this set of photos over a few weeks of just going where the light looked good, which in practice meant checking the w