London's sexiest places ... for those that like the outdoors

Sir Stuart Rose on the Serpentine Bridge
10 April 2012

ES Magazine uncovers the capital's sexiest places: from Parliament Hill to the Serpentine Bridge...

Parliament Hill
Since I was 13 and the school chaplain took me to the top of Parliament Hill it has been a very special place for me. There's a bench and if you go past at midnight you can have the whole top of the hill to yourself. I find that there's something about being in a park and having the whole of the city falling down in front of you, and the stars and the moon, that is incredibly arousing. There's also an old tree on Hampstead Heath that has a secret cave in it; unfortunately, the last time I went the secret had obviously got out and it was all rather sordid.
Viktor Wynd, chancellor of The Last Tuesday Society

Chelsea Physic Garden
When I was very young, romantically ambitious and predatory, I used to find poetry a useful assist in the sport of seduction. Chelsea Physic Garden is as fine a venue for a flirtatious recitation as you could wish. Find a bench near an aphrodisiac plant, bella donna perhaps, and read Andrew Marvell's melancholy The Garden or better still his mischievous To His Coy Mistress. Very reliable. chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk
Stephen Bayley, design guru

Sydenham Hill Wood
If the bosky scent of dells and the idea of spongy moss against naked flesh gets you going, Mellors and Lady Chatterley-style, there remain a few pockets of urban woodland in London that provide fertile ground for al fresco fun. Sydenham Hill Wood, a verdant triangle of ancient oaks, the last remnant of South London's Great North Wood, is where the Victorians came for illicit outings and where, today, the young bucks of Dulwich College come to do their frotting.

Sir Stuart Rose on the Serpentine Bridge
If you want a bit of a hot charge, London is the sexiest city in the world. In the 1960s there was a sexy buzz around Carnaby Street and the King's Road, but now you can go anywhere in London to express your romantic side. When wooing I like to walk through Hyde Park and over the Serpentine Bridge, which never fails to uplift and inspire. The symbolism of the bridge as the male sex organ bridging the gap between man and woman is a bit too Freudian for me, but there is a sense of joining one side to the other, the sensation of a journey.
The view from the bridge can be brooding on an autumnal day, and fantastic on a spring day when you can see all the way down to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. It's always alive with people. Mostly you see couples hand in hand, from more seasoned lovers to young couples with babies. It's a people place and a couples' place. I've had many a significant conversation in this park, walking through with people I'm romantically attached to.
As a Piscean, I'm a romantic at heart; I still believe in Valentine's Day. In the past I've made my own cards and sent them anonymously with tulips. They're my flower of choice because of their unadulterated simplicity. I'm not that fussed about music, but I will charm with food. Aphrodisiacs are seasonal; in spring there's nothing nicer than gulls' eggs with a glass of Chablis, and in the winter I'd chose to comfort with steak and kidney pie. I like a bit of formality so I enjoy dressing up for an evening out. I'm a leg man and I love it when girls dress up, too. Women often ask me what scent I wear: I'm a one-scent man and I've worn Acqua di Parma for the past 15 years.
From a retailer's perspective, sex sells. The two strongest marketing words in the English language are 'free' and 'sex'. Put them together and it's a definite bestseller.
Hannah Nathanson
Sir Stuart Rose's career in retail was crowned by six years as chief executive and then executive chairman of Marks & Spencer; he stood down last month. He is divorced and lives alone in Kensington

The Waterlily House at Kew Gardens
Air heavy with moisture, glass fogged with tropical heat, pink-tipped lilies thrusting up through the glassy black water... Just make sure you don't visit during half-term. kew.org

The Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens
Climb the white steps, stop beneath the golden throne and statue, stand beneath the soaring, surging tower and spire, survey the world, whether in bleak Kensington winter, or balmy summer, and you're a king of London.
Simon Sebag Montefiore (Jerusalem: The Biography is out now)

London Fields Lido
Something about swimming in the open air in the depths of winter brings out the Scandinavian in
us. There's no better place to indulge the strapping Nordic sexbot that lurks within than at London Fields Lido, with its modernist lines, atmosphere of good health, and hipster clientele drawn from the capital's best-looking borough. After an afternoon's breaststroke, drawing bracing rasps of oxygen into the lungs, the steam rising from the skin, we're ready to lose our inhibitions. Risky place for a first date, perhaps, but worth a try for the second. hackney.gov.uk

The cricket pavilion in Battersea Park
The wonderful thing about cricket is that it is such a boring game that no one will notice if you sneak off the outfield for a quick one with someone else's wife behind the pavilion. I have always liked Battersea Park best because the class of lady there is superior.
Rufus Albanese, restaurateur

The private gardens of Notting Hill
It was Alan Hollinghurst who gave the genteel walking grounds of moneyed West Londoners their homoerotic charge. In his wonderful 2004 novel The Line of Beauty, the gay hero, Nick Guest, loses his virginity to a boy named Leo in the garden of the Conservative MP with whom he is staying. '...[J]ust before he came he had a brief vision of himself, as if the trees and bushes had rolled away and all the lights of London shone in on him: little Nick Guest from Barwick, Don and Dot Guest's boy, fucking a stranger in a Notting Hill garden at night. Leo was right, it was so bad, and it was so much the best thing he'd ever done.'

The doggy wash at The Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath
Last autumn I became privy to a scene going on at weekends beyond the northern fringe of Hampstead Heath, in the rear of the car park of The Spaniards Inn, just before dusk. Some think it sexy - it certainly starts out filthy. There may be a footballer, an incognito pop star, a couple from St Albans all kinds. Initiates call it 'dog-washin'. It was after an afternoon yomping on the Heath with my shark-toothed Staffie that I first discovered it, for there we came upon a boisterous convention of border terriers, shar-peis and boxers waiting with their owners to enter the coin-operated dog shower. Afterwards, with pooch sparkling, we repaired to a cosy nook in the ancient inn for a few pints. Legend has it that the upstairs is haunted, though downstairs was filled with warm souls and, since water bowls abound and dogs drink free, happy mutts.
James Scott Linville, screenwriter of The Garden of Eden

Putney embankment
A rosy-cheeked walk with your beloved along the embankment at Putney, trailing the river all the way down to Barnes, past the Harrods storage depot, stopping off for a pub lunch at The Sun Inn in SW13. This is a walk the protagonists do in One Day by David Nicholls.
Elizabeth Day, journalist and novelist

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