Where to hang out alone in London?

Solo Saturday. Midweek afternoon off. An evening where everyone else is busy and you've got a few hours and absolutely no plan.

London can feel enormous when you're navigating it alone, but here's the secret: it's one of the best cities in the world to be by yourself in. Not in a sad, sitting-in-a-corner way. In a genuinely good, doing-exactly-what-you-want way.

If you're not sure where to start, here are a few places in London that actually suit one.

Paint something at Art Play FreeFlow

Shoreditch or ChelseaFrom £16 on a weekday, and dogs are welcome, which is never not relevant information.. Book

Turn up, pick up a brush, paint whatever you like for two hours. That's the whole brief. Art Play's FreeFlow Unguided Painting sessions are exactly what they sound like: a relaxed studio space, all the acrylics and brushes and palette knives you could want, a canvas, and nobody telling you what to do with any of it. No instructor. No theme. No wrong answer. The studio is filled with artwork for inspiration if you need a nudge, but you're equally welcome to arrive with something already in mind and just get on with it.

We love solo painting. It's genuinely one of the better solo hangs in London because you're doing something with your hands, which means you're not performing aloneness at a table. You're just there, making a thing. Other people are doing the same. Nobody needs conversation but conversation happens anyway sometimes, which is the best kind.

Book FreeFlow Painting at Art Play

Wander a market with no shopping list

Borough Market on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Maltby Street on a Saturday morning. Columbia Road any Sunday. London's markets are at their best when you've got nowhere to be and nothing you actually need to buy. When you're alone you can stop for as long as you like in front of the cheese that requires explanation, actually listen to the person selling heritage tomatoes describe the difference between the varieties, and eat a scotch egg standing up without having to check if anyone else is hungry.

The solo market wander is one of those activities that sounds like nothing and turns out to be two hours well spent. You might buy something small and good. You'll almost certainly eat something. You'll probably cover more ground than you expected, which counts as exercise if you're being generous about it.

Spend an afternoon in a museum cafe with a book

Not just the museum. The cafe inside the museum. There is a meaningful difference between sitting in a Pret and sitting in the cafe at the V&A or the Natural History Museum, and that difference is that one of them has natural light, interesting people, and occasionally a very good cake. Most of London's major museums are free to enter, which means you can arrive with a book, spend twenty minutes looking at whatever catches your eye on the way to the cafe, and then sit for as long as you like without anyone giving you a look.

The Reading Room at the British Museum is worth knowing about for this. The Sir Paul Hamlyn Library at the V&A. The cafe at the Tate Modern with the view of the Thames. These are not tourist traps. These are genuinely excellent places to be by yourself on a slow afternoon in London.

Why being alone in London is actually brilliant

The city does not require you to bring someone with it. This sounds obvious, but a surprising number of people never really test it. There's a version of London you only get to when you're alone: the one where you take the slightly longer route because you're curious, where you pop into the bookshop because you felt like it, where you eat lunch at 11am because nobody's vote counts except yours.

Alone time in a city as big and varied as London is also, quietly, very good for you. You're not managing anyone else's energy. You're not deciding where to go based on compromise. You're just following your own nose, which turns out to be a surprisingly good guide.

There's also something to be said for the particular pleasure of the solo cafe. One coffee, a good seat, a window, maybe something to read or maybe not. London is full of cafes that suit this completely: the ones with long counters and no pressure to move, the ones with second-hand paperbacks on shelves, the ones that play music at a volume where you can still hear yourself think. You don't have to have a plan beyond finding one and sitting in it.

A note on the feeling a bit odd about it

If you've never really done the solo London day and feel slightly self-conscious about the idea, it passes quickly. Nobody is watching. Everyone in London is too busy with their own particular journey through the city to clock what anyone else is doing. The person eating alone at the nice restaurant is not being judged. The person at the gallery sitting on the bench in front of one painting for twenty minutes is not being judged. The person at Art Play painting something abstract and slightly chaotic on a Wednesday afternoon is absolutely not being judged.

The hardest part of hanging out alone in London is deciding to do it. After that it just becomes an afternoon, and then a good one.

So, where are you going?

Book the FreeFlow session. Pick a market. Find the museum cafe with the best cake. You've got one of the greatest cities in the world and the rare gift of a few hours with no obligations in it. That's not a problem to solve. That's an afternoon to enjoy.