Waterloo & West London H3
The last time I was in London for more than a couple of hours, is almost four years ago! About time to visit it again, so today I finally found myself once again on a Eurostar under the English Channel. Lots of queueing—the train was full—but at least the biometric gates now worked with my Belgian comic strip passport.
Since I didn’t have time for a coffee before my departure in Brussels, and because I had a bit of time to kill before I could check-in in my hotel, my first stop in London was at Redemption Roasters for some—apparently—prison-roasted coffee, and a piece of banana bread.
My hotel for this trip is again the very conveniently located—right next to the station—hub by Premier Inn King’s Cross. I’ve stayed there once before, returning from one of my Scotland trips. A swift check-in, change into my kilt, and it was time to hit the town!
First up was Mother Kelly’s Bottle Shop & Taproom in Vauxhall. Their taprooms had been on my to-do list for years, but somehow I never made it… This one has 33 beers on tap, so it wasn’t hard to find some beers I liked! The music I didn’t like that much, so after two beers I moved on.
The second stop was the Waterloo Tap. The bar is part of the same family as the Euston Tap, my usual last stop before boarding the Caledonian Sleeper, so I kind of knew what to expect: a nice selection of keg and cask beers. I wasn’t wrong about that, but the venue itself was so much more open than the Euston Tap: it was basically a rather narrow railway arch with windows put in on both sides!
Then it was time to visit BrewDog Waterloo. At that moment it was still the newest London BrewDog bar, but that would soon, very soon, change… I’ve visited BrewDog bars of all sizes, but this one is just ridiculously large: apart from the bar space itself—with 60 taps—and a micro-brewery like we’ve seen in other Outposts, this location also has a separate coffee bar, an indoor ice cream van, a hidden cocktail bar, a podcast recording studio, duckpin bowling, and a slide! My stomach was still on Belgian time, so I seized the opportunity to give the Vegan Allstars menu a try, and had a portion of Loaded Skins.
I didn’t want to eat too much, because the next activity on the schedule was a run, with the West London Hash House Harriers. In The Old Star pub I quickly changed into my running kilt and shoes, and off we went! As usual when hashing, I met a lot of nice people, and as luck would have it, it turned out to be a very tourist friendly trail!
The last stop of the evening was BrewDog Wandsworth, for its Equity Punk (pre-opening) night, that just happened to be during my visit to London. So yes, from now on until the next one opens, that is the newest BrewDog bar in London! I managed to chat to some people I’ve been reading on the EFP forum for years, and some I had met before. It was a really nice way to end my first evening in London.
