HELICOPTER / HELIPORT / HOTEL / LONDON / LUXURY / MASSAGE / RELAXATION / RESORT / RIVERSIDE / SAUNA / SPA / THAMES
Hello class, welcome back. Please open up appropriate Standards to page 25. It is the property section. You're probably taking a look at a CGI projection of the new residential development. The buildings are terracotta and blue and smartly arranged greenery within the communal courtyard completes the colour palette. There is however more blue since this is a CGI projection of a new riverside residential development. “Living through the river” you tell yourself “Wouldn't that be divine? I possibly could jog through the water with the Millennium Wheel faintly coming. Maybe I possibly could even jetski to operate. This is amazing. Where's this area?” Battersea. You look within the following day's paper. It's another riverside development and it's also in Battersea. The next day it's a new development, but it is still in Battersea. “Where is that this enormous section of London I have not visited?”
You're to ask because the riverside developments in Battersea stretch from Nine Elms by Vauxhall Bridge up to Battersea Reach on Wandsworth Bridge. That's four miles of new-build housing for yuppies, millennial entrepreneurs and foreign businessmen disinterested in ever occupying their exponentially appreciating investments.
So what is happening in Battersea? Well, the Dutch and American embassies will be popping within the river soon. In 2022, the Northern Line will be extended off Kennington to incorporate the the brand new stations of 'Nine Elms', 'Battersea' and then join up to Clapham Junction. The forest taxi is being extended to Battersea so that by the turn of the season you'll be to get at Embankment, Blackfriars or Tower Bridge within forty minutes and there's likely to be a new footbridge over into Imperial Wharf. In all but literally, Battersea is crossing the river.
Your Evening Standard told you where to reside in Battersea give or take four miles, but it didn't tell you where to stay, eat and relax. That's my job. Thanks for visiting the Crowne Plaza London – Battersea.
I look at the hotel on a glorious Sunday evening and i am about to enter through the double doors after i watch a voyeur of tourists turning their iPhones on their own sides. “No one takes landscape selfies. That's mental” I figured. They must be actually taking snapshots of a thing and not themselves. I needed to check this out. I quickly first viewed it. An american Army Apache Helicopter rose into the air, whipping up a frenzy amongst the onlookers as they tilted their screens to follow along with the ascension. It hovered there of sufficient length to allow the followers create a Vine and then it whizzed off west. Surprisingly not east.
I burst through the doors of the Crowne Plaza.
“Did the thing is that?”
“Oh yes sir, it's somewhat of a tourist attraction here. There are commercial and private helicopters too. There’s VIPs flying out and in all the time.”
“Oh that's really interesting” I said attempting to hold it all together whilst I wondered where my twenty year old copy of the Spotter's Help guide to International Motorised Transportation might be.
“Are you ready for your massage, sir?”
“Yes, I think I need to calm down”
Natasha, my girlfriend, walks along with a suitcase and collapses around the massage table. She worked all week, a cocktail party ended at 4am on Friday night and she's been at a wedding all Saturday. She looks like she could use a massage.
Are there any particular areas you would like us to concentrate on?
“Lower back please. I sit within an office chair all week and I think I tweaked something Scottish dancing last night” says Natasha
“Groins. Mainly the groins. The entire groin area actually”
We disrobe, lay down, place our heads in the head holes and that i began to relax and think about helicopters. An hour or so later our heads popped out of the holes, our bodies rejuvenated. We transfer to the relaxation room making tea together. The spa enables you to select from five jars of tea leaves, each tea has its own restorative properties and different tastes listed. The tea is looped into a homemade tea bag and put into a transparent teapot. The steam billowed upwards as we lay on our heated loungers in our white robes still balmy from the massage oil.
The Crowne Plaza London Battersea has a quite extraordinary relaxation facility in Spa Verta. The Spa includes a ten metre hydrotherapy pool, a sauna, steam room, sanarium, heated loungers and fitness centre. I recommend the shower jets. The thunderous power falling on your shoulders should knock out any latent tension from you working week. We dip in and out of the sauna and float round the candle lit pool and all the stresses of the week faded away. Sometimes like this, I love to consider myself boxed in on the tube wishing my stop would come. I like to keep in mind that that me wanted so much to be this me. Too often our weekends become more manic than our weeks as we force fun to justify the grind of another imminent working week.
Spa Verta provides a 20% discount on all spa treatments to the resident residing in the vicinity through their ‘Great Mates’ programme. With Anne Semoin, Safe place and Lava Shells bespoke treatments available, that’s a very good deal.
We dress for supper. The Riverside Bar and Grill, your accommodation restaurant sits on a mezzanine level. This offers just enough height to appear out in the lights reflecting around the river. A few is visible eating a houseboat by candlelight around the opposite bank. Giovanni, the restaurant manager, can be used towards the highest standard of hospitality having run Chelsea Football Club's VIP matchday. It's always been rumoured that proximity towards the heliport was among the deciding factors in Roman Abramovich's purchase of the club in 2003. Using the planned demolition of Chelsea Village to accommodate a stadium expansion, I would suspect a great deal of UHNW clientele to stay at the Crowne Plaza for access to the multimillionaires of Stamford Bridge.
The starters arrive. Smoked duck Carpaccio, sweet pineapple compote, roasted hazelnuts and herb salad for Natasha and chicken liver parfait with spiced pear chutney and date and apricot jelly for me. Both are elegantly presented and rich in flavour.
Prawn Curry along with a coconut cream sauce follow and also the Chef’s own burger with egg, crispy bacon, cheddar and chipotle mayo on a brioche bun. Make no mistake. This is a top quality restaurant experience.
We return to our club room feeling soothed and satisfied and that we submit for the night. Natasha leaves early for work. The hotel offers a free shuttle to Sloane Square every day for guests, which she's delighted about. I eat breakfast by myself, looking out on to another gorgeous day around the river. Businessmen hold their hats as they step into their private choppers. Clipper boats chunter east into the City and vis jackets flicker across the water from new build construction sites.
I take into account the wedding video scene in Love Actually once the best man flees to the riverbank to Dido's Here With Me. I think about Beckham around the speedboat in the Olympic opening ceremony. I believe about Joe Strummer screaming “I live and eat the river” in London Calling. This is London. Your investment buildings and also the Queen, The Thames is London's biggest icon. I wish to stay, but I have to check out. Such luxury in such a beautiful spot is so difficult to leave. I hand over my key card.
“A taxi for you, sir?”
“I'm alright, mate. I only live five minutes this way.”
