Limehouse at half past nine: E14 between the basin and the river

Limehouse station carries the DLR and the c2c services and stands two minutes from the basin. Westferry, DLR only, is five minutes from the eastern end of Narrow Street. West India Quay is nine minutes away and is the sensible platform if the evening will end on the estate rather than here.

Trains put the Wharf four minutes east and Bank about nine minutes west. By road, the Limehouse Link tunnel makes this the fastest part of E14 to reach from the City, roughly fifteen minutes outside the rush. Allow forty five minutes to an hour from a confirmed booking, and expect Maude to revise the figure rather than repeat it.

Limehouse has no large hotel of its own, so guests book one stop east and ride or walk in. The riverside one at E14 8RS is the closest of the good ones, eleven minutes on foot along the river path or four by DLR. The hotel at E14 4ED sits on West India Quay, nine minutes from the basin.

A third on the estate itself is the most recently built and the other regular choice. As everywhere on this site, those are addresses where guests happen to be staying and nothing more; none has an arrangement with this desk. Most Limehouse work, though, is to flats: the warehouse conversions on Narrow Street, the basin blocks and the newer builds off Commercial Road.

Slower ones. An hour at £250 is common because the district itself does not ask for a production. Two hours at £500 usually means supper somewhere on Narrow Street and the towpath afterwards, twenty minutes at a walking pace, which looks a great deal better in the dark than it does at noon.

Guests here are largely residents, plus people who deliberately chose to stay west of the estate. Writers, consultants between projects, and a steady number who worked in the towers for years and moved one stop out to stop looking at them. They ask for conversation rather than spectacle, which suits the women who cover the district.

Karolina and Tina are both anchored in the district and know the basin routes in both directions. Molly and Sonya work the postcode at large and come west without being asked twice. Angelika will travel over from the estate for a late table when the night is already running.

The page shows six to eight of them; all twenty eight sit on the desk with real availability rather than a permanent green light. Say the hour and the address, and Maude comes back with who can actually stand at that door.

Canary Wharf is four DLR minutes east and the obvious place for a table. Wapping is fifteen minutes west along the river path, or two Overground stops via Shadwell, and it is the only district nearby with the same warehouse character. The Isle of Dogs begins south of Westferry, five minutes by train.

Every district named here sits in Zone 2, so the fare is already inside the fee and nothing appears when she arrives. Lengths and figures are on rates; the order of events from first message to arrival is on booking.