25 September 2009

Bike Monopoly 14: Northumberland Ave


In one of those amusing and inexplicable quirks of the Monopoly board, Northumberland Avenue - a short, relatively humdrum back street - is rated more expensively than Whitehall next door.


Its four hundred yards of dull, stony, hotel-front grandeur runs from Trafalgar Square (right) to the big traffic on Victoria Embankment by the top of the Jubilee Bridges (bottom right).


There's some bike parking (right) conveniently situated opposite the Sherlock Holmes pub. You're as likely to find a local in here as find me at a royal garden party: it's a contrived tourist device, but done with so much charm that Peter Haydon and Chris Coe highlight it in their fine book The London Pub.


Monopoly's Northumberland Ave costs £160. What could this buy you there? Book with internet discount and you could just about snaffle a night in the Citadines Apart-hotel, for a one-bedroom apartment taking up to four people. You'd probably take your bike into the room with you.

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