We spent about six weeks in London in September 2016. We stayed at the LSE in Drury Lane until we were kicked out because the students returned. We then tried the Go Native apartment hotel in Monument, just north of London Bridge. By the way London Bridge is not the Tower Bridge. That’s about a kilometre downstream. The Monument area was interesting and different. I walked downstream to the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and Saint Katherine’s Dock. Across the river is Southwark Cathedral, the Borough market, the Golden Hind II, the Clink prison museum and various other novelties. Shakespeare’s Globe and the Tate Modern gallery are about a kilometre upstream. Monument is part of the City of London area or “the City”. It teems with people in suits during the week and becomes fairly deserted on the weekend. Of a weekday evening, the pubs are absolutely overflowing with drinking office workers. Public transport is good all around, with buses leaving from London Bridge to pretty much everywhere. There are also a number of stations about the place. Monument station is allegedly accessible (I included a photo of the lift entrance in King William Street) but I didn’t try it.
The Go Native was an interesting place. It’s down a steep cobbled alley called Lovat Lane. The entrance to the apartments has a tricky door but the staff can see you and will come to help. As you can see one of the photos, there are five stairs near reception. These are part of an ingenious contraption that turns into a wheelchair lift. Unfortunately, although it was allegedly rated for 250 kg, it struggled terribly with me and my power chair, although we weigh about 250 kg all up. It kept collapsing and conking out and made our stay pretty annoying. Access to the room was also difficult, with a slippery round gadget to turn. The accessible room was very large and had a good kitchen with a fridge, oven, microwave et cetera. The bathroom was pretty good too. Although there were lots of windows, it’s pretty gloomy. As usual, the good rooms looking over the Thames were not accessible.
This is an interesting area to stay in for a bit if you have a manual wheelchair. Go Native have another, cheaper accessible place across the river near the Tower Bridge but it looked pretty dodgy when I checked out the area.
