London Bridge SE1 hotel nights: an escort to the Shard, Bankside or More London

Three pockets, five hotels

The hotels below are named as landmarks. The desk has no understanding with any of them, and she calls on you there as a private guest.

Shangri-La The Shard, SE1 9QU, which fills floors 34 to 52 of the tower and whose reception is reached by a dedicated lift from the street entrance on St Thomas Street. London Bridge Hotel, SE1 9SG, an independent hotel right beside the station on London Bridge Street. Hilton London Tower Bridge, SE1 2BY, at More London, a short walk along the river from Hay's Galleria. Over in Bankside, Hilton London Bankside, SE1 0UG, a few streets back from the Tate Modern, and citizenM London Bankside, SE1 0NZ, compact rooms where a tablet runs the blinds and the lights.

Name the hotel exactly. The two Hiltons are well over twenty minutes apart on foot, on opposite sides of London Bridge itself.

London Bridge, Borough, Monument

The station at London Bridge, where the Jubilee and Northern lines meet the main line, is about 2 minutes from both the Shard and the London Bridge Hotel. Borough, a small Northern line stop, is roughly 6 minutes from the southern edge of the market. Monument lies across the water, about 8 minutes over the bridge on foot.

The main line platforms carry Thameslink and Southern trains to Gatwick, about half an hour away, which is why so many guests here are catching a flight in the morning.

Borough Market itself shuts its stalls in the late afternoon, but the pubs and dining rooms around its edges, and along Bermondsey Street to the east, stay lively well into the night. That makes SE1 an easy place to begin an evening at a table before the hotel.

Timing across the river

Most of the rota lives north and west of here, so allow an hour from confirmation. Often it is less. The bridges are the slow points: London Bridge and Southwark Bridge at the evening peak, and Tower Bridge whenever it lifts for a passing ship, which it still does. After nine, and at weekends, the drive is quick.

The steps never change. WhatsApp carries the one-time check of your name, hotel and room, a time comes back in writing, and she arrives by car. SE1 sits in Zone 1, so her journey costs nothing on top. You pay her directly when she gets there, and no one else is involved in that part.

Who books south of the river

Three kinds of guest, mainly. People working in the City who cross the bridge in the evening to a hotel with a view, some on a two night trip, some for one night only. Visitors who booked the Shard for a birthday or an anniversary and want the dinner to be a proper occasion. And early flyers from Gatwick, who picked SE1 for the direct train in the morning. The dinner booking at £900 and the overnight at £1,800 are both common here.

An evening on the south bank

A guest checks into Hilton London Tower Bridge at six and books three hours from half past seven. She meets him at the hotel entrance. They walk west along the river past HMS Belfast, under the glass vault of Hay's Galleria, and up to a table high in the Shard with the whole of the City lit on the far bank. Afterwards comes a slow walk back along the water with Tower Bridge floodlit ahead. By half past ten they are at the hotel for a last drink, and at the end of the third hour she slips out as discreetly as she arrived.

Closest on the rota

No companion is based in SE1 itself. The nearest are across the water: Nancy in Covent Garden, a short drive over Waterloo Bridge, and the Mayfair companions Luna and Samanta, a few stops from London Bridge on the Jubilee line from Green Park. Everyone on the full rota comes to SE1 at the same rates.

Over the bridges

North across London Bridge, the City's hotels are five minutes away. West along the river and over Waterloo Bridge, Covent Garden is the nearest corner of the West End. And from the station, Thameslink trains run straight to the Gatwick terminal hotels, where bookings follow a three hour minimum.