Pembridge Road to Elgin Crescent
The first landmark on Portobello Road is the Sun in Splendour, Notting Hill’s oldest surviving pub, built in 1850 and still serving traditional ale and basic pub food in rather spartan surroundings. With the exception of Giselle Menhenett’s fabulous Portobello Gallery, the shops along this stretch tend to cater for the cheap end of the tourist market. Walking on between the gallery and the Gate Hotel, you soon come to a long terrace of two-storey Victorian cottages much in the style of Hillgate Village, though with tiny gardens at the front. At least two writers are known to have lived here: novelist and political essayist George Orwell at No. 22, and the poet Roger McGough a little further down. On the other side of the road, it’s worth stopping at the Lazy Daisy Café, both for its peaceful courtyard setting and the food, which manages to be wholesome, delicious and fairly cheap. This was once the premises of Petersberg Press, printers of fine art whose regular clients included David Hockney, Jim Dine and Henry Moore. It became a café in 1991, soon after the press went into liquidation. The current café owner rents the galleried space from St Peter’s Church on Kensington Park Road, which also runs the nursery school next door.