Massage near Lancaster Gate and the top of Hyde Park

Lancaster Gate is where the park meets the hotels — the long white terraces on Bayswater Road, the Italian Gardens across the road, the Serpentine ten minutes further in. Guests from here are, more than anywhere else, people who use the park: runners doing the loop before work, cyclists, walkers who have overdone it, and hotel guests who came for the park and left with a sore back from the flight.

Deep tissue is the most-booked session from this side. Hamstrings and calves after a long run, hip flexors after cycling, the lower back after a week of both. The pressure is set out loud and built gradually; a runner’s legs two days before a race get a different session from the same legs two days after.

The studio is eleven minutes west on foot — along Bayswater Road past the terraces, then up Leinster Terrace into Leinster Gardens, a quiet residential street in Bayswater. If you are staying on Bayswater Road, it is closer than most of the hotel spas and a good deal quieter.

Getting here from Lancaster Gate

From Lancaster Gate station, walk west along Bayswater Road for about seven minutes, turn right up Leinster Terrace and continue into Leinster Gardens — eleven minutes in all. From the park itself, leave by the Marlborough Gate or Black Lion Gate exits.