Portobello Road Market: London Travel Guide (4.5★)

A Street That Changes as You Walk

Portobello Road is a market you walk, not browse. It runs for well over a mile from Notting Hill Gate up to Golborne Road. Every few blocks it changes what it sells.

The south end belongs to antiques: silver cutlery in velvet trays, brass compasses, old maps, enamel signs. Further north come fruit and veg barrows, then hot food, then racks of secondhand leather jackets under the concrete flyover. The pastel terraced houses at the start, in pink, lilac and pale blue, are the ones you have seen on everyone’s phone.

Getting to Portobello Road

Two Underground stations sit at either end, so you can walk the whole length without doubling back.

• Notting Hill Gate (Central, Circle and District lines): the classic start. Follow the signs and the crowd north along Pembridge Road, then turn left onto Portobello Road.
• Ladbroke Grove (Hammersmith & City and Circle lines): closer to the food stalls, the Westway and Golborne Road. It’s a good finish point.

Starting south and walking north puts the antiques first, while you are still fresh. You reach the food at about the time you want lunch.

What You’ll Find, Block by Block

The market has a rough geography. Use it to decide where to spend your time.

• Chepstow Villas to Elgin Crescent: the antiques arcades and street dealers, densest on Saturdays. Expect prints, porcelain, cameras, military medals and jewellery.
• Around Elgin Crescent and Blenheim Crescent: turn off for the Notting Hill Bookshop on Blenheim Crescent, the travel bookshop that inspired the 1999 film Notting Hill.
• The middle stretch: fruit, vegetables, flowers and everyday stalls, plus the Electric Cinema, which opened in 1910 and is one of Britain’s oldest working cinemas.
• Under the Westway: vintage clothing, records and flea-market odds and ends in the shade of the A40 flyover.
• Golborne Road: the market’s north end, where the area’s Portuguese and Moroccan communities show in the cafés and stalls, with Trellick Tower looming above.

Beating the Weekend Crush

This is one of London’s best-known markets, and on Saturdays it feels like it. The quietest window is 8am to 10am, on weekdays and at weekends alike. Arrive then and you can actually stop at a stall without being nudged along.

Try not to turn up on a weekend between 10am and 6pm. That’s when the antiques stretch slows to a shuffle and photos of the coloured houses come with strangers in them. If Saturday is your only day, take the Tube to Notting Hill Gate for 8am.

The street is listed as open 8am to 7pm every day. How many stalls trade varies a lot by day, though. Saturday is the big antiques day, and weekdays are mostly the general market and the shops. Check the official market website before you go if a particular section matters to you.

Haggling, Paying and Other Street Manners

A few habits make the morning smoother.

• Haggle politely, and only at the antiques end. Asking “what’s your best price?” on a costlier piece is normal with dealers. On fruit stalls or a food truck, it isn’t.
• Carry a card and some cash. Most stalls take contactless, but a few smaller dealers prefer notes, especially for small sums.
• Watch your bag. The crowds near the antiques arcades attract pickpockets. Keep your phone in a front pocket.
• Ask before photographing goods. Some dealers don’t like close-ups of their stock. A quick question gets a better reaction.
• Step aside to stop. The pavement is narrow. Duck into a doorway to look at a map or take a picture instead of halting in the flow.

Prices are on the stall labels or come from the stallholder. They vary too much to predict, so ask.

Making a Day of It

Allow two to three hours to walk the length at a browsing pace, longer if you get drawn into the antiques arcades. Grab street food near the middle or a custard tart on Golborne Road, then rest your legs.

Holland Park is about fifteen minutes’ walk south-west of Notting Hill Gate, with its Kyoto Garden and peacocks. Kensington Gardens is just south of the station too. If you’re in London over the August bank holiday weekend, Notting Hill Carnival takes over these same streets; plan around it or go all in.