Londoners love a drink. While the temptation is to snooze off the following day in whichever bed/gutter/Crossrail development you've woken up, it's better to battle the hangover out and about. Here's what we suggest.
Stomach-settling
Rehydration is top of any hangover agenda — refresh in style at Redemption. This teetotal bar in Notting Hill and Shoreditch will fix you up with lovingly made mocktails, such as the Coco-rita (coconut water, lime and agave served over crushed ice), Pomms (pomegranate juice, mint and soda), and hibiscus iced tea.
For further adventures in non-alcoholic drinking, we recommend signing up to Club Soda, which hosts low and non-alcoholic beer tastings.
Time to ease yourself back on the booze? Get a couple of 69 Colebrooke Row's Prairie Oysters down your gullet; these Hestonesque delicacies combine Sally Bowles's usual with another tried and tested hangover cure, the bloody mary.
Once suitably refreshed it's time to eat. Fill your boots with a breakfast from any given region of the world. Tuck into one of London's best roast dinners. Or brave one of London's best all you can eat and drink brunches.
Head-clearing
Queasiness minimised, it's time to ease that brain into gear. There's nothing quite like a walk to blow off the cobwebs: check out our mapped weekend walks (which you can in fact embark on any time you like).
Every Sunday, the very appropriately-named Hangover Lounge at The Lexington plies punters with soothing(ish) sounds from its roster of DJs. A mellower institution is the Sunday Morning Coffee Concerts at Wigmore Hall; slurp on a steaming caffeine (or sweet sherry if you prefer) while swaying to the strains of Mozart, Haydn or Schubert. And should you need to properly slob out, do so in one of the Electric Cinema's double beds.
Body and soul-cleansing
The final stage of vanquishing your hangover is to purge all the bad stuff and ultimately forgive yourself. Porchester Spa is the most glorious of its ilk left in London; a watery art deco palace. The plunge pool, steam rooms and hot towel treatments here will see off any leftover physical ailments in no time. If you really want to let it all out, take a nude Sunday swim in Bloomsbury's Energybase.
Find your Zen among the peacocks and water features at Holland Park's Kyoto Garden, or at the Barbican's conservatory (open to the public on Sundays). The London Buddhist Centre in Bethnal Green hosts a number of meditation and wellbeing classes. Most are drop-ins, and either cheap or suggested donation (handy if you've just blown the month's salary on cider).
If you've been a bad boy or girl and want to let it all out, Westminster Cathedral conducts daily confession sessions. Though there are more unorthodox ways to use London's churches too.
After all that, you'll probably be feeling thirsty. Time to locate the nearest decent boozer.
