London has a reputation for being expensive, which it is, and a reputation for requiring expense to enjoy, which it doesn't. The city's best dates are mostly under thirty pounds for two if you know where to point yourselves. Six that I've sent friends on.
A pint and a swim on Hampstead Heath
The ponds at Hampstead are open all year. Entry is around four pounds each. Take towels and a change of clothes, swim for twenty minutes in the mixed pond in summer or watch the regulars in winter, then walk up to the Garden Gate or the Magdala for a pint. Total damage: under twenty pounds for two including drinks. The walk down through the heath at dusk is the best free thing in north London.
If swimming isn't on, do the same walk and end at Kenwood House, which is free to enter and has Vermeers and Rembrandts on the walls of an eighteenth-century library.
Tate Modern at six on a Friday
The permanent collection at Tate Modern is free, and the building empties out around six on weekdays when the office crowd leaves and before the weekend tourist surge. Walk the top three floors of the Blavatnik building for the views, then take the lift down and cross the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's. Coffee from the cafe is around three pounds. The whole date can cost a single round of drinks at the Founders Arms next door, total around fifteen pounds.
Maltby Street Market on a Saturday
Maltby Street under the railway arches in Bermondsey is the cheaper, less crowded sibling of Borough. A scotch egg from St John, a glass of wine from Gergovie, a doughnut from St John Bakery. Twenty pounds gets two of you fed and slightly drunk by two in the afternoon. Walk it off along the Thames Path toward Tower Bridge.
A double bill at the Prince Charles Cinema
The Prince Charles off Leicester Square does double bills and themed evenings for between five and ten pounds a ticket. They show everything from Wong Kar-wai retrospectives to whole nights of Studio Ghibli. Two tickets and a shared bag of popcorn comes in under twenty-five pounds. Afterwards, walk five minutes to the Lyric on Great Windmill Street, a proper old pub with no music, for a pint each.
A picnic from a supermarket, properly done
This sounds like a cheat. It isn't. Get to a Marks and Spencer Food Hall or a Waitrose, spend fifteen pounds on cheese, bread, olives, grapes, and a bottle of something drinkable. Take it to one of the parks people forget about: Greenwich Park up by the Royal Observatory, Brockwell Park looking down over the city, or the rose garden in Regent's Park in summer. The view from the General Wolfe statue in Greenwich is the same view people pay seventy pounds for at the Shard.
Add a corkscrew to your bag before you leave the house. It is the only thing standing between this date and disaster.
A free gallery and a cheap noodle
The National Portrait Gallery on Charing Cross Road reopened in 2023 and is free. So is the National Gallery next door, the British Museum, the V&A, the Wallace Collection, the Sir John Soane's Museum, the Wellcome Collection. Pick one, give yourselves an hour, then walk to Koya on Frith Street for udon at around twelve pounds a bowl, or to Kowloon Bakery on Gerrard Street for char siu and a bun for under ten pounds total.
The move is to under-plan the museum and over-deliver on the food. Two rooms of the National Gallery, properly looked at, beats the whole place skimmed.
A canal walk and a pint at the People's Park
Walk the Regent's Canal from Angel to Victoria Park, about an hour and a half. End at the Pavilion Cafe on the lake for coffee, around three pounds each, or at the Crown on Grove Road for a pint, around six pounds each. The walk is free, the date is three hours long, and you've covered enough of east London to actually have things to talk about.
What budget dates teach you
The expensive date is easier to plan and harder to learn anything from. When the restaurant is doing the work, neither of you has to. A picnic in the rain that you laugh through tells you more about whether this is going somewhere than a tasting menu ever will. Spend the money on the third date, when you've decided it's worth it.