WE ❤️ PORTOBELLO

Your Fun Family Guide to Portobello Road & Notting Hill

There's something about Portobello Road that just gets you. The colours, the noise, the feeling that something brilliant is always happening just around the corner. Bring kids, and it becomes something else entirely.

Portobello Road street market open for business Friday - Monday

Looking for things to do with your kids and teens this May Half Term? Here's our guide to making the most of it — the clubs children talk about for weeks, the market that never gets old, and the lunch spot at the end that rounds the whole day off perfectly.

THE CLUBS

If you haven't discovered the kids' clubs tucked around Notting Hill yet, you're in for a treat. This little pocket of West London has some of the best in the city.

359 Portobello Road home to the hottest kids club in town kids upcycle their old clothes with a vintage haberdashery bar

Chillie Kids Club is the one every parent tells their friends about. Kids take old clothes and turn them into something brilliant — bags, outfits, whole new looks — guided by founders Natalie Hartley and Lydia MacNeill who make the whole thing feel exciting rather than crafty. One child turned a waistcoat into a sequined handbag. Another made a dress from a T-shirt. 5.0 stars on GOOGLE and absolutely earned!

Cygnets Art School on Lancaster Road is proper fine art for children — not an after-school doodle session, the real thing. Run by Rania, a Chelsea School of Art graduate who grew up on these streets, children learn real techniques with real materials and leave genuinely proud of what they've made. From age 5, Friday afternoons and Saturdays.

For something more active, RYU-KAI on Notting Hill Gate is the karate school with 4.9 stars and the kind of reviews that make you book immediately. Parents write about their children arriving a little uncertain and leaving — weeks later — noticeably more confident and focused. The senseis are warm, patient and genuinely brilliant with small children. From age 4.

TARKA on Pottery Lane has a perfect 5.0 from nearly 150 reviews, which tells you everything. Themed activity sessions for children from age 3 at a beautiful church — energetic, joyful and the kind of thing kids declare "the best day ever." They also do birthday parties, and yes, they handle all the organising.

For the tiniest ones MONKEY MUSIC at the Portobello Community Centre is a five-star favourite with parents of babies and toddlers. Music, rhythm and enough joyful chaos to make a toddler completely captivated. One reviewer credits it as the start of their child's lifelong love of music.

The NOTTING HILL CLUB on Lambton Place is a beautiful space doing kickboxing from age 3 — brilliant instructors, great energy, 4.9 stars. And there's a very good coffee machine for parents. Small detail, big deal on a Saturday morning.

And if everyone deserves a proper treat, CLOUD TWELVE on Colville Mews has a kids' club running alongside one of the best spas in Notting Hill. Children are looked after while parents get the afternoon they didn't know they needed. 4.9 stars. Worth every penny.

THE ROAD

Saturday morning on Portobello is one of those London experiences that never loses its magic. Get there before 10am — that's when it still belongs to the neighbourhood. Walk the whole stretch, from the antiques in the south to the street food stalls under the Westway. The noise, the colour, the characters. It's impossible to be bored.

While you're at it, wander the side streets. The painted houses, the little mews, the doorways that look like they belong in a film set. It's free, it's beautiful and it's the part of the day everyone somehow remembers most.

FINISH AT PANELLA

End at Panella on Golborne Road and you'll end perfectly. This family-run Sicilian restaurant has 4.9 stars and reviews that read like love letters — proper home cooking, generous portions, prices that feel almost too reasonable for this postcode. One reviewer called it the most authentic southern Italian in London. Children are completely at home here, the food is extraordinary, and there is genuinely no better way to finish a day on the road.

Closed Sundays — so save it for weekdays or Saturday. You'll be glad you did but there is always a queue so get there early as once the food runs out there is no more!