Londoners! You (if you are anything like me) will hear the news story on the local news on Friday and curse your luck because your weekend will be arranged. It’s Open House weekend again and careful planning is required.

There seem to be more buildings than ever. I’m not sure this impression is correct: I suspect if there were, the website would let us know all about it. Nevertheless, the complete list of buildings took 22 sides to print off.

Open House weekend is great because it gives you a chance to see the insides of builidngs which otherwise would remain a mystery, that much is obvious. It’s also great because it gives you an incentive to get to bits of London which otherwise aren’t on your beat. And unfamiliar bits of London necessarily = interesting, not least because they also = new pub opportunities. But to know where the best pubs are concealed requires research too.

And routes can be tricky: a cursory glance at the list shows that there are places I’d like to see as far apart as Sydenham, Greenwich, Barnet and Harefield (no, I don’t know either, apparently it’s in the London Borough of Hillingdon, but since I didn’t know there was a London Borough of Hillingdon until about two minutes ago, I’m not much the wiser).

Get planning!