Barnet Table Tennis Club: £10 Friday Night, No Membership

Barnet Table Tennis Centre is at Barnet Lane, Barnet, London EN5 2DN, and on Fridays and Saturdays it sells non-members a full club night for £10 per adult. You do not need to join. The centre says it is open every night except Sunday from 19:30 until 23:00, and at the moment every table must be booked and paid for in advance.

Friday and Saturday are the club nights, with reduced playing fees, and the non-member adult price is £10 per person for the evening, against £7 for a junior non-member. Members pay £8 for the same night, so the saving for joining is small unless you come every week. The home page also advertises air-conditioned courts.

On other evenings you pay for the table rather than the night. The playing-fees page lists table hire at £16 per hour for non-member adults, Monday to Thursday, and £11 for members. The centre says new players and visitors are always welcome, and the hall is a place where league players and casual hitters share the same floor.

Booking is done through the Lemon Booking link on the site, Monday to Saturday. You can also book in advance when you are in the building. Social sessions are the exception, since booking is not needed for those.

On arrival, report to the bar steward to sign in or confirm your booking. The regulations are short: no food or drink apart from water in the playing area, so anything else is taken in the lounge, and the car park is monitored by Parking Eye, so follow the signs. Players agree to the posted guidance when they arrive.

Social Table Tennis runs on weekday mornings on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday between 9:30 and 12:00, with an afternoon session on Wednesday from 14:00 to 16:30. Non-member adults pay £8 and non-member juniors £6. These sessions are for all ages and standards and are normally doubles because attendance is high.

Singles are only allowed when there is space, which is the main difference from an evening booking. The Wednesday afternoon session is described as more suitable for beginners, and anyone who has never played can start with the Wednesday morning coaching class from 10:00 to 11:30, priced at £12.50 for non-member adults.

The centre claims to be the first purpose-built table tennis centre in England. Its history page, written by former chairman Tony Cox, says the idea came in the 1960s from Douglas Underwood, when Barnet Table Tennis Club had to finish league matches in a school hall by 10pm. The plan was to build a headquarters for the Barnets and District league on land in Barnet Lane near Dollis Brook.

The building was to cost about £12,500, then rose to £25,000. A government grant of £9,044 covered half of the early estimate, and the committee formed a limited company, borrowed from the council and a bank, and raised money with a Sunday Tote Double. Councillors thought ten tables was too many and trimmed the hall from 120 feet to 90 feet. Morris of Enfield built it, and the first week of May 1970 saw it open.

The official opening was on Saturday 14 November 1970, with an Intercounty Premier Division match between Middlesex and Essex. At that point the centre had 500 members, its maximum. Cox lists the original directors as Anthony Cox, Victor Gibson, Frank Hutchings, Douglas Underwood, Brian Gale, Peter Abraham, Gerald Stephens, Don Kenny and Geoffrey Mitchell.

Coaches are Table Tennis England qualified, CBT approved and first-aid trained. Most sessions are limited to 18 participants on a first come, first served basis, and bats and balls are provided. Sunday from 10:00 to 11:30 is an open adult and junior coaching session, priced at £12.50 for a non-member adult and £10 for a junior.

Juniors have a ladder of pay-as-you-go sessions: under-11 beginners on Monday and Tuesday from 17:30 to 18:30, junior beginners aged 12 to 18 from 18:30 to 19:30, and a Friday junior open session from 18:15 to 19:25. Non-member juniors pay £7.50 for the under-11 and beginner sessions and £10 for the junior open sessions. During half terms the coaching sessions give way to training camps.

The centre says it is about a ten-minute walk from High Barnet Underground station, the last stop on the Barnet branch of the Northern Line. Leave the station, turn left to the crossing halfway up Barnet Hill, walk to the bottom and turn right before the railway bridge into Underhill, then left into Barnet Lane. You pass the former Barnet Football Club site, now a school, and the playing fields. The centre is on the left beside a road crossing island.

Buses stop within about ten minutes' walk, and the car park is monitored, so read the signs. The first-time route is easy to misjudge in the dark, so allow extra minutes if you are arriving for a 19:30 start.

This is the better choice if you want to play, not drink. The hall was designed around ten tables and has a lounge for post-game talk. It is less convenient if you want to walk in on a whim, because the evening tables are booked in advance. For a no-booking option in west London, NET Table Tennis Centre in Brentford suits a spontaneous visit.

Choose Friday if you want the cheapest full evening, and Saturday if you prefer to start the weekend with a game. Weekday mornings suit anyone happy to play doubles with strangers.

Bring indoor shoes and water, and keep any food for the lounge. Check that your booking includes your whole group, since the club says tables must be paid for in advance. If you arrive by Tube, the walk from High Barnet is mostly downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back, so leave time for the return.

Afterwards, follow Barnet Lane to Dollis Brook, where the centre's founders first spotted the plot, and the open fields beside the hall make a quiet stroll in daylight. Retrace your route to High Barnet, the terminus of the Barnet branch, for the train home.