Think you know London? Think again. Until you’ve walked along, instead of traveling on, a tube line, some of London’s best bits will be passing you by, says Andrew Mickel.

(Illustration by David Plant)

London’s tube map has a lot to answer for. It may be an international symbol of the capital’s diverse communities, but it has also broken most people’s conception of how the city is laid out.

The frantic mess of ancient thoroughfares are hardly welcoming for pedestrians, and most road junctions feel like live action reenactments of Frogger. But walking ranks as the best way to get to know the place – so I’m going to spend my Sunday walking the Central Line.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to use the train?” a friend earnestly asks over a fry-up in Ealing Broadway before I start.

The first stretch, through the three spread-out Actons (North, South and East), will certainly make you miss the tube. The grimy industrial parks of Park Royal and the Westway road are for cars, not people.

The dispiriting start soon gives way to one of the best things about walking: you get to see how the city is changing. I used to work in White City, but aside from the grey approach to the squat TV Centre, the place is barely recognisable. A massive shopping redevelopment stretches as far as you can see. It is certainly better than Shepherd’s Bush, an elaborate roundabout hemmed by kebab shops and Costcutters.

I head east, corner-shop pasty in hand, and tackle the nightmarish Holland Park Roundabout. This is Escher’s road system, and no-one bothered to put any signs up. Still, at least the walk is getting markedly leafier, thanks to Holland Park. I celebrate what is rapidly turning into a gastronomic walk with an Italian sandwich.

By the time I hit buzzy Notting Hill Gate fifteen minutes later, I’m bored of traffic. The Central Line passes directly beneath what is the same road through Zone 1 – under the Bayswater Road, Oxford Street and High Holborn, before picking its own way through the City. For the sake of my lungs I take the parallel path across Hyde Park to Marble Arch.

By Bond Street, my hungry scowling is clearing a path through the tourists and casual shoppers. It’s time for another food break. I may be saving a tube fare (£2), but I’m slightly outspending this saving on food (£18 and counting).

At least I’m clearing the tube map faster now I am in Zone 1; you can get between the well-to-do Queensway and Lancaster Gate in under ten minutes. By contrast, the Sunday afternoon crowds between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road are expectedly slow. This is not a place to be in a misanthropic mood. If the humid mass of gawping shoppers doesn’t leave you feeling a little sociopathic, then the anonymous chain stores should do the trick.

Passing Holborn and entering the abandoned City brings welcome breathing space. Only a few tourists are around Chancery Lane and Bank, pondering why an international financial centre is shut on a Sunday.

The City can be hard to navigate, but it is a beautiful place to get lost. Every corner gives way to another monument – St Paul’s, the Bank of England, hundreds of hulking financial institutions. It feels cleaner (or more sanitized) than the rest of town.

An eerily abandoned Liverpool Street, thanks to engineering works, marks the end of the City before the heave of Banglatown.

This is my home turf, but after such an epic walk I’m seeing it through fresh eyes. The bustling restaurants of Bethnal Green (and, on this particular walk, the bagel shop) pose a welcome return to a human scale after the City.

The one thing we can do on a grand scale is the road junction just past Mile End, the eastern counterpart to the Holland Park Roundabout. This is where inner London ends: the tube stops are getting less frequent. The walk to Stratford stretches for miles through an unerringly grey sprawl of roads and low-level industry.

By the time I reach Stratford six hours after setting off, it’s quite clear that Woodford is going to remain a dream. My legs, though slightly achy, are now moving on auto-pilot – remembering to stop at roads requires an intervention by my brain – but I have places to be, and my waistline frankly can’t take the strain of feeding my feet.

First, though, I slump in a greasy spoon and order a large all-day breakfast. With extra chips.

Info:

Use TfL’s Journey Planner (click) with all the transport options deselected to find walking routes. In Zone 1, try this guide to find easy journeys on foot (click). Or just spend a fiver and pick up a trusty A to Z.