Clapham Common is bigger than it looks and different in every corner. The North Side has the cafés and the Georgian terraces; the centre has the Victorian bandstand; the south has Long Pond and the quieter paths; and Abbeville Road at the bottom is a village high street that seems to have arrived from a different, calmer city.
This walk crosses the common diagonally and ends in Abbeville Village, which has its own Saturday market and a handful of restaurants worth making the journey for. Come back through the park at dusk and the common changes again: the dog walkers take over, the light goes horizontal through the trees.
