Clerkenwell is the part of central London that still works for a living, and the walk reflects it: a run of independent coffee shops, a green with a radical library, a Norman gatehouse, and a Victorian meat market that is both an architectural masterpiece and, realistically, on the way out.
Start at Exmouth Market with a coffee from Caravan or Workshop. Walk south down Farringdon Road briefly, then east into Clerkenwell Green, which is smaller than the word "green" suggests and lovelier for it. Up through the cobbles to St John's Gate — real Knights Hospitaller stonework, hiding in plain sight behind a bus stop.
From there it's a straight run east past the old jewellery district to Smithfield. The meat market is being converted to a museum; either you walk it now or you see the after. The hall is a cathedral to nineteenth-century engineering; stand in it for five minutes.
End at St Bartholomew the Great, which is the quietest, oldest room in London. Sit in the back pew for long enough and the twenty-first century becomes an abstraction.
