Columbia Road flower market is not a secret, but the walk around it still can be. Three kilometres on a Sunday morning gets you flowers, a few pubs, a city farm, and forty quiet minutes between the crowded bits.
Start at Hoxton and come in from the west. Columbia Road proper is already full by ten; cut north onto Ezra Street first, which is the street everyone else forgets. One block, four or five small independent places, a coffee queue that moves.
Drop back onto Columbia Road at the far end, where the crowd thins and the side streets start to feel like a real neighbourhood again. Cross Hackney Road — genuinely under-photographed, full of pie-and-mash shops and thrift furniture — and cut into Haggerston Park. The city farm inside is small, free, and the best small farm in central London.
Loop back to the bottom end of Columbia Road at the Royal Oak. A pint in the sun, a cellophane-wrapped bunch of peonies, and home on the Overground.
