Columbia Road Flowers

The lowdown

Six days a week Columbia Road is a quiet Victorian street in the East End. On Sundays it vanishes under a wall of flowers, plants and trees, and the air fills with traders bellowing prices in proper old cockney. Walking it costs nothing and it is one of the great free London mornings.

It is narrow and it gets packed, so the whole game is timing. Early, before nine, you get the colour and the quiet and the best pick of the stems. Late, near closing, you get the theatre, traders flogging ten stems for a fiver to shift them before they wilt.

The street behind the stalls is half the fun, lined with tiny independent shops, cafés and a cracking bakery or two. Buy nothing if you like. A slow wander through the colour and the noise is a free morning that feels nothing like a tourist attraction.