An exact walking route from Oxford Circus through Carnaby Street, Soho Square and Chinatown to Leicester Square
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat present the walk where three cuisines, two theatres, one film premiere and a man selling fake watches all compete for your next 90 minutes.
The Soho Neon Drift
Soho is central London’s densest single square mile for restaurants, nightlife, theatres, and regret. It is also genuinely compact, genuinely walkable, and genuinely worth doing both by day and by night for two entirely different experiences.
Start and Finish
Start: Oxford Circus Station.
Finish: Leicester Square or Charing Cross.
Distance: 1.3 to 1.8 miles.
Time: 45 minutes walking, 3 hours with shopping and dinner, 7 hours with a show.
Exact Directions
Exit Oxford Circus Station. Walk south down Regent Street briefly, then turn left into the Carnaby Street area. Carnaby is pedestrianised, once the epicentre of 1960s counterculture, now a shopping enclave with good street decoration and Kingly Court, a three-tiered courtyard of restaurants and bars.
From Carnaby, walk south-east onto Broadwick Street and continue into the Soho grid. The streets here are short and arranged without logic. Do not fight this. Wander. Pass Soho Square, a small green rectangle where office workers eat sandwiches and contemplate their life choices.
Head south through Soho’s core: Dean Street, Old Compton Street, Frith Street. This is London’s main LGBTQ+ district and the heart of media, music, film and theatre history. Ronnie Scott’s jazz club (1959) is on Frith Street. See ronniescotts.co.uk for listings.
Continue south to Shaftesbury Avenue. Cross into Chinatown via Gerrard Street, London’s compact and highly active Chinese quarter. Eat something. Do not skip this step.
Emerge south into Leicester Square. Cinemas, tourist shops, and the occasional film premiere red carpet. For a longer finish, continue south to Charing Cross or east to Covent Garden.
What to See
Carnaby Street. Kingly Court. Soho Square. Ronnie Scott’s. Old Compton Street (heart of queer London). Photographers Gallery. Curzon Soho cinema. Chinatown gates. Leicester Square and the Leicester Square Theatre. The official theatre district West End listings are useful for same-day tickets.
Coffee, Toilets, Survival
Coffee: Flat White, Workshop, Monmouth (Monmouth the branch, not the original which is Borough). Food: Bao, Kiln, Xi’an Impression, Barrafina, HPPY. Toilets: department stores on Oxford Street, theatres during shows (ticketholders only), Chinatown restaurants. Most pubs will let you use theirs if you make gentle eye contact.
The Humour Interlude
Soho is the only neighbourhood where, in a single hour, you can see a film premiere, a man in a dinosaur costume advertising a pizza shop, and a queue of 28 people outside a restaurant waiting to eat tofu that has been marinated in yuzu and its own self-importance. The yuzu will, against all odds, be worth it.
Theatreland begins here. On any given night, about 35 West End shows are performing, which means 35,000 people are about to be entertained and 35,000 more are about to discover what a 14 pound G&T at an interval actually costs. A London theatre satirist has written extensively about this phenomenon.
Local Wisdom
Weekday evenings for theatre. Sunday afternoons for Chinatown dim sum. Late night Soho is an entirely different walk, largely legal, mostly survivable.
For more West End satire, see NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
Mei Lin Chen is a student writer whose satire explores identity, modern culture, and social nuance. Her work reflects academic curiosity and engagement with London’s diverse perspectives.
Expertise is growing through study and practice, while trust is supported by clear intent and responsible humour.
My professor said critics of it wanted satire that criticized systems while preserving belief in systems. That was contradictory.
My mate’s in government and he’s gone absolutely still. That’s haunting.