Soho Post Work Route Planner: Square, Side Streets, Supper

Soho is about one square mile of narrow streets boxed in by Oxford Street, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road, and every corner has its own Tube station. That geography is the whole trick of a post work route planner here: decide which station you want to end at before you take a single step, then walk the evening backwards from it. Do that and a tired hour after the office turns into a short, deliberate loop instead of a shuffle through Friday crowds.

Tottenham Court Road sits on the north-east corner and gives you the Elizabeth line plus the Central and Northern lines. Oxford Circus, on the north-west corner, handles the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines. Piccadilly Circus in the south-west serves the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines, and Leicester Square in the south-east serves the Northern and Piccadilly lines. If you live out east or near Heathrow, the Elizabeth line makes Tottenham Court Road the natural finish; south London commuters on the Northern line can end at either eastern corner.

Once the exit is fixed, the rest is a question of which squares and streets sit between your office and that station. Most people working in Fitzrovia, Holborn or Covent Garden enter Soho from the east, while anyone coming off Regent Street or Mayfair enters from the west. Writing that down as start, finish and time available is the first thing to tell any planner, human or app, because it rules out half the options instantly.

Soho Square is the quiet room of the neighbourhood. The garden has a weathered statue of Charles II and, in the middle of the lawn, the little timber-framed hut that photographers love. On a mild evening people sit on the benches with jackets folded beside them and the noise of Oxford Street fades within a few steps of the gate. It is the obvious place to decompress before you decide anything else.

From the south side of the square, Greek Street and Frith Street run down towards Old Compton Street in parallel. Pick one going in and the other coming back and you get two different sets of shopfronts, doorways and old signage for the same few hundred metres. That simple rule keeps a short loop from feeling like you walked the same block twice.

Berwick Street is the street that best shows how Soho changes across a working day. Its market is a lunchtime street-food scene for nearby offices, and by the time most people finish work the stalls are thinning out and being stacked away. After work, you are walking the street itself: the narrow pavements, the remaining record and fabric shops, and the little cut-throughs that link it to Wardour Street.

If you only have half an hour, Berwick Street is a good spine for a south-to-north walk that ends close to Oxford Circus or Tottenham Court Road. It is also where an evening plan can stall, because it is easy to drift into a doorway and lose the thread. Decide in advance whether this is a walk-only night or a walk-then-dinner night.

Golden Square, just west of Berwick Street, is a paved Georgian square with benches and a statue at its centre, and it tends to stay calmer than the streets around it. It works well as a meeting point when one person is coming from Regent Street and the other from inside Soho. From there, Carnaby Street and the open-air courtyard of Kingly Court are a couple of minutes north.

Here is the honest judgement: skip Carnaby Street on a Thursday or Friday if your aim is to unwind. The pedestrian street fills with shoppers and visitors, and the walk becomes stop-start. Use Golden Square as your west-side pause instead, then cut along Beak Street or Broadwick Street to wherever you are eating.

Old Compton Street runs east to west across the southern half of Soho and has long been the centre of the area's LGBTQ+ life, with packed pavements outside its bars by early evening. It is lively rather than restful, so treat it as a destination, not a through-route, when the aim is quiet. If you have theatre tickets, Shaftesbury Avenue is one block south, so a route that ends on Old Compton Street leaves you a short walk from the stage door crowd.

Karpo is useful at the point where you know the shape of the evening but not the stops. In the Karpo APP, describe the constraints in plain words: leaving an office near Soho Square at six, finishing at Tottenham Court Road, sixty minutes, want a calm walk then somewhere easy to eat with one other person. Karpo suggests places and a sensible order to visit them based on what you asked for.

It does not watch queues, count people or book tables for you, so treat its list as a shortlist and check each venue's own website or social page for that night. If the first choice looks busy when you arrive, ask Karpo for a second option within a few minutes of where you are standing rather than walking back across Soho.

Thirty minutes: enter Soho Square from the north, sit for ten minutes, walk down Frith Street, cross Old Compton Street, return north on Greek Street and finish at Tottenham Court Road. It is a decompression loop with no stops, and it keeps you out of the Oxford Circus crush entirely.

Sixty minutes: start at Golden Square, walk Brewer Street east, turn north up Berwick Street, then let Karpo suggest a relaxed place to sit near Soho Square for the second half hour before an Elizabeth line ride home. Ninety minutes: begin on Old Compton Street, eat early, walk it off through Soho Square and finish at Oxford Circus once the evening rush has thinned.

Pavements in Soho are narrow, and on dry evenings the bars spill drinkers onto them, so allow more time per block than the map suggests. Avoid changing lines at Oxford Circus at the peak of the rush if you can; walking to Tottenham Court Road is often calmer. Use the TfL Journey Planner for closures and engineering works, which often affect weekend evenings.

On Friday and Saturday nights the Night Tube runs on the Central, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines among others, which helps if dinner runs late. Plan B for rain: Soho's squares lose their appeal fast, so swap the walk for a shorter route between covered doorways and let Karpo narrow the list to places close to your exit station.