Piccadilly, W1J, measured end to end in eight minutes

The Circus end is loud, well lit and full of people going somewhere else. It is four minutes from the theatres and two from Piccadilly Circus station, which makes it the practical end for an evening that begins with a performance. The Hyde Park Corner end is the opposite: quiet, green on one side, with the park across the road and almost no foot traffic after ten.

Between them run the arcades. Burlington Arcade was built in 1819 and still employs beadles in top hats who will stop you whistling in it, which remains the oddest rule in central London. The Royal Academy sits behind its courtyard halfway along, and its late openings finish at ten on certain evenings.

Piccadilly Circus is two minutes from the eastern end on the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines. Green Park is four minutes from the middle on the Jubilee, Piccadilly and Victoria. Hyde Park Corner is eight minutes from the Circus end and two from the western hotels, on the Piccadilly line only.

Traffic on the avenue itself is the slowest in the district between seven and nine, and the one way system around the Circus makes a short cab ride longer than it should be. A companion crossing from inside W1 walks. From further out she comes to Green Park and walks the last three or four minutes. Thirty minutes from confirmation is the honest figure for most of this postcode.

W1J 9BR stands at the Green Park corner with an arcade running along its Piccadilly front, and its Arlington Street door is the one guests use when they would rather not cross the pavement. W1J 7BJ faces the park with a living wall of ten thousand plants across its frontage.

W1J 7QY sits on the Hyde Park Corner roundabout on the site of a house the Queen grew up in. W1J 8LT is just north of the avenue on Stratton Street with a theatre in the basement, and W1J 7BH runs through several Georgian houses on Half Moon Street with a door that reads as a private address. These are buildings, not partners. Nothing connects any of them to this desk.

Half past six, a drink at the western end where the room is calm and the park is going dark through the window. Half past seven, eight minutes east on foot to a table, or four minutes north into the Mayfair streets if the table is there. Ten, back along the avenue with the arcades shut and the frontages lit. Half past ten, a last glass in a hotel bar that does not close early.

Three hours at £700 covers that comfortably. Ninety minutes at £400 works for the drink and the walk if the table is booked for a larger party. The four hour dinner date at £900 is the right shape when the evening includes something at the Academy or a performance at the Circus end.

Guests who chose a hotel on the avenue precisely because it puts them between two districts. Visitors with a performance at one end and a table at the other. People staying at the park end who want the quiet of Mayfair without the walk up into it. And a steady number of one night guests between flights, for whom the Piccadilly line straight to Heathrow is the reason they are here at all.

Bookings run a little longer here than the average, because an evening that uses both ends of the road needs the hours to do it in.

Cindy likes an early table and a short walk afterwards, which is exactly what this postcode is for. Vanessa is the one to book for a late view and a courtyard glass, and comes in from Paddington in fifteen minutes.

From either side, Lea walks up from St James's in four minutes, Stacy is composed beyond her years and comes over from Chelsea, Angelika is already inside W1 and times a walk better than a map does, Tiffany comes down from Soho for a late booking, and Bianka reaches any W1 door in twenty minutes. The whole list is on On The Books, on the same figures.

The hour, the length, the building and a name. Romilly is at the desk at every hour of the night and answers in ten to fifteen minutes on WhatsApp or Telegram, with the arrival time rather than a window. Her fee goes to her in person in the first minute of the booking.

One check follows: the full name the booking is held in, the hotel and the room number, confirmed once and used for nothing else. On this avenue it is worth naming the entrance, since two of the five hotels have a side door most guests prefer.

North of the avenue the streets climb into Mayfair within two minutes of the arcades. South across the road the courtyards of St James's begin at the first turning. North east past the Circus the lanes tighten into Soho in about six minutes, and south east along Pall Mall the government quarter of Westminster is twelve. Green Park, Berkeley Square and Piccadilly Circus all sit on the edges of this postcode, and the wider W1 picture is on the W1 page.