Sloane Street, SW1X, once the shutters come down

Ten minutes, end to end

From the Knightsbridge junction to Sloane Square is about ten minutes at a walking pace, or fifteen if you stop. It is the most useful ten minutes in SW1X: it connects two Underground stations, two garden squares, and two quite different halves of the evening. Guests who have spent the day being driven everywhere tend to find that the walk down it after dinner does more for the evening than another room would.

The church halfway down

Holy Trinity stands back from the street on the eastern side, and behind a plain enough front it holds one of the great Arts and Crafts interiors in England: a vast east window made by Morris and Burne-Jones, and metalwork by half a dozen people who were changing their trade at the time. It keeps daytime hours and is often empty. Twenty minutes in it before an early table is a better opening to an evening than a bar, and it is one of the few things on this street that costs nothing.

Five addresses on the street, or a minute from it

SW1X 9PY, on Cadogan Place halfway down. SW1X 7RL, at the top by Wilton Place. SW1X 9SG, at the Sloane Square end on the corner. SW3 2RP and SW3 2RJ, both a minute behind the southern end on the garden square.

No hotel on this list has any connection to this house. They are named so that you can place yourself, and for nothing else.

Two stations, one at each end

Knightsbridge is 2 minutes from the northern end on the Piccadilly line, which makes it the simplest address in SW1X for anyone arriving from Heathrow. Sloane Square is 6 minutes from the southern end, Circle and District. Hyde Park Corner is 10 minutes north-east. Between the two ends there is no station at all, which is another reason the street empties so completely after six.

Who books on this street

People staying in the flats above the shops, which are numerous and rarely noticed. Guests of the hotels who came for two days of shopping and had not thought about the evenings. Residents of the garden squares behind, who treat the street as a corridor rather than a destination. And a certain number of guests who simply like arriving somewhere at nine in the evening where there is nobody about to notice them arriving.

An early start, which is better

Half past six, in October. A guest at the Sloane Square end asks for three hours and would rather begin before the light goes entirely. Tamsin suggests Molly, who prefers an early start and says so.

They walk up the street while the last shutters come down, take a table off the square at half past seven, and are back at the door by half past nine with the evening unhurried at every point in it. Three hours, £700, handed over at the start and never discussed again.

The two closest to the street

Lucy is twenty-four, dark curls, keeps small talk short and likes a seat in the stalls; concert evenings need a few days, but dinner on this street can usually be arranged the same day she is free. Molly is warm first and clever second and is in no hurry to prove either, and is comfortable at short notice for an evening near the square.

From either end, Bianka, Margo and Sonya come down from Knightsbridge in minutes, and Lea, Patricia and Violetta across from Belgravia.

Where the street leads

Knightsbridge closes the northern end at the junction. Belgravia lies immediately east behind Cadogan Place. The King's Road and Chelsea begin at the southern end past Sloane Square. Pimlico is fifteen minutes south, and all of it is attended at the same figures with travel inside the fee.