Test cricket returns to Lords on May 17 with the first Test between England and the West Indies. Diehard cricket fans may not be able to tear themselves away from the action but the streets, canals and parks of the salubrious suburb of St John's Wood around the Lords ground make for a beautiful May walk. This month's route winds north out of central London through the back streets of Marylebone, from which the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), owner of Lords, gets its name. It then turns into Regent's Park, before heading up into St John's Wood and following the Regent's Canal west to Little Venice.

Highlights

Marylebone Lane
Marylebone High Street
Regent's Park
St John's Wood
Lords Cricket Ground
Regent's Canal
Little Venice

Type of walk: linear (with optional drop-out points at tube stops along the route)

Time taken: 2.5 hours approx

Distance: 4 miles approx

Start: Bond Street tube (Jubilee and Central lines). Take the Oxford Street (south) exit out of the tube station and cross Oxford Street at the pedestrian lights. Turn right, then almost immediately left up Marylebone Lane. Do not be put off by the ugly 1960s car park which looks as if it is completely blocking the road. This is the one blot on the landscape of an otherwise quirky lane whose small shops and delis are a welcome contrast to the brash noisiness of Oxford Street. Look for the shop called The Button Queen which aptly sells nothing but buttons.

At the junction of Bentinck Street, continue straight ahead up Marylebone Lane with Hinde Street Methodist church on your left, until you get to the junction with Thayer Street. Turn right into Marylebone High Street . Ten years ago, Marylebone was a bit of a backwater, spurned by people looking for a central London home in favour of more obviously fashionable areas like Chelsea or South Kensington. But the arrival of a Conran Shop and the opening of Conran's Orrery restaurant caught the attention of affluent and stylish Londoners who then started to discover the streets of terracotta gabled mansion blocks and flat fronted stucco townhouses. Middle class shops like Waitrose and Divertimenti opened in Marylebone High Street and what was once a rather ordinary London shopping street is now a lively mix of delis, restaurants, bars and bookshops. No risk of starving here - the street is lined with patisseries and people tucking into cakes loaded with coronary-inducing cream and chocolate. Try Patisserie Valerie for some serious indulgence.

The route continues left along Moxon Street, where a tempting smell of cheese wafts into the street from La Fromagerie's speciality cheese counter. Continue to Paddington Street Garden through iron gates at the end of the street. This is a small but welcome oasis of green in an otherwise built-up area, with mature shady trees and a bandstand, and a good place to eat a take-away deli snack. Ignore the path immediately to your right and follow the second path round to your left with the round woodedn shelter immediately to your left. Emerge through the gates past a carved stone recording the park's history as St George's burial ground between 1731 and 1857 and its donation to the public in 1885.

Turn left into Paddington Street and continue across Baker Street into Crawford Street past streets of red brick mansion blocks with elaborate gables, characteristic of this part of London. This area is on the fringes of the enclave of Middle East communities around Edgware Road and you can see men sitting at tables outside cafes sharing hookahs. Cross Gloucester Place and turn right into Upper Montague Street to reach the busy Marylebone Road. Cross at the pedestrian lights and continue straight on up Balcombe Street.

Balcombe Street hit the headlines in December 1975, when the residents of number 22B were held hostage by IRA gunmen for six days before being dramatically led to freedom via the balcony of the neighbouring flat live on television. It is difficult now to imagine such a drama unfolding in quiet Balcombe Street and neighbouring Dorset Square, site of the first Lords cricket ground in 1787. From Balcombe Street turn right into Ivor Place and continue to the main Park Road, where you cross and turn right to enter Regent's Park at Clarence Gate, marked with an elegant white painted house.

Regent's Park and the white terraces ringing it were designed by architect John Nash and opened in 1811, although only eight of the 56 intended terraces were built. Turn left along a tarmaced path with the boating pond on your right. Many of the people steering blue pedalos along the lake or relaxing on the grass at weekends are Muslims dressed in traditional chador and hijab, as this part of the park is close to the Regent's Park mosque, whose turret and crescents are visible above the trees to the left.

Leave the park where the path ends by the mosque at Hanover Gate and continue up the outer circle to a traffic island marked with a blue arrow. Cross here to a footbridge over the Regent's Canal and continue straight ahead into Charlbert Street. This is the beginning of St John's Wood, London's first deliberately planned suburb, built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with villas in various styles set in large gardens, close to central London yet far enough away to feel rural. From the beginning it was popular with artists and writers, as well as Thomas Lord, the founder of Lords Cricket Ground. Lord moved the ground to St John's Wood in 1811 from its original site in Dorset Square.

Turn left into Allitsen Road to reach St John's Wood High Street, another stylish High Street lined with cafes and delis and populated with smartly dressed people. St John's Wood is cosmopolitan and expensive. This is not a place where woman leave the house without full make-up. Turn right into the High Street and continue across St John's Wood Terrace, a perfect treelined street of white stucco flat fronted terraces, to St Ann's Terrace. The brightly painted villas and terraces in different architectural style, some with pillars and pediments, others flat fronted or with castellated rooflines, are characteristic of St John's Wood.

At Acacia Avenue turn right past more detached villas and left into Ordnance Hill, so called because St John's Wood Barracks is in this road. Be prepared to see armed soldiers guarding the main entrance - a slight shock in such sylvan surroundings. Take a left turning into Queen's Grove and cross Finchley Road. You can finish here by turning left and walking a short distance to St John's Wood tube.

Otherwise, turn left then almost immediately right into Marlborough Place and left into Loudon Road. The large postwar building on the corner of Loudon Road and Grove End Road is St John's Wood United Synagogue, one of several thriving Jewish congregations in this area.

At the junction, turn left along the continuation of Grove End Road and keep straight on until you reach St John's Wood Road. The Lords cricket ground is just behind the high fence on your left but frustratingly, there is nothing to see from this angle, so divert off the walk route into St John's Wood Road for a sight of the main entrance and the stands. The best view of the ground you can get without paying is from the top floor of double decker buses going up and down Wellington Road, parallel to Grove End Road.

If you want to end here, continue down Lisson Grove to Marylebone tube and main line station (trains to north west London, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire).

The route continues a short way along Lisson Grove to a wrought iron gate with a carving of birds over the top in the wall on your left. Go down the steep slope to reach the towpath of the Regent's Canal which you crossed earlier in the walk, coming out of Regent's Park. The Regent's Canal was also built by John Nash and opened in 1820 to link the Grand Junction Canal at Paddington with Limehouse. A feature of the canal is its long narrow tunnels, only wide enough for barges, which is why you are almost immediately diverted up to street level again up a steep flight of stairs on this section while the canal disappears into blackness. Follow the arrows round to the left and continue straight ahead along Aberdeen Place to the junction of Edgware Road. The canal reappears on the other side of the road.

Walk down either side of the canal past colourful house boats (popular with some who cannot afford London house prices) moored on both sides. Head for a blue painted bridge which has excellent views over Limehouse Basin, where the Regent's Canal meets the Grand Union Canal. The walk ends here, with a well-deserved rest by the canal admiring the houseboats and the elegant white nineteenth century Italianate houses overlooking the basin. To return to Oxford Street, turn right across the bridge and follow signs to Warwick Avenue for tubes and buses.

Finish: Warwick Avenue tube (bakerloo).

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