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Ideal for a sunny day. And for a cold rainy day: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing".
Four gardens in a mile, three of them behind gates that are open two and a half hours a day.
1 mile, 2 hoursWalks & routesGardensFree
The Inns of Court are the four societies that control entry to the English Bar - Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple - and nobody practises as a barrister in England and Wales without belonging to one of them. Each works rather like an Oxford or Cambridge college: a hall to dine in, a library, a chapel, and sets of rooms the members work from. All four grew up along the same mile of ground, between Westminster, where the courts sat, and the City, where the clients were; in 1882 the courts moved onto that mile themselves, to the Strand. The gardens came with the colleges - private grounds laid out for the people who lived inside the gates, not parks - and the Temple's were granted to its lawyers by James I in 1608 on the condition that the land be used only to house and educate them. Six centuries in the same ownership is why there is this much green in the middle of legal London, and why it opens when the Inns say so rather than when a council does.
They are also some of the best gardens in London, and mostly kept to their members: the public gets a lunchtime and no more. Gray's Inn gives you two and a half hours, the Inner Temple the same, the Middle Temple the same again but only from May to September; Lincoln's Inn alone leaves its gates open through the working day. The windows barely overlap, which makes this less a stroll than a timed run, and worth doing precisely because of that.
Start at Gray's Inn Walks at twelve, when the gate at Field Court opens. Five and a half acres laid out when Francis Bacon was Treasurer, and the largest private garden on the route: red oaks down the central path, planes ringed with hyacinths, a bank left long for the daisies. Give it half an hour. Then out to Gray's Inn Road, south to High Holborn and west along it, about ten minutes, to Lincoln's Inn Fields - the one place here with no gate to catch, open from half past seven until dusk, and the sensible place to eat something. Cross it eastwards and go through into Lincoln's Inn Gardens, whose own gates stay open until seven in the evening, so there is no hurry at this end. Then Chancery Lane down to Fleet Street and into the Inner Temple Garden, ten minutes, where you may stay until three. The Middle Temple's garden is immediately west of it across the lane, on the same hours from May to September, if you want a fifth.
It has to be north to south, and the reason is the gates. Gray's Inn shuts at half past two and the Inner Temple at three, so walking south you are always moving away from the one that closes first: start at noon with Gray's Inn's full window ahead of you, and the Temple is still open half an hour after Gray's Inn has shut. Go the other way and you start at the Temple at half past twelve and must reach Gray's Inn before half past two - possible, but you spend the walk racing a gate, and if you linger anywhere you lose the best garden of the four.
Weekdays only. The Inner Temple also shuts on bank holidays, and closes in high winds and for private functions, so it is worth a look at its Instagram before setting off - it is the far end of the walk and the one you cannot substitute.
Weekdays only, noon to 15:00: three hours in which to do a two-hour walk.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.