Come UK

Covent Garden was once a vegetable field attached to Westminster Abbey, became the low-life haunt of Pepys, Fielding and Boswell, then a major fruit and veg market, and is now a triumph of conservation and commerce. The car-free piazza is surrounded by designer gift and clothes shops and hip bars and restaurants. Stalls selling overpriced antiques and bric-a-brac share the arcaded piazza with street theatre, buskers and people-watchers

Smithfield is the last-surviving produce market in Central London. It’s Europe’s largest wholesale meat market and no place for faint-hearted vegetarians. Early weekday mornings, Smithfield is a hive of activity. Many of the local pubs open from the middle of the night to cater for the stallholders unsociable hours, so assuming you can pass yourself off as a Cockney meat seller (just douse yourself in blood and practise saying ‘wotcha guv’), there’s always the chance of an early-morning pint with your fried breakfast.

The colourful Portobello Market is London’s most famous street market, best seen on a Saturday morning before the gridlock sets in. It’s full of antiques, jewellery, ethnic knick-knacks, second-hand clothes and fruit and veg stalls. Petticoat Lane is East London’s celebrated Sunday morning market, but it’s overrated, overpriced, and appeals only to those so bleary-eyed from the night before that they think they need broken chocolate bars, ugly trinkets and cut-price cans of Ajax. Brixton Market is a cosmopolitan treat made up of a rainbow coalition of reggae music, slick Muslim preachers, halal meat and fruit and vegetables. Its inventory includes wigs, homeopathic root cures, goat meat and rare records.

The huge Camden Markets could be the closest England gets to free-form chaos outside the terraces of football stadia. They stretch between Camden and Chalk Farm tube stations, incorporating Camden Lock on the Grand Union Canal, and get so crowded on the weekends that you’ll think you’re in the Third World. The markets include the Camden Canal Market (bric-a-brac, furniture and designer clothes), Camden Market (leather goods and army surplus gear) and the Electric Market (records and 1960s clothing).