What You See on a Black Cab Tour of London, Stop by Stop

The shape of a London route

Nearly every sightseeing route here runs the same line, west to east: the royal quarter, then Westminster, then across or along the river, then the City, then the Tower. It is the shape London itself makes, and a cab drives it in a way a walking tour cannot.

What changes with the hours is not the direction. It is how long you stand at each stop, and how far off the line the driver is willing to go. Every stop time below is the operator's own published figure.

Buckingham Palace, and the ceremony that sets the clock

Published stops run from ten minutes to a full hour. The cab sets you down at the gates or on the Victoria Memorial side, and several routes reach it along The Mall, which most traffic may not use.

The King's Guard changes at 11am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with soldiers gathering from about 10am, and the Household Division publishes the schedule. It changes at short notice, so check it on the day and say it matters when the driver confirms your plan. One tour sells a 9am pickup for exactly this.

Westminster: the Abbey, Parliament and the bridge

Ten to thirty minutes at Westminster Abbey, always from outside. Ten to twenty at the Houses of Parliament. Big Ben is marked as a pass-by on two of these itineraries, which is honest — there is nothing to walk into, and the photograph is better from the far side of Westminster Bridge anyway.

The Churchill statue on Parliament Square is a three-minute detour and is on almost every route. So is Horse Guards Parade, where a licensed taxi can stand on the gravel.

The river, and the stops that only exist on longer tours

Three hours buys the South Bank: the London Eye, Westminster Bridge, the river itself. One three-hour listing publishes fourteen named stops, which tells you how much ground a cab covers when it is not looking for a parking space.

The City: St Paul's, Guildhall and the Bank

Five to thirty minutes at St Paul's Cathedral, and the difference is what the driver does with it. On a short tour it is a photograph from the churchyard. On the six-hour run the same stop sits beside half an hour at Guildhall and half an hour at the Bank of England Museum, which is the part of London most sightseeing skips entirely.

The Millennium Bridge view of the dome is the one people photograph, and it is two minutes' walk from where a cab can stand.

The Tower of London and Tower Bridge

Ten to thirty minutes, from the outside, at the eastern end of nearly every route. The Tower is a ticketed site with timed entry and no fare here covers it. Tower Bridge is usually a drive-across rather than a stop.

If the Crown Jewels are your reason for coming to London, book them separately and ask the driver to end the tour at the gate. That works on any of these tours.

Kensington and the west, on the longer routes only

The six-hour tour gives fifteen minutes to Kensington Palace and ten each to the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial, then works east through the park. None of that fits in two hours, which is the clearest single argument for booking longer.

The themed routes trade landmarks for addresses

The Beatles runs publish the longest stops of any tour here: an hour on Carnaby Street, an hour at the London Palladium, half an hour at Abbey Road and half an hour outside 3 Savile Row. The film-location route does the opposite, with nine short stops from King's Cross to Borough Market.

Both are on their own pages — the Beatles routes and the film-location routes — and both are three to five hours because the addresses are scattered.

What the cab passes rather than parks at

Worth knowing, because it is where expectations go wrong. Across these itineraries the following are marked as pass-bys on at least one route:

• Big Ben
• Trafalgar Square
• Tower Bridge
• Hyde Park Corner
• Horse Guards Parade
• Lambeth Bridge

A pass-by is a driver deciding that stopping costs ten minutes and buys a photograph you can take through the window. If one of them matters, say so before you set off. On almost every tour here the route is yours to change.

How the stop times compare

The full table, with the landmarks that appear on only one route, is on what a tour stops at.

What you do not see

The inside of anything. Not one tour listed here includes admission to the Tower, St Paul's, Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle, and one of them says so in its own exclusions block in those words: this is external sightseeing. That is not a gap in the product, it is what the product is — the cab shows you where everything is and what it was for, and the doors are yours to open later.

You also do not see the far edges of London. Greenwich, Hampstead, Kew and the Olympic Park are outside every route on this sheet, and the tours that leave the city go to Windsor and the Cotswolds instead. Those are on the day trips page, and what the seasons do to any of it is on the weather page.

How to get more out of the same hours

Say what you want before you set off. Every driver here confirms the plan in advance, and that conversation is the single biggest thing you control. Name the two stops you actually care about and the rest of the route arranges itself around them.

Ask which stops the cab can park at. Some are drive-pasts because parking would cost ten minutes for a photograph you can take from the window, and knowing which is which stops you expecting to get out at Big Ben. And take a morning slot if the Guard matters, because the roads around the Mall close before eleven. What the fare covers, before any of that, is on the planning page.

Tours that cover the most ground

6 Hour Private London Sightseeing Tour

Fourteen stops from Kensington Palace to Tower Bridge, with half an hour at Guildhall and USB charging in the back.

From $687 per group, up to 6

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London: Sightseeing Black Cab Tour with Hotel Pickup

Fourteen photo stops in three hours, and the order is yours to rearrange on the day.

From $430 per group, up to 6

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Private Black Cab Tour of London's Icons & Hidden Treasures

Four hours split between the landmarks everyone photographs and the corners nobody points at.

From $716 per group, up to 6

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