London Black Cab Tours Through the Year: Light, Lights and the Quiet Months

London's weather barely touches this format: you are inside a heated vehicle and the photo stops are yours to skip. What does change, enormously, is the light. Sunset moves five and a half hours between June and December, and that decides what an afternoon booking is actually worth.

Daylight is the constraint, not weather

On the shortest day London gets about seven hours and fifty minutes of light, from around eight in the morning to just before four. On the longest it gets more than sixteen and a half, from a quarter to five until after nine.

Book a two o'clock tour in December and it ends in the dark. Book the same slot in June and it ends in full sun. Neither is worse. They are different products, and the only mistake is not knowing which you have bought.

When is the best time to take a black cab tour?

September, if you can choose. It is warm enough to stand about at the stops, quiet enough that the traffic moves, and long enough that an afternoon tour still finishes in daylight. May is the close second.

December is the exception that proves the point: it is the worst month for daylight and the best month for the product, because the Christmas lights tier only exists then.

Spring: March to May

The clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March and sunset jumps straight to about seven. That single change turns an afternoon booking from a twilight run into a daylight one, and it is the biggest step of the year.

April and May bring mean daily maximums of about 15 and 18 degrees on the Met Office's Heathrow record, moderate crowds and the most reliable conditions for a tour that wants to be outside the cab. Two bank holidays in May close roads in the centre, so ask which weekend they fall on.

Summer: June to August

The longest light of the year, and the slowest traffic. An evening booking becomes a genuine option in June, when it is light until after nine. Mean daily maximums run from about 22 in June to about 24 in July.

The cost is congestion. July is the slowest month in central London and a fixed block of hours notices, so take a morning start if you can. Air conditioning is included on most of these tours and it matters more in August than any other line in the fare.

Autumn: September and October

September is the best single month of the twelve for this. October is the wettest on the Heathrow record and the month the clocks go back, dropping sunset to about half past four on the last Sunday.

Neither stops a cab tour. What October changes is the shape of the afternoon: a two o'clock booking that finished in daylight in September now finishes in dusk, which is better for photographs of the floodlit fronts and worse for the parks.

Winter: November to February

Dark early, cold, quiet and cheap to find a slot in. Mean daily maximums sit between about 8 and 12 degrees. Traffic is at its most reasonable and the landmarks are at their emptiest.

It is also the only time of year the Christmas tier exists, which for many travellers is the reason to come at all.

The Christmas lights season, week by week

The displays go up street by street through November and come down in the first days of January, so the window is about seven weeks. A pair of tours run inside it: two and a half hours and three hours, both after dark, one in a cab with a glass roof.

Book them in October. The evening slots go first, and December is not a month with slack in it. The two products are set out on the Christmas lights page.

Does the Changing of the Guard run all year?

The King's Guard changes at Buckingham Palace on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am, with soldiers gathering from about 10am, according to the Household Division. The schedule changes at short notice and thins in winter, so check it on the day rather than planning a morning around it.

If it matters to you, book an early start and say so. One operator sells a 9am pickup for exactly this reason, and the roads around the Mall close before the ceremony.

London month by month, in figures

Temperatures are the mean daily maximum and minimum, computed from the Met Office's published Heathrow station record for 1991 to 2020. Light is sunrise to sunset, rounded, for the middle of the month.

The full twelve months, one at a time, are on the month-by-month page.

Which month is cheapest?

None of them, and that is unusual. These fares do not move with the season the way a hotel room does: the same tour is the same price in January and July, because what you are hiring is a driver's afternoon rather than a seat on something with fixed running costs.

What does change with the month is availability. December fills first and fills hardest, because the lights tier concentrates demand into about seven weeks. January and February are the easiest months to get the slot you want at short notice, and the traffic is at its most cooperative, which means a two-hour booking covers more ground than the same booking in July.

So the saving in winter is not on the fare. It is on what the fare buys you: fewer people at every stop, faster roads, and a driver who is not working their eleventh tour of the week. Whether that outweighs seven hours of daylight is a judgement only you can make.

Which tour suits which season

Spring and autumn: anything. This is when the open sightseeing routes are at their best and the day is long enough for a six-hour booking.

Summer: a morning start, and the longer blocks, because the traffic makes short ones feel shorter.

Winter: the lights tours from late November, and short daylight runs otherwise. A two-hour booking at eleven in the morning is a bright tour even in January.

School holidays, and the weeks to avoid

Three periods thicken the centre noticeably. Late July and all of August, when the English school holidays overlap with the international ones. The two weeks around Easter, which move with the calendar. And the half-term week in late February, which is short and sharp.

None of them stops a tour and none of them changes a fare. What they change is the time each stop takes: a Buckingham Palace stop that runs fifteen minutes in November can run twenty-five in August because of the crowd at the railings, and a fixed block of hours absorbs that out of the end of the day. Booking the earliest slot on offer is the whole mitigation.

What the weather never changes

Rain does not cancel anything here and it barely affects the day. You are inside for most of it, the stops are optional, and one review describes an afternoon of rain that "barely registered". Bring a coat for the stops you want to make.

Snow is rare in London and closes nothing. What genuinely disrupts a route is a road closure — a state occasion, a marathon, a demonstration — and the answer to that is a driver who rearranges the order, which is what the reviews describe them doing.

Frequently asked questions

What the fare covers whatever the month is on the planning page, and every tour is listed with its hours and its season on Black Cab London Tours.

Tours for the season you are here in

London: Christmas Lights Tour in a Black Cab

Two and a half hours after dark with a badged guide, between the November switch-on and early January.

From $486 per group, up to 6

Check Availability

Christmas Lights Taxi Tour with Hotel Pickup

Three hours under Oxford Street and Regent Street in a cab with a glass roof, finishing wherever you like.

From $473 per group, up to 6

Check Availability

London Private Black Cab Tour: 2 hour highlights/hotel pick-up

The year-round answer: short enough to be a bright tour even in January, and the cheapest fare here.

From $304 per group, up to 6

Check Availability