Black Cab Tour Pickup Points and Routes in London

Hours, prices and access verified by the Black Cab London Tours team — last checked 2026-09-08.

There is no meeting point to find on all but one of these tours. The cab comes to you. What you need to know before you book is where it may collect you, where it may not, and how much ground each block of hours actually covers once it has.

The central London pickup zone

Several operators publish the exact postcodes they cover, and the lists agree with each other. If your hotel is in one of these, you are inside the zone:

E1, E2, EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4, N1, NW1, NW8, SE1, SE11, SE16, SE17, SW1, SW3, SW4, SW5, SW6, SW7, SW10, W1, W2, W8, W9, W10, W11, W14, WC1, WC2.

That covers the West End, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Marylebone, the City, Islington, Shoreditch, Bankside and Bermondsey. Almost every hotel a visitor books is inside it. If yours is not, ask before you book rather than after: two operators will quote for a pickup outside the zone, and two charge a supplement for one.

Airports, ports and the edges of the zone

This is where the tours differ most, and getting it wrong costs you the booking.

One tour will meet you at an airport. It publishes sixteen pickup points, including Heathrow, Heathrow Terminal 5, Terminals 2 and 3, and London City, and seven drop-off points covering the same. If your day starts or ends at a terminal, that is the one to look at.

Two say plainly that they do not. One of them puts it in capitals: no pickup from any London airport. Booking it and hoping is how a layover goes wrong.

Two will quote. Ports and addresses outside central London are possible on request, usually with a supplement, and one names Heathrow and Gatwick specifically. Ask at the point of booking, in writing.

If you are on a layover, check this first. Only one of these tours is built for it, and the timing arithmetic is unforgiving — a six-hour layover leaves about three hours of tour once you have cleared the airport twice. The sightseeing page sets out which one collects at the terminal.

The one tour that meets you instead

The Beatles route from Sloane Square is the exception. It has no pickup at all: you meet your guide at Sloane Square Underground station, by the main entrance, and the lower fare is the trade for it. Sloane Square is on the District and Circle lines, so it is easy to reach from most of the zone.

The other Beatles route does collect from your address. The difference between the two is set out on the Beatles page.

What a route actually looks like

Most of these tours publish a route and then treat it as a starting point. Here is one of the two-hour ones, in the operator's own order, to show the shape:

Hotel pickup in central London
Buckingham Palace and St James's Palace
Past Horse Guards Parade to Westminster Abbey
The Houses of Parliament, with Big Ben passed rather than parked at
Through Trafalgar Square to St Paul's Cathedral
The Tower of London, and across Tower Bridge
Drop-off back in central London

Every one of those steps is negotiable except the first and the last. Hand your driver a list when they confirm the plan and the order rearranges. That is the whole difference between this and a fixed-route bus.

Two hours, three hours, six hours: how far each one gets

Taken from the published itineraries rather than from the marketing. Distances in central London are short; it is the stopping that takes the time.

You book	What it reaches	What it will not reach
2 hours	Westminster, Trafalgar Square, St Paul's, the Tower	Kensington, the City museums, anything out of the centre
3 hours	The same plus the South Bank, Piccadilly and time out of the cab	A theme and the landmarks in the same run
4–5 hours	A full theme, or the landmarks plus the side streets	Windsor or the Cotswolds
6 hours	The city end to end with a lunch stop, or Windsor and back	The Cotswolds villages
9 hours	The Oxfordshire Cotswolds, six villages, and back after dark	Anything in London on the same day

Know your hours, not sure of the route?

Every tour here publishes what it stops at and for how long, so you can see what fits before you pay.

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Charges, traffic and road closures

You will not pay the Congestion Charge or the Ultra Low Emission Zone charge. Licensed London taxis are exempt from both, which is one of the quiet advantages of this format over hiring a car with a driver. Parking and tolls are inside the fare on several of these tours and are never charged to you separately on any of them.

Road closures are the real variable. State occasions, marathons and demonstrations close the roads around Westminster and the Mall at short notice, and a driver finds out the same morning you do. The reviews describe drivers rearranging the order on the spot when that happens, which is the argument for a route that was never fixed.

Frequently asked questions

Where does a black cab tour pick me up?

At an address you choose in central London, on all but one of them. Four operators publish the postcodes they cover — E1, E2, EC1 to EC4, N1, NW1, NW8, SE1, SE11, SE16, SE17, SW1, SW3 to SW7, SW10, W1, W2, W8 to W11, W14, WC1 and WC2. One tour has no pickup at all and meets you at Sloane Square Underground station instead.

Can the cab collect me at Heathrow?

One of these tours will: it lists sixteen pickup points including Heathrow, Heathrow Terminal 5, Terminals 2 and 3, and London City. Two others say in terms that they do not collect at any London airport. Two more will quote for an airport or a port on request, usually with a surcharge.

Can the tour start and end at different addresses?

On several of them, yes, and two say so outright. It is worth asking for: a tour that finishes near your dinner reservation rather than back at your hotel buys you an extra hour of the evening. Say where you want to end when you book, not on the day.

What happens if we are late for the pickup?

One tour here publishes the answer: the driver waits twenty minutes past the start time and calls you before leaving. The others do not publish a figure, so treat twenty minutes as the working assumption and message the operator if you are running behind. The clock starts at the booked time, not when you get in.

What happens if my flight is delayed?

Tell the operator as early as you can — most will move the start time if the cab is not already committed. If it is, the 24-hour cancellation window is what protects you, so a delay you know about the day before costs nothing. Only one listing here collects at an airport, which is the one to choose if your day starts at a terminal.

What the fare covers before any of this matters is on the planning page, and what each stop gives you is on what a tour actually stops at.

To check a tour against your own address, the black cab day trips from London are set out with their pickup rules on Black Cab London Tours.

Check the pickup before you book

Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead, on every tour listed here.

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