Area & Travel information

When to go - Considering the temperateness of the English climate, it's amazing
how much mileage the locals get out of the subject - a two-day cold snap is
discussed as if it were the onset of a new Ice Age, and a week in the upper 70s
starts rumours of drought. The fact is that English summers rarely get hot and the
winters don't get very cold, though they're often wet. The bottom line is that it's
impossible to say with any degree of certainty that the weather will be pleasant
in any given month. May might be wet and grey one year and gloriously sunny
the next, and the same goes for the autumnal months - November stands an
equal chance of being crisp and clear or foggy and grim.

As far as crowds go, tourists stream into London pretty much all year round, with
peak season from Easter to October, and the biggest crush in July and August,
when you'll need to book your accommodation well in advance. Costs, however,
are pretty uniform year-round

Arrival - Flying into London, you'll arrive at one of the capital's five international airports : Heathrow,
Gatwick, Stansted, Luton or City Airport.

Eurostar trains arrive at Waterloo International , south of the river. Trains from the Channel ports arrive at
Charing Cross or Victoria train stations; boat trains from Harwich arrive at Liverpool Street . Arriving by train
from elsewhere in Britain, you'll come into one of London's numerous main-line stations, all of which have
adjacent Underground stations linking into the city centre's tube network. Coaches terminate at Victoria
Coach Station , a couple of hundred yards south down Buckingham Palace Road from the train station
and Underground.

Information - The London Tourist Board (LTB; www.londontown.com) has a desk in the arrivals section of
Heathrow Terminal 3 (daily 6am-11pm), and another in the Underground station concourse for Heathrow
Terminals 1, 2 and 3 (daily 8am-6pm), but the main central office is in the forecourt of Victoria Station
(Easter-April Mon-Sat 8am-7pm, Sun 8am-6pm; May Mon-Sat 8am-8pm, Sun 8am-6pm; June-Sept Mon-Sat
8am-10pm, Sun 8am-7pm; Oct-Easter daily 8am-7pm). Other centrally located offices can be found near
Piccadilly Circus in the British Visitor Centre ( www.visitbritain.com), 1 Regent St (June-Oct Mon
9.30am-6.30pm, Tues-Fri 9am-6.30pm, Sat & Sun 9am-5pm; Nov-May same times except Sat & Sun
10am-4pm), in the arrivals hall of Waterloo International (daily 8.30am-10.30pm), and in Liverpool Street
Underground station (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat & Sun 8.45am-5.30pm).

Individual boroughs also run tourist offices at various prime locations. The two most central ones are on the
south side of St Paul's Cathedral (April-Sept daily 9.30am-5pm, Oct-March Mon-Fri 9.30am-5pm, Sat
9.30am-12.30pm; tel 020/7332 1456; www.cityoflondon.gov.uk), and at the south end of London Bridge
(Mon-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 10.30am- 5.30pm; tel 020/7403 8299; www.southwark.gov.uk). The above offices
will answer phone enquiries ; LTB can only offer Visitorcall (tel 0839/123456), a spread of pre-recorded
phone announcements - these are a very poor service, and the calls are charged at an exorbitant rate.

Most of the above offices hand out a useful reference map of central London, plus plans of the public
transport systems, but to find your way around every cranny of the city you need to invest in either an A-Z
Atlas or a Nicholson Streetfinder, both of which have a street index covering every street in the capital; you
can get them at most bookshops and newsagents for under £5. The only comprehensive and critical
weekly listings magazine is Time Out, which costs £1.95 and comes out every Tuesday afternoon. In it you'll
find details of all the latest exhibitions, shows, films, music, sport, guided walks and events in and around
the capital.