The West End switches its Christmas lights on over nine days in November, and the shopping season I drive for begins the same evening. Carnaby Street goes first on Wednesday 4 November, Regent Street follows on Thursday 5 November, and by Thursday 12 November Bond Street, Covent Garden and Chelsea have all joined in. Black Friday is Friday 27 November. From the first switch-on to Christmas Eve I spend most Saturdays, and more weekday afternoons than you would think, taking people between Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Covent Garden with the boot filling up as the day goes on. Here is how I plan a London Christmas shopping day, and the one trip out of town that people ask me for most.
The switch-on dates in order
These are the confirmed dates at the time of writing, taken from the street organisers and Time Out's list published on 26 October:
- Tuesday 3 November: St Martin's Lane, lights on at 4.45pm.
- Wednesday 4 November: Carnaby Street. The same day the new Harry Potter flagship store opens on Oxford Street.
- Thursday 5 November: Regent Street and St James's. Regent Street is closed to traffic from 5pm to 9pm for the switch-on, and the Spirit of Christmas angels return for a tenth year.
- Tuesday 10 November: Knightsbridge.
- Wednesday 11 November: Marylebone Village, switch-on at 6pm.
- Thursday 12 November: Bond Street (event 4pm to 8pm, lights at 7pm, the Crown Jewels design again), Covent Garden (over 300,000 lights, the British-grown tree back on the West Piazza) and Chelsea (King's Road, Sloane Square and Sloane Street).
- Thursday 19 November: Leadenhall Market and St Katharine Docks, and Hyde Park Winter Wonderland opens.
- Thursday 26 to Saturday 28 November: Mayfair Christmas Market on Mayfair Place, W1, 11am to 9pm daily.
- Friday 27 November: Black Friday, with Cyber Monday on 30 November. Most of the big retailers start their deals around 21 November.
Oxford Street has not announced its date yet. What is confirmed is the theme: the classic stars will be joined by Harry Potter designs to mark the new store. I will update this post when the date lands, but if you are planning around it, assume early November like every other year.
Why switch-on nights are a car problem
A switch-on is a street party, and street parties close streets. On 5 November Regent Street is shut to traffic for four hours, which pushes every bus and cab onto Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue and the Mayfair back streets at the same time. Bond Street on 12 November is a smaller event but it sits inside the tightest grid in London, and Covent Garden fills to the edges the same evening. If you want to be there for the countdown I will get you to it, but I will set you down two or three streets away and we agree a pickup point before you get out. Conduit Street works for Regent Street. For Bond Street I use Brook Street or Bruton Street. For Covent Garden it is Long Acre or the Strand end of Wellington Street. You walk two minutes, and you are not standing on a kerb afterwards watching a full street of people wave at the same cabs.
A Saturday on the doors
Most shopping bookings are by the hour, and the minimum in London is five hours, which is almost exactly how long a proper Christmas run takes. A pattern I drive often: collect at 10am, Harrods first while it is quiet, then Sloane Street and the King's Road, then across to Mayfair for Bond Street and Mount Street, and finish at Fortnum and Mason or Covent Garden around 3pm. The point of having me there is not the driving between the shops. It is that the shopping goes in the boot after each stop instead of coming with you into the next one, that you never queue for a cab in the rain with six bags, and that nobody has to remember where the car is. If a store will hold your purchases for collection, I collect them on the way past so you can walk out empty handed.
Two practical things. The Congestion Charge is £18 a day, 7am to 6pm on weekdays and noon to 6pm at weekends, and it is included in your fixed price, so you do not see it. And a shopping day is one of the few jobs where I will suggest the Range Rover or the V-Class over the S-Class, purely for the boot. The S-Class carries a weekend's luggage without complaint, but twelve shopping bags with boxes in them, plus a tree for the hall, is a van job.
Oxford Street without the cars
The western half of Oxford Street, between Selfridges at Orchard Street and Great Portland Street, started going traffic-free on 26 October. For the Christmas lights it is a good thing: you can stand in the middle of the road and look up. For a chauffeur it means the Selfridges doors are no longer a drop-off point. I now use the side streets to the north, Duke Street and James Street, or Orchard Street itself on the Marble Arch side, and I tell you which one before we arrive. Allow an extra ten minutes on any Oxford Street pickup during the lights season. Everyone has had the same idea about the same four side streets.
The day out: Bicester Village
The trip I am asked about most from November onwards is Bicester Village, the outlet village in Oxfordshire. It is open 9am to 9pm seven days a week, the Village describes itself as less than an hour from London, and its own winter display goes up from 5 November. By car it is the M40 to Junction 9 and then two miles along the A41, and the address for the satnav is 50 Pingle Drive, Bicester, OX26 6WD. Parking is free, with a park and ride running on the busier days and a reserved parking option right beside the boutiques, and there is a hands-free shopping service that holds your purchases until you leave.
You can do it by train. Chiltern Railways run direct from Marylebone, fastest 54 minutes and about an hour and five on average, two an hour. Plenty of my clients do exactly that and I only collect them at Marylebone on the way back. The reason people book the car instead is simple: the return journey. After five hours of outlet shopping nobody wants to carry it all onto a train, and the Village on a Saturday in December is not somewhere you want to be guessing at a taxi. I take the bags as you buy them, you have lunch, and we leave when you have finished rather than when the timetable says. Bicester is outside London, so the six-hour minimum applies, which in practice is a leisurely day with a stop in Oxford or at Blenheim on the way back if you want one. Tell me the date and I will quote a fixed price.
Black Friday weekend
I have a straightforward view of 27 November: central London is busier than any ordinary Saturday, but in my experience it is nothing like the week before Christmas. In my experience the real crush starts around the second weekend of December and runs through to Christmas Eve, when every pavement from Marble Arch to Piccadilly Circus is full by noon. If you want a calm day on the shops, go on a weekday in the first half of December, start at ten and finish by three, and you will be home before the roads thicken. If it has to be a Saturday, book it early. December Saturdays in the diary go first, and a chauffeur who knows the side streets is worth most on the day the main roads stop moving.
If you would like a shopping day, a lights evening or a Bicester run, send me the date and a rough plan on the contact page or by WhatsApp and I will come back with a fixed price and a suggested route. For more London seasonal dates see klasschauffeur.events.
