Kensington Chauffeur Hire

West of the park that shares its name, Kensington arranges itself around Kensington High Street, with Holland Park off to the north-west and the palace and gardens over to the east. Antique dealers line Kensington Church Street as it climbs towards Notting Hill Gate. Step behind the main roads and Phillimore Gardens, Campden Hill and the turnings off Holland Park Avenue go as quiet as anywhere in inner London. Passengers here are long-standing residents, diplomatic staff, and families spending a week near the museums.

Traffic on Kensington High Street moves at pace and stopping is restricted along nearly all of it, so the set-downs that actually work are the side streets, Argyll Road, Phillimore Gardens, Hornton Street, plus any hotel entrance with a forecourt of its own. For a long stretch Kensington Church Street runs one way, which turns a wrong turn into several lost minutes rather than a few seconds. Kensington Palace Gardens is a private road, security at both ends, access by arrangement only. The district falls outside the congestion charge zone.

What draws people out in Kensington is the antique and art trade along Church Street, the shops on the high street, and Holland Park itself, which accounts for a fair number of local journeys on its own. Concert halls and museums down at the Albert Hall end of the borough are five minutes away by car. Underneath all that runs a steady rhythm of school runs, embassy appointments and dinners over in Notting Hill, and every one of those suits an hourly arrangement better than a string of one-way transfers.

Of all central starting points, few reach Heathrow faster: 35 to 60 minutes as a rule, out along the Cromwell Road and the M4. Gatwick generally wants 65 to 100 minutes. Sitting at the far end of the city, London City takes 50 to 75 minutes at most hours. Windsor, Ascot and the Thames Valley are near enough on the M4 that beginning in Kensington counts as a real advantage on a race day morning.