Zone one, district by district, with the walking times attached

Mayfair between Oxford Street and Piccadilly, where the evening is planned backwards from the table. Soho, nine minutes across and open latest of all. Marylebone, a village that takes its last orders early. Fitzrovia, an hour ahead of everywhere else. Piccadilly itself, a corridor rather than a destination, eight minutes end to end. The whole postcode is summarised on the W1 page.

Covent Garden runs on two clocks, the half past seven curtain and the quarter past ten spill. Holborn is a minute from two lines and the fastest door in this half of the zone. Bloomsbury is laid out on garden squares and keeps its voice down about twenty minutes from the noise.

Westminster keeps hours nowhere else attempts, and a booking there is often made at half past nine for eleven. St James's is the smallest district on the site, built out of courtyards, three minutes from the Green Park gates. Above both of them, Central London draws the three postcodes together and gives the crossing times between them.

The postcodes, and what changes as the letters change. The nearest stations, the lines through them and the walk in minutes. Between four and six hotels, named because guests stay in them and for nothing else. The companions who reach that district quickest, drawn from On The Books. And a short set of questions the desk is asked about that postcode more than any other.

The figures never change from page to page. An hour opens at £250 everywhere in the zone, travelling inside Zones 1 and 2 is counted already, and the full ladder is on the rates page.