The O2, a peninsula with one way in and one way out

Everything about driving to the O2 comes back to the shape of the land. The Thames wraps around three sides, the fourth is the Blackwall approach, and the arena sits at the far end. There is no through route and no alternative to double back to.

That is why the departure is planned before the arrival. On the way in, an early start solves the problem entirely. On the way out, nothing solves it except being somewhere the traffic is not.

The A102 feeding the Blackwall Tunnel is one of the most reliably congested stretches in London, and it is the road the peninsula hangs off. An incident in the tunnel affects the arena approach immediately and completely.

For collections we route away from it wherever possible, coming round through Greenwich and Charlton on the south side rather than sitting in the tunnel feed. It is longer on a map and shorter in minutes, which is the trade we make at most venues.

Peninsula Square has a row of restaurants and bars, and unlike most arena forecourts they are genuinely usable. That makes the early arrival an easy sell: get there at six, eat, and walk into the arena without having spent an hour on the approach road.

The alternative is arriving at twenty to eight for an eight o clock show, which on a sold-out night means joining a queue of cars doing exactly the same thing. The saving is real and it costs nothing but an earlier collection.

Off the peninsula, and far enough off that the return journey does not depend on the tunnel approach clearing. Greenwich and Charlton both work; so does the north side if the run home is going that way.

The point is not the distance but the direction. A car waiting on the wrong side of the Blackwall approach at half past ten is a car that will take forty minutes to travel two miles, and no amount of local knowledge changes that.

From Mayfair, Kensington or Chelsea the O2 is a genuine cross-town run, and eight miles takes an hour in the evening. The options are the Embankment and the Limehouse Link, or south of the river through Southwark and Deptford.

Both are slow at six in the evening. We would collect ninety minutes before doors from west London, which sounds excessive and is what the road actually requires on a weekday.

The arena is the largest part of a much bigger entertainment complex with smaller music venues, a cinema and a great many restaurants under the same roof. An event at one of the smaller spaces is a different evening entirely, with a fraction of the crowd.

It is worth telling us which venue you are attending. A thousand-capacity show and a sold-out arena night share a postcode and nothing else, and we would plan the two completely differently.

A number of guests go straight from an event to a hotel near an airport or to an early flight the next morning. London City is fifteen minutes away across the river and is the natural pairing; Heathrow is an hour and a quarter across town at that time of night.

Where that is the plan, the collection point matters even more than usual. Ten minutes of walking at half past ten can be the difference between reaching a hotel by midnight and reaching it at one.