House removals across North London

North London climbs, and that single fact shapes a move here more than the postcode does. Between Islington's Georgian squares and the Enfield edge the ground rises through Highgate, Crouch End and Muswell Hill, where the streets are steep, the houses are tall and where the van stands in relation to the front door decides how hard the day turns out to be. Crouch End and Muswell Hill have never had an Underground station of their own, which is part of why they kept their large Victorian and Edwardian family houses, and part of why the roads up to them carry more bus and school traffic than the map suggests. Down in N1 the stock is Georgian — four and five storeys over a basement, original staircases, half-landings and joinery that we protect before anything moves. Out through Palmers Green, Winchmore Hill and into the EN codes the houses turn into 1930s semis with driveways and side access, which is a completely different and usually much faster day.

Parking splits the region in two. Islington's controlled parking zones cover almost every residential street in the borough, and Upper Street is a red route where stopping is not an option at all, so a booked bay suspension is closer to essential than to a nicety. The Harringay Ladder — the parallel terraced streets running between Green Lanes and Wightman Road — is permit-controlled and narrow enough that the van position has to be agreed in advance. Further north, the segregated cycle lanes built along Green Lanes through Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill took out loading bays and stretches of kerbside parking as they went, so the obvious place to stand a van there is often simply no longer available. Wood Green's High Road stays congested with buses and deliveries for most of the day, so we work from the residential turnings behind it. North of the North Circular the pressure drops away: much of Enfield and Barnet has unrestricted residential parking and off-street space, and the carry shortens accordingly.

Two football grounds sit inside this region and both of them close roads. A Tottenham Hotspur home fixture — or an NFL game or a concert at the same stadium — shuts stretches of the High Road around White Hart Lane, and Arsenal event days bring restrictions and closures across the streets around the Emirates in N5 and N7. We check both fixture lists before confirming a weekend date. The rest of the time the A1, the A10 and the A406 do the work, with the M25 at Junctions 24 and 25 a few minutes from the top of the region.