How Hard Is It To Navigate Central London?

I know this may sound like a stupid question but I've only ever been to central London once and that was to see the millennium dome when I was small. In the near future my company is going to bring more work in-house so it means I'll be venturing into central London.

Currently I cover this sort of area (marked in black).



Soon I could possibly be covering this sort of area (all of the black and red area).



Is it true that SatNav's don't work in central London or is it only parts where they get a bit confused? Any tips or tricks anyone has in navigating London?

Thanks everyone.

[SoulKiss]

Satnav will work, only problem is that in parts where there are very tall buildings you can lose your satellite lock.

I don't find much trouble getting around just using my phone satnav on audio and Google Navigation.

Come down to visit Soho some Friday and someone will guide you into Soho, will give you some idea.

Once I find out the locations I'm going to be working in I'll certainly be taking a trip down on the bike. But for my first trip it'll certainly be well outside of peak hours and hope it isn't always rush hour all the time.

[SoulKiss]

You're close enough, just come down and have a play sometime

You should be fine with the sat nav. I hate relying on my phone as it has to download the maps as it goes.

[dizzyblonde]

Our Satnav was a pile of poo in London, specially the centre, it wasn't quick enough for all the turns. It was a Garmin pile of poo, that went in the wheelie bin when we got home.
We had to rely on Petes memory, which is far too old and wee soaked......was far better than the Garmin!

My Sat nav is usually fine on the way into London, ie: it started the journey with a signal, and most of the time finishes with a signal. The difficult bit is then when you switch it off, and back on again at the beginning of your journey in Central London, and it's trying to get a lock from scratch. One trick for this is go find somewhere quite open, like Embankment, one of the bridges over the Thames, Trafalgar Square, etc, and drive round a couple of times with a nice wide clear view of the sky until it gets a fix (1 minute max in good weather), then I find you can drive back into the heavily built up areas without too much trouble. Sounds like a ball ache, but it's quicker than loosing 15 mins getting lost. How good your sat nav is once it has a signal, just depends on how good your maps and software are. My old sat nav had a habit of telling you to turn the wrong way into one way streets and was constantly having to recalculate, but apply common sense and it got you there, or at least allowed you to see on a map exactly where you are. The integrated Toyota sat nav I have now is fine.

A Satnav we borrowed led us a bit of a merry dance when we got into central London but it wasn't too bad and considering we just wanted to get straight back out again (no offence to you Londoners but we the most traffic we are used to is the odd daft sheep and drunken disorderly ) we survived And we were in the van so couldn't exactly get anywhere quickly!

[Spiderman]

You'll be fine dude, london aint as confusing on the north side as it is on the south side. There are easy routes into the center from all over that area you currently cover.
Just remember that the thieving *******s at westminster will want you to pay for bike parking if you go in their borough but the others dont.

Thanks everyone, I'm a little more at ease knowing London isn't the total black-spot that I thought it was. It's taken me a while to navigate round the outside of Central London and even that scared me to begin with. London traffic really doesn't give you an inch as I sound learnt.