Man and Van in Nascot Wood

A Victorian villa gives you height instead of floor space. The stairs are steep, the half-landing is tight, and the top-floor rooms were built for a servant's bed rather than a king-size divan. We have taken enough furniture up and down them to know which items go whole, which lose a leg or a rail first, and which are honestly never going to make the third floor.

If you are moving into one of these, tell us what the biggest pieces are before the day. It is far better to find out in advance that a sofa needs its feet off than to discover it on a landing with the van still loaded.

The streets up here are narrower than the ones down by the park and the parking is on-street for most of them, so by mid-morning both sides are full. There is also a real gradient: a van left facing the wrong way on a slope with a tail lift down is not a good arrangement.

We plan the stopping point and the direction of approach before we set off, and where the street is genuinely full we start early enough to get a space at all. Being close to the Junction cuts both ways, so an early start beats a mid-morning one most days.