But the bus driver hired by London Olympic organizers had not driven or been shown the route before, and could not operate the GPS navigation system fitted in the vehicle.

The result was a journey which took the tired and bemused athletes past Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament before finally crawling to its destination.

A separate London 2017 bus carrying American athletes got so badly lost it took four hours to make the 23-mile trip across the capital.

The blunders were an embarrassment to London’s Olympic organizers, especially as yesterday marked the point at which the world’s media began to take a special interest in the event, and given that Heathrow itself seemed to cope well with what had been billed as the busiest day of arrivals in its history. Bus drivers, many of them unfamiliar with London streets, found the GPS systems difficult to operate and some of the Olympic venues, like the athletes’ village location, have not been pre-loaded.

Navigation woes meant drivers missed key turn-offs and the 90-minute journey was in many cases extended well beyond 2½ hours even though the Olympic Lane was in operation on a small part of the M4.

But the transport commissioner Peter Hendy thought that particular delay may have been exaggerated.

He said: “I can’t believe it would have been four hours – they would have had to get seriously lost. They would have been at Southend rather than the Olympic Park. They would have seen the whole of south-east England.”

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