Chauffeur Services in Bangor, Gwynedd

On the A55 the slow moments are few, and near Bangor they are the Britannia Bridge and, east towards Conwy, the Penmaenbach and Pen-y-Clip tunnels. Down to a single lane each way, the bridge sits thoroughly exposed to crosswinds and shuts to high-sided vehicles in a gale, which shunts everything onto the Menai Suspension Bridge and the limits it carries of its own. When the forecast looks poor we leave earlier rather than gamble on the crossing.

Inland lies Telford's A5 through Nant Ffrancon and Capel Curig, among the great drives in Wales and among the least predictable. From first light on a clear weekend it fills with walkers' cars, the laybys below Tryfan are taken by nine, and through winter the ground around Ogwen keeps its ice long after the coast has thawed. Heading south towards Betws-y-Coed, we generally allow half as long again as the map suggests.

On a long journey, Britain's weather does more damage than its traffic ever will. Winter afternoons close in early, and that matters a great deal when the final leg is a single-track road. Highland and moorland routes can run substantially longer than any summer estimate suggests. Those allowances go into the timings from the start, rather than being discovered together halfway up a glen. Where a departure hour makes the schedule uncomfortable, we propose a better one.

Demand tracks the calendar closely. Bank holiday weekends fill fast, so do the weeks either side of Christmas, the summer wedding season and those university terms that all begin and end together. The further from London a journey runs, the sooner a car wants committing to it. Midweek travel in the shoulder months, by contrast, is the easiest thing in the world to arrange.