Chauffeur Services in Carrickfergus

This is the natural place to join the A2 Coast Road, which is one of the great drives anywhere in these islands. North of Larne it has been cut into the cliffs, and the Glens open one after another: Glenarm, Carnlough, Waterfoot, Cushendall. Winter brings high winds and spray, and short sections do close now and then, which is when the inland A36 over the moor to Ballymena earns its keep. We check conditions before setting out rather than finding a barrier with half the day gone.

For the Islandmagee peninsula and the Gobbins cliff path the town sits nicely, a short run north through Whitehead, though the Gobbins wants a booked time slot. Put that together with the castle, lunch at the marina and an afternoon on the coast road and you have a full day that never feels rushed. Guests on a cruise call at Belfast ask for this itinerary often, since it keeps close to the harbour and still gives them proper coastal scenery with a comfortable margin.

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.