Chauffeur Services in Dorchester

South Dorset hangs off the A35, and west of the town that road is single carriageway for most of its run, with a slow climb at Askerswell and long sections where overtaking is not sensibly on offer. Get behind a lorry between Dorchester and Bridport and half an hour turns into a great deal more. Come July and August it carries holiday traffic on every day of the week rather than only at weekends, so we quote any westward journey with that fact allowed for instead of glossed over.

Getting down to the coast means steep, narrow lanes with very little room to turn, above all around Abbotsbury, Osmington and the approaches to Durdle Door and Lulworth, where the car parks are full by mid-morning in season. The set-down point is agreed in advance, and if the final stretch really will not do, we tell you. For an early Southampton flight, leaving about three hours ahead is the honest figure rather than the flattering one.

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.