Chauffeur Services in Kendal

Every route into the southern Lakes seems to pass through junction 36 of the M6, which is where the region's traffic piles up. Come a Saturday in summer, with the A590 and the A591 both peeling off there, the tail can be back on the motorway itself by late morning. Push north and the M6 lifts towards Shap past junction 39, high and open enough that wind and snow shut it down several times each winter while Kendal sits perfectly clear below. For the longer runs we read the forecast with the same attention we give the traffic.

Out to the west, the A591 climbs at a steady rate towards Windermere, and since it carries everyone making for the lake, late mornings and Sunday afternoons in season crawl. There is the older way north as well, the A6 over Shap summit, a lovely drive that is also high, lonely and among the first roads to shut when the weather turns. By nine in the evening Kendal has gone quiet. Set off before seven and you will have the quickest journey of the day.

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.