Chauffeur Services in Windermere

That one mile of Lake Road linking Windermere with Bowness acts as the choke point for the whole southern Lakes. In season, anything between late morning and early evening crawls, and the car parks nearest the pier are the first to fill. Approaching a lakeside hotel, we come at it from whichever side dodges the worst. With a train or a flight in the plan, we set off earlier than most guests would think necessary. Yet before nine in the morning the same road is empty.

Bowness to Far Sawrey by ferry does save real distance, and it will also let you down. Only so many vehicles fit aboard; summer queues stretch; high winds stop it, and so does maintenance. So we count it as a pleasure, never as a route. North of there, Kirkstone Pass on the A592 climbs hard and shuts for snow in most winters. The A591 by Grasmere floods after long spells of rain, and has done for years.

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.