London to Birmingham by Chauffeur

Being that close to London, Birmingham ought to make the travelling vanish, and a chauffeur is what does it. No Euston, no Marylebone, no queue on the pavement outside New Street, and no hunting for a meeting room somewhere in the Colmore Row grid from a cold start with a wheeled case in tow. The car reaches the door at the hour agreed, your notes still open in front of you.

Nearly all of it happens on the M40, which ranks among the better motorways England has: wide, well surfaced, and a genuine pleasure through the Chilterns cutting and on past Oxford. Mornings see traffic gather around High Wycombe, late afternoons around Warwick. Most of the real variation, though, sits in that final stretch along the M42 and the A45 heading towards the airport and the NEC.

Preparation fits comfortably into two and a half hours. Guests turn up to Birmingham meetings having read everything twice, taken a couple of calls and finished a coffee, which beats the state the very early train leaves people in. Coming back, the same stretch becomes decompression instead. That is the least glamorous case for a chauffeur, and more often than not the one that convinces.

Day returns account for most Birmingham bookings, and we treat them as one journey with waiting built into the middle rather than as two unrelated transfers. Run long and the car stays put. Finish early and you leave early. Days with several stops across the NEC, Solihull and the city centre are simple enough to arrange, so long as we know the shape of them at the time of booking.