A touring itinerary is the easiest thing in travel to over-plan. On paper, six counties in five days looks like value. In practice it is five days of packing, unpacking and watching hedgerows through glass, and the castle everyone wanted to see becomes the third stop of a tiring afternoon. Good touring is mostly the discipline of doing less. The best days have a gap in them.
This checklist covers the structural decisions: how far to travel each day, where to base yourselves, what the chauffeur's week looks like, how luggage works when the car is your wardrobe, and where to leave room for the things you will want to do once you are there. It applies whether the tour is a week in Scotland or three days between country houses.
Pace the route before booking anything
Start with driving hours per day rather than places per day. Three hours behind glass is a pleasant morning; six is a wasted one, however beautiful the road. Between two and four hours of actual driving leaves room for stops, lunch somewhere worth stopping, and arriving with enough of the afternoon left to enjoy it. Beyond that the tour becomes a transfer with scenery.
Then check the terrain rather than the mileage. Sixty miles across the Fens is an hour; sixty miles through the Highlands or west Cornwall is considerably more, on roads where overtaking is rare and the views deserve a slower pace anyway. A route that looks modest on a map can be a full day in the wrong part of the country, which is worth knowing before hotels are booked.
- Driving hours per day, capped at a figure you would actually enjoy
- Terrain along each leg, not just the distance
- One principal thing to see per day rather than three
- Arrival times early enough to enjoy the destination
- At least one day with no significant driving at all
- Ferries, timed entry tickets or anything else that cannot flex
Bases, hotels and where the car sleeps
Two nights in one place beats one night in two, almost always. A base lets you unpack, gives you a day of local exploring without moving luggage, and removes the morning ritual of checking out. Where a route allows it, building around three or four bases rather than seven overnight stops improves the week considerably, and gives the chauffeur somewhere consistent to work from.
Hotels need to know a car is coming. Parking at country houses and city hotels varies from generous to non-existent, and a height barrier or a narrow arch is worth knowing about before the day. Chauffeur accommodation is arranged as part of the booking and is a normal part of touring; ask your hotel what they offer for drivers at the point you reserve your own rooms.
- Fewer bases with longer stays, where the route allows
- Parking at each hotel: secure, on-street or a height-limited garage
- Access for a larger vehicle, including gates and arches
- Chauffeur accommodation, arranged as part of the booking
- Distance from each base to the things you want to see
The chauffeur's week
On a multi-day tour the chauffeur is with you from breakfast until after dinner, potentially for a week. That is a long time for anybody, and the arrangement works best when the day has a shape: a start time, an approximate finish, and some hours in the middle where they are not required to be standing by the car. Say what you want and they will plan around it.
Late evenings after long driving days are the point where fatigue matters. If several days involve early starts and dinners that finish late, say so at the planning stage and we will propose an arrangement that works — a lighter day in the middle, a later start, or in some cases a second chauffeur. It is far better raised early than managed on the fourth night.
- An expected start and finish time for each day
- Evenings where the car is needed and evenings where it is not
- Days with both an early departure and a late return
- Rest built into the middle of the week rather than at the end
- How the chauffeur will be reached during free hours
Luggage when the car is your wardrobe
On a tour the boot is packed and unpacked daily, which changes what works. Two medium cases are easier than one enormous one, soft bags fill awkward spaces better than rigid ones, and anything you need during the day should be in something you can reach without unloading the entire boot at a viewpoint. It sounds trivial and it is the difference between a tidy morning and a scramble.
Think about what accumulates. A week of touring produces purchases, laundry, walking boots that are no longer clean and at least one thing bought because it could not be left behind. Leaving a little space at the start is wiser than filling the boot on day one and reorganising it in a hotel car park on day four in the rain.
- Two medium cases in preference to one very large one
- A day bag kept in the cabin with coats, cameras and water
- Walking boots or muddy kit kept separate from clean clothes
- Formal clothes for any dinner that requires them, packed to hang
- Space left for purchases made along the way
Building in time that is genuinely free
The itineraries people remember have gaps in them. An afternoon with nothing booked is where the unplanned things happen: the village you drive through and want to stop in, the extra hour in a gallery, the long lunch nobody wants to leave. An itinerary with every hour allocated cannot absorb any of that, and it becomes something to keep up with rather than something to enjoy.
Free time also protects the plan. Weather changes, a road closes, somebody wants a morning off, or a place turns out to deserve twice the time allowed. A tour with slack in it adapts; a tour without it starts cancelling things. Tell your chauffeur where the flexible hours are and they can suggest what is worth doing with them locally.
