Multi-day chauffeur tours of the UK

The planning failure that spoils touring holidays is always the same: an itinerary designed around a list of places, with the driving treated as the gap between them. In this country the driving is not a gap. It is often four or five hours of the day, and on the more interesting roads it is slower than that.

We start with the number of nights and work out how many road hours the trip contains in total, then distribute them. A ten-night tour with two long transfer days and eight short ones is a far better holiday than one with ten medium ones, because the short days are the ones where anything actually happens.

Hotels then follow the driving rather than leading it. A hotel chosen because it is beautiful but sits ninety minutes past where the day should end costs you three hours over the following two days, and nobody enjoys the second of them.

On a multi-day tour the chauffeur has to sleep somewhere, and it is better handled openly at the quotation stage than discovered at check-in. A single room at the same hotel is the usual arrangement, and most hotels have a driver rate that is considerably below their published one.

Where the hotel is a small country house with eight rooms and no room to spare, the chauffeur stays nearby instead. That is fine provided it is nearby: a driver staying forty minutes away means a chauffeur on the road before your breakfast and a car that arrives having already done an hour.

The quotation states who books the room and how it is paid for. Some clients add it to their own reservation, some prefer us to arrange it and put it on the invoice, and both work as long as it is decided in advance.

The luggage arithmetic is where touring vehicle choice is decided. Four people touring for a week bring four large cases, four hand bags, coats, walking boots, a camera bag and something bought on day three. That is a V-Class, not a saloon, and the difference is felt on every hotel forecourt.

Two people can tour comfortably in an E-Class or an S-Class provided the shopping is kept in check. Six people touring need a Sprinter, which takes the luggage and the passengers without either compromising the other.

The practical advantage of a chauffeur-driven tour is that nothing gets carried up a flight of stairs by you. Cases go from boot to lobby at each hotel, and the day bag is the only thing that moves between the car and a restaurant.

Historic city centres are designed against cars, and increasingly so. York restricts vehicle access through much of its centre during the day, Oxford and Cambridge are difficult in every direction, and the streets around most cathedral closes are pedestrian or permit-only.

The touring answer is the same one that works on a day trip: drop at the nearest legal point, park properly on the edge, and agree a collection corner. On a tour this is easier, because the chauffeur has the whole afternoon rather than a two-hour window and can position the car for the onward leg while you walk.

It also affects hotel choice. A hotel inside a walled city is delightful and often has no parking at all, which means the car sleeps in a public car park a walk away. That is workable and worth knowing before the booking rather than at ten at night.

Anything involving a vehicle on a ferry needs booking well ahead. Car spaces on the summer sailings to Mull, Islay and the Outer Hebrides sell out weeks in advance, and a tour that assumes it can turn up at Oban and drive on is a tour that will be spending an unplanned night in Oban.

Skye is the exception people misremember. It has been reached by bridge for many years, so no crossing is needed and no booking applies, which makes it much easier to fit into a flexible itinerary than the islands that still need a boat.

The same early-booking logic applies on land to anything with an appointment attached. Distillery tours, private house visits and archive appointments all have limited slots, and they should be fixed before the driving schedule is built around them rather than after.