The Lake District in a saloon

One of the genuinely convenient things about the region is how straightforward it is to reach. A motorway runs along its eastern edge with two junctions that lead directly into the central lakes, which means the difficult driving is confined to the last half hour of a journey that is otherwise entirely ordinary.

The M6 runs up the eastern edge of the region and the junctions at Kendal and Penrith put you into the lakes quickly. From Manchester Airport it is a straightforward run of around two hours; from London it is a long day.

That makes the region unusually accessible for somewhere that feels remote, and it explains why so much Lakeland work starts at an airport rather than at a house.

It is worth being clear about what a chauffeur is actually providing in a landscape like this, because it is not the same thing as a transfer between two addresses. The value is in what the passenger is able to do with the journey rather than in the journey itself.

Because a driver looking at the road is not looking at Windermere, and the whole point of being in Cumbria is looking at it. A day with somebody else driving turns a demanding piece of navigation into a view.

Book it by the hour rather than by the journey. Nothing in the Lake District keeps to a timetable, including the weather.

Windermere has a vehicle ferry across it that saves a substantial detour for anybody going between the eastern and western sides of the central lakes. It runs frequently, it takes a handful of cars at a time, and on a busy summer afternoon the queue for it can be longer than the drive round.

Whether to use it is a judgement made on the day rather than a plan made in advance, and it is exactly the sort of thing that a driver who works the region knows and a visitor does not.