# Bath, Bath and North East Somerset

URL: https://performanceandprestige.co.uk/car-hire/bath

Performance & Prestige has no depot, branch or rental counter in Bath and holds no premises there. Every lease is delivered to an address you choose and collected from it afterwards.

Bath is a Georgian city built up the sides of a steep bowl, and the gradient decides more about a handover here than anything else. We deliver into the Royal Crescent and Circus streets, up Lansdown and Bathwick Hill, across to Widcombe and Combe Down, and out to Bathford, Batheaston and the villages towards Bradford on Avon. The set-stone surfaces in front of the finest terraces are exactly where a low car is least comfortable, and the residents schemes cover most of the centre, so the street matters as much as the postcode. Beyond the city the roads are immediately good: the Mendips, the Wiltshire downs and Castle Combe are all a short run out. We hold no premises in Bath, and nothing about a lease here asks you to travel to us.

Typical delivery: Gradient and surface come first here, then the parking zone. A terrace on Lansdown or Bathwick Hill sits on a slope no transporter ramp should be unloading on, so we look for a flat section nearby and plan to walk the car the rest of the way. Then the residents bays, which cover most of the central streets and dictate where a car may wait and for how long. The weight limits on some of the older river crossings settle the approach for us. The window is worked out with you and confirmed by a person before anything is committed.

The setts in front of the Crescent and around the Circus look wonderful and are unkind to a low front splitter taken at an angle, particularly coming off a ramp. So the last leg is driven, slowly, and we choose a flat street nearby to do the paperwork on. Weight limits on some of the older crossings keep a transporter out of parts of the city altogether, which is another reason the final approach is usually made on four wheels rather than on a deck. Out at Bathford, Combe Down and the villages there is normally a drive and none of this applies. Send a photograph of the entrance if you are unsure.

Postcode areas covered: BA.

## Does Bath's clean air zone charge a private car?

Bath's zone is aimed at higher-emission taxis, private hire vehicles, vans, buses, coaches and lorries rather than private cars, which puts it in a different category from the scheme a few miles up the road in Bristol, where private cars falling short of the standard are charged. That is a genuine difference worth knowing if you are moving between the two cities in the same week. We still confirm the position for the exact vehicle and your dates before anything is agreed, and you are told which charges we settle and which are billed on.

## Can the car be handed over outside a Crescent or Circus address?

Yes, with care and with the right timing. Those streets are residents-controlled, the surface is stone rather than tarmac, and the space in front of the finest houses in England is not somewhere anyone wants a car manoeuvring back and forth while paperwork is read. We come in slowly, keep the handover to the twenty minutes it needs, and would often rather do the licence check and the walk-round on a flat street one block away and then bring the car round. If you have use of a mews garage or a rear lane, say so - it is always the better answer.

## Where does the car sleep in a city with no off-street parking?

Most central Bath addresses have none, so the honest options are a secure car park with a barrier you have checked, a hotel with parking of its own, or a permit arrangement made against the registration through the council's own scheme. What does not work is assuming a central street will do - the zones are enforced and the permits belong to plates rather than people. Combe Down, Bathford and the villages have drives, which is why a good number of leases here start at an address a few minutes outside the centre rather than inside it.

## What is the best short drive out of Bath?

Castle Combe and the lanes around it, which are a short run north and about as pretty as English road gets. South, the A367 up on to the Mendips and across to Cheddar takes under an hour if you go early, and it is a different country by the top. East, the A4 and then the downs above Marlborough open into fast, empty, chalk-country roads with long sightlines. The Wiltshire lanes in between are narrow, high-hedged and flint-surfaced at the edges, so they reward a steady pace rather than a quick one.

## Which dates tighten the city up?

A home rugby fixture at the ground in the middle of the city does it in a way few other grounds manage, because the Rec sits inside the Georgian core rather than out by a bypass, and the streets and the bridges fill together. The March half marathon closes central roads for most of a morning with the route published well ahead. Large weddings at the estate venues outside the city run through the summer and are date-fixed by definition. Tell us the dates and we will set the handover clear of whatever is on.

## Is Bristol part of the same arrangement?

It is a short run rather than a separate job, so delivery in Bath and collection in Bristol at the end of the term - or the reverse - is one arrangement quoted against both addresses. The thing to hold in mind is that the two cities run different schemes with different rules, and a car that is free to enter one may be charged in the other. We set out which applies to your car before you commit. Bristol Airport sits south of both, which makes a terminal handover at one end a sensible way to shape it.

*Pre-launch note: the driver criteria, deposits, excesses and mileage allowances quoted here are read from Performance & Prestige's own catalogue data, which is still being confirmed with the owner and the insurer. Read them as the shape of the figures rather than as a quotation. What binds is your written quote and your agreement.*