# Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

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

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

Cambridge has more money in it than the streets let on, and most of it belongs to people who cycle to work and want something entirely different on the drive at the weekend. We deliver into Newnham, Trumpington, Grantchester, Madingley and the Barton Road side, out to the science parks at Granta and Babraham, and on to Ely, Saffron Walden, Newmarket and the villages along the A10. The centre is the hard part: narrow, one-way, threaded with bus gates and full of bicycles that have every right to be there and considerably better sightlines than you do. The country beyond it is the opposite - flat, straight, open and very quiet once you are past the ring road. We hold no premises in Cambridge and nothing here asks you to come and collect a car.

Typical delivery: Bicycles and bus gates govern this, not mileage. The central streets carry heavy cycle traffic at the start and end of the working day, which is precisely when a car standing still is most in the way, so we aim either side of it. Several approaches are restricted to buses with camera enforcement, and a wrong turn into one is a penalty rather than a warning. A science-park or college address means arranging the barrier with whoever holds it. You get the window from a person, agreed with you, before anything is committed.

We would rather hand over away from the centre wherever you can meet us, and most people here can. A driveway in Newnham, Trumpington or one of the villages takes ten minutes and involves nobody else; a handover on a central street involves a cycle lane, a loading restriction and an audience. If the address is inside the core, tell us and we will find a bay or a forecourt and keep it brisk. Out towards Grantchester and Madingley the lanes are narrow and hedged with deep soft verges either side, and a wide car that puts a wheel off the tarmac there does not simply drive back on to it.

Postcode areas covered: CB.

## How much do the bicycles actually matter?

More than any other factor in this city, and it is worth saying plainly rather than politely. Cambridge has cycle traffic at a density found almost nowhere else in Britain, riders filter on both sides at every junction, and a wide car with poor rear three-quarter visibility is the worst possible tool for a tight one-way street at half past five. None of that is a reason to avoid the city. It is a reason to take the car out of it before you enjoy it, and to treat the first mile as something to be done slowly with the windows down and the mirrors earning their keep.

## Where does a car live in Cambridge?

On a drive, in a garage, or in a secure car park with a barrier you have measured - not on a central street. The residents schemes attach to a registration, the college lanes are private, and the streets that are neither tend to be narrow enough that a car of this width takes up more of the road than it is entitled to. Village and outer-suburb addresses solve it outright, which is one reason a lease here often runs from a house in Grantchester or Great Shelford rather than from somewhere you could walk to a lecture from.

## What are the fen roads actually like?

Straight, flat, fast-looking and more demanding than they appear. The droves out towards Ely and the Hundred Foot run along the tops of banks with a dyke on one side and no barrier at all, the surfaces rise and fall where the peat has shrunk beneath them, and the sudden dips hide an oncoming tractor completely. Crosswinds across open fen push a car about with nothing to shelter behind. They are genuinely interesting roads to drive well and entirely unforgiving of a moment's inattention, so they reward an early start and a calm right foot.

## Is Newmarket worth the short run east?

It is one of the few places in the country where the roads are arranged around horses rather than cars, and it is about half an hour out on the A1304. Strings cross the public roads at marked crossings in the early morning and have absolute priority, the heath roads are quiet and open, and the whole town is built around the industry. Race days fill the approaches and the hotels together. It makes a far better morning out than the mileage suggests, and it is a reminder to keep the throttle gentle through a town where a spooked horse is a serious matter.

## Does the science-park and business side change how a lease is set up?

The address changes, not the agreement. A great many leases here run to people at the research and technology sites east and south of the city, and delivery to a business park means arranging the barrier and a bay in advance rather than pulling up at a reception door. A business lease exists alongside the personal one and the enquiry form asks which you want. How a business lease is treated in your own accounts is a question for your accountant rather than for us, and we will not pretend otherwise.

## Where do people go for a proper day out from here?

Duxford is the obvious one and deserves its reputation - it is a short run down the A505 and the drive there is easy. Otherwise the good roads are north and east rather than west: the lanes through the Suffolk villages around Clare and Lavenham, the coast at Aldeburgh and Southwold for a long lunch, and the Norfolk north coast if you are prepared to make a weekend of it. Nothing here is dramatic. It is quiet, open, unhurried country, and a grand tourer suits it far better than something stiff and short-geared.

*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.*