# Cornwall

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

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

Cornwall is longer than almost everyone expects and served by one quick road, and those two facts govern how a car gets here and what it can sensibly do once it has arrived. We deliver into Truro, Falmouth, St Mawes and the Roseland, to Rock, Padstow, Wadebridge and the north coast, to St Ives, Penzance and the far west, and to the Tamar-side towns at Saltash and Looe. Most of the good addresses finish down a lane with a granite bank on either side. Over a three-month agreement the car is not a holiday object here, it is the thing that makes living a long way from everything workable, and the mileage allowance is worth doing arithmetic on before you commit. We hold no premises in Cornwall and there is nothing for you to come to.

Typical delivery: The crossing of the Tamar and the state of the A30 decide almost all of it. There is one fast road down the spine of the county and no parallel route worth the name, so when it stops, everything stops with it. Beyond that, what matters is how far your address sits from that spine and what the final lane is like. Holiday changeover days are their own category. You get a window from the person handling the booking, set against the road as it actually is that week, and it is fixed once you have agreed it.

The last part of a Cornish delivery is nearly always driven rather than transported, because the lanes down to the coves are single track, walled with granite-faced banks, and steep enough in places that a low car has to take the crest at an angle. Several of the best addresses finish on gravel, hard standing or compacted sand, and blown sand across the tarmac behaves exactly like loose chippings under a wide tyre. Tell us what the final approach is made of and whether there is anywhere to turn at the end of it. If there is not, we will set the car down at the nearest made road and walk it in with you.

Postcode areas covered: TR, PL.

## How does a car actually get into Cornwall?

By one of three road crossings of the Tamar. The A38 uses the Tamar Bridge at Saltash and the Torpoint chain ferry runs alongside it, both of which are charged, with the charge collected in one direction. Further north the A30 crosses near Launceston without a toll, which is why almost everything heading for the middle and west of the county goes that way. The crossings are also the pinch point on a busy weekend. If your route uses the bridge or the ferry, tell us and the registration is dealt with rather than left to catch up with whoever owns the car.

## How long is Cornwall really?

Long enough to reshape a weekend. The far west is a serious run from the Tamar, on a road that is quick in parts and ordinary in others, so a plan that puts a cove near Land's End and dinner at Rock on the same evening is a plan that will not happen. The honest way to use the county is to pick one coast for the day. Over a longer agreement that stops mattering, because you are not trying to compress it: the mileage is spread across months rather than spent in a weekend.

## Which beaches and coves are wrong for a low car?

Most of the famous ones, if you intend to drive all the way down. The approaches are single track with passing places cut into the bank, the gradients are severe, and the car parks at the bottom are frequently unsurfaced or laid on sand that goes soft after rain. Granite-faced hedges do not move and do not forgive a misjudged passing manoeuvre. The sensible plan is unglamorous and it works: park on made ground at the top, walk the last stretch, and keep the car off surfaces you would not push a loaded trolley across.

## Are the ferries worth using?

Two of them genuinely are. The King Harry Ferry across the Fal saves a long inland detour between the Roseland and the Truro side and takes vehicles as a matter of course. The Torpoint chain ferry does the same job at the Tamar. The one that catches people out is the Rock to Padstow crossing, which carries foot passengers only, so a car has to go the long way round through Wadebridge while its passengers are already having lunch. Slipway gradients and tide state are worth a thought in anything with a low front.

## Which weeks tighten up in Cornwall?

School holidays across the board, and Saturdays in high season above all, when the whole county changes over its rentals at once and the A30 carries both directions of it. The Royal Cornwall Show fills the roads around Wadebridge while it is on, the summer music festival at Newquay does the same to the north coast, and regatta weeks empty the harbour town car parks before mid-morning. None of that prevents a delivery. It decides the hour, which is why the dates are worth sending with the enquiry rather than after it.

## Does a lease make sense somewhere this far from everywhere?

It is worth thinking about the mileage first. Every agreement includes a thousand miles a month, and Cornwall eats miles in a way a city does not, because the nearest of most things is a real drive away. If your normal week involves the length of the county, say so at the enquiry rather than discovering it at the end of the term. The other side of the argument is straightforward: the purchase price, the eventual sale and what the salt air has done to the car over the winter are not your problem on a lease.

*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.*