# Harrogate, North Yorkshire

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

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

Harrogate is built around wide Victorian villas with in-and-out gravel drives, which makes it one of the easier places in the north to hand a car over properly - off the road, out of sight, with room to walk round it. We deliver onto the Duchy Estate and around Harlow Hill, out to Pannal, Beckwithshaw, Follifoot and Kirkby Overblow, into the Montpellier streets behind the old Pump Room, and on to Knaresborough, Ripon and Wetherby. The Stray takes a great deal of protected grass out of the middle of the town, which is lovely to look at and removes a good deal of kerb from the equation at the same time. A three-month agreement fits a place where the Dales start a short run west: nobody has to book a weekend to use them. We hold no premises in Harrogate and there is nothing here to come and collect.

Typical delivery: Two things set the window here rather than the mileage. The first is the drive: most Harrogate addresses have one, and what we want to know is the surface, the width of the gateposts and whether there is room to turn at the top. The second is the town's event calendar, which fills the roads towards the showground and the convention centre for whole weeks at a time rather than single afternoons. We put a window to you once those are understood, and a person confirms it with you before anything is committed.

The gravel is the recurring physical issue. The older villa drives here are laid deep and loose, and a wide car pushes gravel rather than rolling over it, throwing stones at its own sills on the way in. Several of the in-and-out drives also rise sharply from the pavement, which catches a low front on the way up rather than on the way down. Send a photograph of the entrance and we will tell you beforehand whether the car goes on to the drive or whether we hand over on the flat outside and walk it in with you. In the centre, Montpellier and the streets off Parliament Street are pay-and-display or permit-controlled, so we agree a specific spot and a specific time rather than circling.

Postcode areas covered: HG.

## Where can a car legally stand for a handover in the middle of town?

Not on the Stray, which is protected common land with no parking on it at all, and not on the Montpellier and Parliament Street stretches without a ticket bought against the registration. What works is a hotel forecourt where somebody is expecting you, a bay taken for the twenty minutes the paperwork actually needs, or one of the quieter roads off Cold Bath Road and Swan Road where a car can sit without blocking anybody. Give us the address and we will name the street rather than leaving you at a window watching for us.

## Which roads is a car in Harrogate really for?

The A59 west over Blubberhouses puts you at Bolton Abbey and into Wharfedale inside the first half of a morning, and the A61 north through Ripon leads on to Masham, Leyburn and the whole of Wensleydale. The road most people here forget is the B6265 up to Pateley Bridge and into Nidderdale, where the climb out at Greenhow is long, steep and genuinely quiet on a weekday. All of it is two-lane, walled in dry stone and shared with tractors, sheep and cyclists who arrived earlier than you did.

## What do the shows and conference weeks do to the roads?

More than the traffic normally does. The Great Yorkshire Show in July fills the showground side of town for days rather than hours, with the approaches from the Wetherby Road queuing well before the gates. The spring and autumn flower shows do a smaller version of it, and a large convention takes the hotels and the central parking together. None of that stops a delivery - it decides the hour and sometimes the street. Send us the dates with the postcode and we will say what is on in the town that week.

## Can you get to an address up a Dales lane?

Usually, after a conversation about the last mile. Beyond the valley floors the lanes narrow to single track with passing places, cattle grids sit at every field boundary, and the gateposts on the older properties were set at the width of a farm cart. A covered transporter reaches very few of those doors and blocks the lane attempting it, so we drive the final stretch instead. Tell us what is actually there - grid, gate, ford, gradient, gravel - and we will be straight with you about whether the car you have chosen is the right one for that approach.

## Do Knaresborough and Ripon work for a delivery or a collection?

Both do, with the same caution about where the car stands. Knaresborough's waterside is steep, narrow and cobbled in stretches, and the streets down to the river are no place to leave anything wide while paperwork is signed, so we would rather meet at the top of the hill. Ripon's market square is a fine open space on most days and unusable on market day. Wetherby, Boroughbridge and the villages between them are simple driveway handovers. Delivery in one of those towns and collection at the end of the term from another is one arrangement rather than two.

## Can I take the car just for the summer?

Yes. Three months is the shortest agreement we write, and taken from June it covers the summer and nothing you are not using. The alternative worth considering is starting in spring and running longer, because the shoulder months either side are often the better ones to be out in this part of Yorkshire, and a longer term brings the monthly figure down. Either way the shape is one month up front and one a month after that, with a thousand miles a month included, and the car sits on your drive for the whole of it rather than being booked out for occasions. Delivery and collection are quoted against your address before you agree to anything.

*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.*