# Hertfordshire

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

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

Hertfordshire is where a great many people keep the car that London will not let them keep in London, and that single fact explains most of the leases we deliver here. We bring cars to Radlett, Shenley and Brookmans Park, to Harpenden, St Albans, Chorleywood and Rickmansworth, to the gated roads around Hadley Wood and Cuffley, and out to the villages under the Chilterns. Almost all of it is private-drive delivery behind hedges and gates, which is the most discreet arrangement we do. The county sits on the M25 and the M1 together, so the car is out of the county and on to something worth driving quickly. There are no premises of ours in Hertfordshire and nothing here for you to travel to.

Typical delivery: Access decides this rather than distance. Most addresses here are gated, which means a code or an intercom and somebody expecting us, and many sit at the end of a long drive whose surface and turning space are worth establishing beforehand. The lanes through the smaller villages narrow at the bridges, so a transporter may have to set down on a main road with the car coming in from there. The county's motorway junctions behave badly at predictable hours and we plan round them. The window comes from a person and is agreed with you before anything is committed.

Handovers here mostly happen on a private drive, off the road and out of sight, which is how most people in this county would prefer it. Surface and geometry decide whether it goes smoothly: deep loose gravel is hard work for a wide low car and throws stones at its own paint, a short steep apron at the gate will ground a front splitter on the way in, and a long drive with nowhere to turn means a considerable reverse back out to the lane. The other local point is hedging - many entrances here are set in a high hedge on a bend with no visibility either way, which decides where we stop rather than where we would like to.

Postcode areas covered: AL, WD, SG, EN.

## Why keep the car here rather than in London?

Because the kerb rules are the whole problem. A car of this value in central London needs a permit tied to a plate, a bay that costs more than the use it gets, and a battery that flattens between outings. Twenty-odd miles north the same car sits on a drive behind a gate, starts when you want it, and is on the M1 or the M25 in minutes. A three-month lease suits that pattern exactly: the car is available every day of the term rather than booked for occasions, at a known monthly figure, with delivery and collection to your own door at each end.

## Which Hertfordshire roads are worth taking the car out for?

North and west, into the Chilterns. The B4506 through the Ashridge estate is the one to know - beech woods on both sides, a good surface and long sweeping curves - and the lanes around Aldbury, Ivinghoe and Whipsnade carry on in the same vein. Deer come out on to those roads at dusk in numbers, which is not a warning to be polite about. Closer in, the lanes between Shenley, Ayot and Codicote are quiet and pleasant on a weekday. East of the A1 the county flattens out and gets duller, so most of the good driving is on the Chiltern side.

## How does the M25 shape a lease here?

It shapes it more than anything else in the county. Being on the northern arc puts the Chilterns, the Cotswolds, Oxford, Cambridge and both London airports inside a straightforward run, which is why a car kept here gets used in every direction rather than one. The cost is that the junctions between the M1 and the A1(M) are heavily congested at predictable hours, and an incident on that stretch reroutes everything through the villages. We take that into account when we set the window, which sometimes means proposing an hour that looks unusual and is actually the quiet one.

## Do you deliver into St Albans and the town centres?

Yes, though the town centres are the harder half. St Albans has a narrow historic core with controlled parking, a market that takes the main street out on its days, and streets around the abbey where a wide car is more trouble than it is worth. Watford, Hertford and Berkhamsted are similar on a smaller scale. Where the address is central we agree a bay or a forecourt and keep the handover to the twenty minutes it needs. Where it is one of the outer roads or a village, it is an ordinary driveway handover and none of that applies.

## What happens when there is an event at one of the big houses?

The county has several estates that host large events, and a concert weekend at one of them puts tens of thousands of people on to roads built for a village. The approach roads queue for hours, temporary closures and one-way plans go in, and the effects reach several miles out from the gates. Hatfield and the other house venues do a smaller version of it through the summer wedding season. None of it prevents a delivery or a collection. It means the date is worth telling us along with the postcode so we can set the time around it.

## Can the agreement start at Heathrow or Luton and end at the house?

Yes, and it is a common way to shape it from this county. A handover at a terminal when you land removes a leg of travelling on the day the agreement starts, and collection at the end of the term can be from your own drive instead, or from a different address entirely if that suits you better. Both points are agreed at the booking stage and quoted against the real addresses, so nothing appears afterwards. What we ask is that the two ends are settled when the dates are rather than on the last morning.

*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.*