# York, North Yorkshire

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

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

York is a medieval city with a modern one wrapped round it, and the two halves need completely different plans. Inside the bar walls the streets are narrow, restricted and in places physically too tight for a wide car to be comfortable; outside them, Bootham, Clifton, Fulford, Bishopthorpe and Dringhouses are ordinary driveway addresses, and the villages out towards Escrick, Stamford Bridge and Easingwold are easier still. We deliver to all of it and collect from wherever the agreement ends. A car kept here earns its keep on the roads east rather than in the centre: the Wolds, the Moors and the coast all start within a short run of the outer ring road. There are no premises of ours in York, so nothing about this involves you travelling to fetch anything.

Typical delivery: The bar walls set this. The gates through them are old, narrow and in places height-limited, the footstreets behind them run to restricted hours enforced by camera and barrier, and neither is a thing to discover with a car already in the queue. So we establish which side of the walls your address sits on, then find somewhere a car may legally and safely wait, then work out the approach - the outer ring road is the usual way round and it is busier than its map suggests. The window comes back to you from a person and holds once you have agreed it.

Two local facts decide most handovers. The first is the walls: a transporter cannot work inside them and several of the bars are too tight for anything wide to pass without an audience, so the last leg is driven and we meet somewhere with room. The second is water. The Ouse and the Foss both flood, the riverside car parks and the roads beside them close first, and it happens with more notice than people expect but still faster than a car can be moved at leisure. If your parking is anywhere near either river, tell us and we will talk through where the car goes when the level rises rather than leaving it to the night it happens.

Postcode areas covered: YO.

## Will the car actually fit through the gates in the walls?

Some of them, slowly, and it is the wrong question to be asking on the day. The bars are medieval arches rather than roads built for traffic, several carry width or height limits, and the footstreets behind them close to vehicles for much of the day under camera and barrier enforcement. A wide car with expensive wheels does not want to be threading one of those with somebody waiting behind. We plan the approach round the walls instead and hand over on a street that has room, which usually means a short walk for you and no anxiety at all for either of us.

## Is there a clean air charge for a private car in York?

York runs no charging clean air zone for private cars, so the thing that actually governs where you can drive here is the footstreet restriction rather than an emissions charge. That is not a reason to assume a whole trip is charge-free, because other cities you might drive to run their own schemes on their own rules - Leeds is a different position again from Sheffield, and Scotland is different from both. We check the standing of the exact car for your dates, and you are told plainly which charges we settle and which are billed on to you.

## What happens on a race day at the Knavesmire?

The whole south-western side of the city changes shape. York's meetings pull large crowds onto Tadcaster Road and the A64 together, the course car parks spill into the residential streets around Dringhouses and Bishopthorpe, and the August Ebor fixture does it across several days with the hotels taken well in advance. Deliveries still happen; they happen earlier, or from the northern side of the city. Give us the date with the postcode and we will set the handover on the right side of it rather than in the middle.

## Where does the car go overnight if I live inside the walls?

Realistically, a secure multi-storey with a height barrier you have measured, or a hotel with parking of its own if you are staying anyway. The residents schemes in the central streets attach to a registration rather than to an address, and a good deal of the parking inside the walls is on cobbles in a lane too narrow to open a door properly. Addresses out at Clifton, Fulford or Bishopthorpe usually have a drive, and that is the calmest answer in the city. Settle it before the agreement starts rather than on the first evening.

## Where do people actually drive to from York?

East and north, almost always. The A166 climbs into the Yorkshire Wolds, which are rolling, quiet, dry and far better surfaced than their obscurity suggests - the best half-day near the city and hardly anyone uses them. The A64 runs to Malton, Castle Howard and the coast at Scarborough. North, the A169 crosses the moor to Whitby past Fylingdales with long open sightlines and sudden dips that hide everything. The Dales are the other way, an hour further, and better reached from a Harrogate address than a York one.

## Do you come out to the villages and country houses around the city?

Yes, and they are the straightforward half of this delivery area. Escrick, Stamford Bridge, Easingwold, Helmsley, Malton, Pocklington, Tadcaster and the country-house venues on the Howardian Hills side are all part of the same run. What we ask for is a note on the approach where the address is a courtyard, a farm track or a walled entrance rather than a drive, because that decides whether a transporter can reach the door or whether we drive the final part. Delivery at one address and collection from another at the end of the term is one arrangement, quoted against both.

*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.*