Surrey. Twenty minutes from Heathrow, with your name already at the estate gate.

St George's Hill runs to about 964 acres above Weybridge and holds more than four hundred houses, laid out from 1911 by the builder W. G. Tarrant around a golf and tennis club. Wentworth, at Virginia Water, was Tarrant's second and larger version of the same idea from 1922, built around a course by Harry Colt. Both are private estates: the roads belong to the residents, there are gatehouses, and access is not public.

That matters to a chauffeur in practical ways. A car arriving without the resident's name, the house name and the expected time can be turned away or held at the gate while somebody telephones. The roads inside are unlit, unmarked, heavily wooded and full of unsigned junctions and long private drives, and satellite navigation is unreliable within them. There are estate speed limits and there are residents who care about them. None of this is difficult, but it is the difference between arriving at the door and arriving at the gatehouse. We ask for the estate, the house and the resident's name at the booking stage for exactly this reason.

Surrey's advantage is position: St George's Hill is about three miles from the M25 and seven from the M3, Wentworth is beside junction 13 and the A30, and Heathrow is twenty to thirty minutes from either on a quiet morning. Farnborough is much the same distance in the other direction, which makes this one of the few places in the country equally convenient for a scheduled long haul and a private departure.

The disadvantage is the same road. The stretch of the M25 between junctions 10 and 13 sits between the A3, the M3 and Heathrow and carries an enormous amount of traffic, and a chauffeur who leaves at the wrong time pays for it twice over. The practical answers are to leave earlier than the map suggests, to use the A3 and the A308 rather than the motorway when the motorway is wrong, and to know which of the Heathrow entrances is quickest from the west. See Heathrow, Farnborough, Heathrow to central London and Farnborough to London.

South of the M25 the county changes completely. The Surrey Hills between Guildford, Dorking and Box Hill are steep, wooded and threaded with single track lanes, and they hold a run of country house hotels, wedding venues and private houses that are a good deal harder to reach than their postcodes imply. Sunningdale, Windlesham and Chobham sit to the west, Cobham and Esher to the east, and Ascot and Windsor are just over the Berkshire boundary.

For rural destinations we ask for a pin or a what3words rather than a postcode, because postcodes in this country cover a wide area and a wrong turn onto a lane with no passing place costs twenty minutes. For a day that takes in several of them, a car held at disposal is almost always better value than separate journeys. See hourly and as directed, Windsor and Ascot and long distance chauffeur.