This is the longest road journey we are regularly asked for. Here is when the car is the right choice, and when the train or a flight with cars at both ends makes for a shorter, better day.
The route
Being honest about it
Four hundred miles is a real distance. On a good day the drive takes seven hours and on a bad one it takes nine, and no amount of planning changes that arithmetic. The train covers the same ground in a little over four hours, runs roughly every half hour, and puts you in the middle of Edinburgh rather than on a bypass.
So the first thing we usually say to a client asking for this journey is that they may not want it. What they often want instead is the same service at both ends: our own car and chauffeur to King's Cross in London, and a car waiting at Waverley or at Edinburgh Airport, arranged through an operator we know and briefed by us. That is a better day and a shorter one.
There is also a practical limit that clients do not always expect. A chauffeur cannot sensibly drive four hundred miles, wait for a meeting and drive four hundred miles back on the same day. A one way road journey means an overnight for the car and the chauffeur, or a second chauffeur, and we will set out which we are proposing rather than leaving it to be discovered. None of that means the answer is always no. There are trips where the car is plainly right, and they are almost always trips where Edinburgh is not the only destination.
When the road is the right answer
Every one of these has something in common: the road is doing more than moving people between two stations.
Compared
| Door to door | Good for | Less good for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chauffeur | About 8 to 9 hours with breaks | Touring, luggage, several people, a car that is needed in Scotland for days afterwards, and journeys that start well north of London | A single meeting in Edinburgh and a return the same week. It is a long day spent to arrive tired |
| Train | About 5 hours all in | Nearly everyone. Around four to four and a half hours King's Cross to Waverley, roughly half hourly, arriving in the centre of the city with a car we have arranged waiting outside | Large amounts of luggage, or a destination well away from the railway |
| Flight | About 4 hours all in | A tight diary, an early meeting, or a private departure from a field near you into Edinburgh or Glasgow | Anyone for whom the train's city centre to city centre simplicity is worth forty minutes |
This is the honest version and it is the advice we give on the phone. If you want the car anyway, we will drive it properly and tell you what it involves.
The east
Up through Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland.
The west
Motorway almost the whole way, past Manchester.
Either end
Request a quote
Where you start, where you need to be, and what happens for the days after you arrive. If the train or a flight is the better answer we will say so and quote for the cars at both ends instead. If the road is right, we will tell you what it involves for the chauffeur as well as for you. Nothing is booked or charged online.
Prefer to talk? +44 2030 048300 or WhatsApp, at any hour.
Questions people ask
Seven to eight hours of driving, and eight to nine with the breaks a journey of that length needs. In winter, or with an incident on the M6, longer. Anyone quoting you six hours has not driven it.
No. Four hundred miles each way with a meeting in the middle is beyond what any chauffeur should be doing in one day. It means an overnight or a second chauffeur, and we will tell you which before you agree anything.
Odyssey owns the fleet and employs the chauffeurs in London and Manchester, with a trusted global network everywhere else. In Scotland the car comes from an operator we know, briefed by us and managed by us, and you still deal with one contact.
That is the version of this journey that works. A car and chauffeur for several days, with the route built around where you want to be rather than around a station. We can also arrange a private flight up and a car waiting at the other end. See multi-day tours.
