Rental Car

This weekend, I’ve gone for a different plan to the usual one for travelling to and from Cambridge. It’s kind of an experiment, although even if it works out OK this weekend, it’s not one I’m going to be making use of a lot, I suspect.

Anyway, rather than travelling home (and then back here on Monday) by train, this weekend I’ve rented a car from Avis. Purportedly it’s going to be a Renault Megane, but that’ll only be confirmed when I get there later today.

Bizarrely, it’s actually costing me slightly less to rent a car for the weekend, than it does for the train ticket (£59, vs. £65) but that’s not including the extra for bringing down the insurance excess to something sane. However, the real test is going to be down to time and convenience. At the moment, the train journey takes me roughly 2½ hours door-to-door – and a maximum so far of 3 hours, including a delay because a bunch of little bastards all set off the emergency alarms in four carriages. The AA‘s route planner reckons it’ll take me two hours by road, but that also includes the M25 Orbital Car Park on a Friday afternoon (although I’ll be leaving Cambridge at about 2pm, so *touches wood* I shouldn’t hit the M25 at a bad time) so we’ll see.

Of course, there’s also the journey back on Monday morning – and I suspect that may rapidly become nightmarish. Partly because the thing I failed to include in my calculations of when to do this little experiment is that this week is half-term, which means that Monday is likely to have a lot of people travelling back to university/college/school/whatever. Still, I’ll be leaving at some ungodly hour of the day, so I don’t know what it’ll be like – and I’ve already warned work I may be horribly late on Monday, so *shrug*

Whatever happens, it’ll be fun, I’m sure.