Horley Transportation

It worked quite well on the last trip, so I arranged for my transportation needs by pre-booking with Hertz for a pickup at Heathrow Airport. I once again rented a standard transmission Ford Mondeo - a nice working vehicle, but maybe just a trifle too big for our needs on the many back roads we travelled. There is not much margin to play with on English roads, or in parking lots, so you are better off with a Focus or some other similarly sized car if you can get your luggage into it (cheaper too).

This time around, Hertz charged me 103 pounds/week and 14.71 pounds/day plus the usual smaller add-ons such as Location Service Charge (22 pounds), Vehicle Licence Fee (11.77 pounds) and Taxes (45 pounds). I did not take out any extra insurance and at the end of 13 days useage, the total bill came to 300 pounds or C$619 (US$540). Of course, don't forget that you will pay dearly for gas (petrol) as well. With the cheapest unleaded pump price of about 88 pence/litre it was approximately double the cost in Canada of 98 cents/litre (it also works out to US$5.80/US gallon). In other words, the recent world-wide increase in fuel costs did not change the relative country costs as compared to my 2004 trip. Altogether, I pumped about 90 pounds (US$160) into the car for the 810 miles we clocked during the trip.

I was happy with the car and the costs were what I had expected as the price of 'freedom'.