Royal Ascot Chauffeur Hire, Berkshire

Royal Ascot fills five days of June and behaves less like a race meeting than a very large garden party with horses in it. Gates open late morning, lunch runs long, the Royal Procession comes down the straight in the early afternoon and racing follows through until early evening, after which a good part of the crowd stays on around the bandstand. You will be on your feet, outdoors, in your best clothes, for most of the day.

A chauffeur changes the two ends of that day. You are set down close to the enclosure entrances rather than crossing a field from a numbered car park, which is a different proposition entirely in heels and a hat that has to survive the wind. At the other end you send a message and the car returns; nobody in your group has spent the afternoon on elderflower cordial doing arithmetic about the drive home.

Plan the arrival earlier than feels necessary. The roads around Ascot, Windsor and Sunninghill thicken from late morning and the last two miles are the slow ones, so we usually suggest leaving London before the middle of the morning. Give us a rough departure window rather than an exact minute for the return. Badges, enclosure admission and hospitality come from the racecourse or your host; we are an independent chauffeur company and supply the car only.

For a couple, a Rolls-Royce Ghost or a Mercedes S-Class is the natural choice, and the Phantom is the car people photograph. Groups of five or six are far better served by a V-Class, where hats travel upright and nobody sits with a coat on their knees. If your party splits across enclosures we will run two vehicles on the same timings, so the return is not a negotiation.