London to Southampton by Chauffeur

Cruise days are unforgiving. Check-in windows are fixed, the terminals are spread out along the docks, and the volume of luggage involved would defeat most cars before it defeated the passengers. A chauffeur solves the capacity problem and the timing problem simultaneously, and collects you from home rather than leaving you to negotiate a station car park with four suitcases and a hat box.

The M3 leaves London at Sunbury and runs down past Basingstoke and Winchester with very little drama, before the M27 takes you round towards the docks. It is the most predictable of our southern routes outside of holiday Fridays and half term, when the Winchester stretch can slow considerably. Margin is built into sailing days as a matter of course rather than offered as a favour.

Two hours before a fortnight at sea is a pleasant way to begin. There is no early train, no cases hauled along a platform and no anxiety about a connection that has been running late all week. On the return morning, when a ship disembarks several thousand people at once, having a car and a name waiting is the difference between an easy morning and a very long one.

Tell us the ship, the terminal and the check-in window when you book, because Ocean, Mayflower, Horizon and QEII are some distance apart and the wrong one costs an hour you may not have. Return legs are arranged for the disembarkation morning with a flexible window, since passengers are cleared in groups. Extra luggage capacity is always worth mentioning early.