through town or double the milage on motorway?

but who would want to live near professional northerners with your sort of attitude to people just a few miles away down a motorway?

your own local knowledge will be best in getting you onto reasonably fast roads as quickly as possible from Finchley. The Vauxhall bridge area would be lovely on a Saturday morning :-(

You obviously don't use it much at weekends then....

The bit from the M1 junction to the M3 junction often crawls on a Sunday evening.

Chris

That's the quickest route at most times of the day.

It pretty much blindly does as it's told.

You must have a different definition of pretty brisk to me ;)..

I know that part of London well, at least that part north of the Thames. You are lucky: driving North South is not as bad as going East West through Marble Arch.

Now, let's look at the arithmetic: Through town, from Finchley Central to Edenbridge is------A miles; fuel consumption is--------------------------B mpg; petrol used is--------------------------(A/B) gallon. Via motorway, as you pointed out,--------------(67.5/35.2)A miles;* motorway fuel consumption is better, (36/30)B mpg;** petrol used is (67.5/35.2)A/(36/30)B gallon, or----1.6(A/B) gallon.

So, the M25 route uses 60% more petrol***. But then....when you arrive at Edenbridge, you don't have a developing headache!

• formatting link
  (Via motorway, 67.5 miles)
  formatting link
  (Through town, 35.2 miles)** I couldn't find a 1.3L 1995 petrol, so extrapolating from the highwayand city consumption on here:
  formatting link
  36 and 30 mpgrespectively.

The Reid proclaimed to uk.rec.cars.maintenance ...

And people sometimes forget that sometimes people arent just driving for laziness - many of us have too much to carry on public transport, dont particularly like smelly, cramped, uncomfortable travel and don't like getting ill all the time.

Nope, but a quick glance at London Connections + London/SE railway maps does reveal 2 stations in Edenbridge - Edenbridge and Edenbridge Town - both with links to Victoria and London Bridge. You could either get a direct tube to London Bridge, or get one heading towards Bank and change for the Victoria line at Euston (nice + easy cross-platform interchange) to get down to Victoria pretty quickly.

However, I say this with lack of knowledge on the following matters:

a) the reliability/frequency/speed of mainline services to either Edenbridge station at the weekends (taking into account last services on a Sunday as well....) b) the reliability of the Northern Line c) the OP's situation, need to carry luggage d) the OP's exact destination the other end (relative to a station), and if someone has a car the other end to collect them.

But, all things considered, going by train would certainly be something I'd at least consider if I was doing that journey regularly, as it is potentially a pig of a drive whichever way you'd go.

I'm sure your motoring association pamphlet style advice is invaluable. How many people would be likely to be wanting to car share between Finchley Central and Edenbridge of a weekend, do you think?

My main issue with that would be the queues along the shit section of the A406 (from Bounds Green Road to Clockhouse junction) and the queues getting off at Redbridge for the A12 - I've always found it quicker to stay on all the way to the A13 since they've improved it.

Hmm, the latter, definitely. Sat-nav and route-planners in general leave huge amounts to be desired in terms of planning around real-world traffic conditions.