Suggestions for car rentals in Edinburgh

[Calgacus]

Jock gives good advice and it might be useful here to tell you a bit about single track roads, which you might well have never encountered before, and the etiquette involved.

Single track roads are only wide enough for one car to travel on them at a time. They are however provided with frequent 'passing places' which are short sections of wider road, resembling lay-bys. They are not however lay-bys, and using them as such could impede the flow of traffic. The roads are usually quiet enough however that stopping to take a photograph or two will not cause any issues.

If you need to let a car behind you overtake, or you meet another car head-on, you should use the nearest passing place. If the passing place is on the left side of the road, simply pull in to it. If however the passing place is on the right side of the road, you should stop opposite it. The basic rule here is keep left!

If you meet someone head-on, it is usual for the car which is closest to a passing place to reverse back to it.

You will also find that when cars pass, it is courtesy that both drivers give a small 'wave' to say "thanks". This wave might be nothing more than the raising of a finger or three from the rim of the steering wheel, but it will be there none the less. Cars passing from behind may give a friendly toot on the horn or a flash of their hazard lights.

Don't be afraid to try driving on these roads, we have a habit of hiding some of the best bits of our scenery along them

[chewse]

Jock gives good advice and it might be useful here to tell you a bit about single track roads, which you might well have never encountered before, and the etiquette involved.

Single track roads are only wide enough for one car to travel on them at a time. They are however provided with frequent 'passing places' which are short sections of wider road, resembling lay-bys. They are not however lay-bys, and using them as such could impede the flow of traffic. The roads are usually quiet enough however that stopping to take a photograph or two will not cause any issues.

If you need to let a car behind you overtake, or you meet another car head-on, you should use the nearest passing place. If the passing place is on the left side of the road, simply pull in to it. If however the passing place is on the right side of the road, you should stop opposite it. The basic rule here is keep left!

If you meet someone head-on, it is usual for the car which is closest to a passing place to reverse back to it.

You will also find that when cars pass, it is courtesy that both drivers give a small 'wave' to say "thanks". This wave might be nothing more than the raising of a finger or three from the rim of the steering wheel, but it will be there none the less. Cars passing from behind may give a friendly toot on the horn or a flash of their hazard lights.

Don't be afraid to try driving on these roads, we have a habit of hiding some of the best bits of our scenery along them

Just so I'm clear, on a narrow road we are to pull over to the far left to let traffic behind us to pass on the right. And if the wider part of the road in on the right, we are pull to the far right, stop, and let traffic behind us pass on the left. If we encounter a car heading towards us on a narrow road, one of us stops and and back up until a wider part of the road is reached so that the other car can pass.

Did I get it right? Sorry, CORRECT rather than right?

[Calgacus]

Just so I'm clear, on a narrow road we are to pull over to the far left to let traffic behind us to pass on the right. And if the wider part of the road in on the right, we are pull to the far right, stop, and let traffic behind us pass on the left. If we encounter a car heading towards us on a narrow road, one of us stops and and back up until a wider part of the road is reached so that the other car can pass.

Did I get it right? Sorry, CORRECT rather than right?

Not quite. If the widest part of the road is on the right, don't pull in to it, stop on the left opposite it. The other car will pull into the wide part to pass you.

[chewse]

Not quite. If the widest part of the road is on the right, don't pull in to it, stop on the left opposite it. The other car will pull into the wide part to pass you.

Got it! Thanks......

[Pleater]

Although I am in the far South, and so situations might be different, using the Sat Nav has become second nature - I have one with the voice of Yoda and I have become quite fond of the little guy.

When visiting York - where I was born, I used the Sat Nav for finding parking, food, petrol and relatives - and the way back to the car. It was far more up to date with the one way system than I was. It also coped with the switch from driving to walking and did not send me around the one way system on foot.

Just put in the post code, select the road and the number of the building and you should be able to concentrate more on the traffic than finding your way.

Anne the Pleater :ootd:

[gwynng]

If you have a Garmin, go on Amazon and get the UK map chip. It saved our butts more than once on a 3 week driving trip in the UK. If you have the post code for your destination even better. It usually gave PERFECT directions to the door. Even gets you through those pesky roundabouts. Also, don't get the car until you leave Edinburgh. We found a parking place and left the car there for 4+ days. Had the good fortune of one of the members of our party is disabled so could use his handicapped placard (AKA blue badge in the UK). If we'd not had that, parking in Edinburgh would have been a nightmare akin to parking in San Francisco or Manhattan.

Have a ripping good time!

[Ron Abbott]

I'm originally from Edinburgh but have lived overseas for the past 26 years.

Over the years, I found that www.payonarrival.com was one of the cheapest and most reliable car rental companies in the UK, however the company has since been taken over (or subsumed in some sort of manner) by Worldwide Reservations.

The website is at :-

http://www.wwideres.co.uk/

I used them last year and had no problems whatseover....in fact quite the opposite. They use National/Budget and I;m not sure whether it's still the case but it included unlimited mileage and a second driver at no extra cost. Furthermore you didn't have to pay any sort of deposit. It really was 'pay on arrival.'

[Alan H]

I am learning something very difficult, here.

1. ) our automobile insurance here in the USA is with USAA. I've been with them for 33 years and love the company. However, they offer NO insurance outside of North American and Puerto Rico. None of our policy is applicable to Scotland. For all of you who are adamant about rejecting insurance offers from the rental company, are you POSITIVIE that your automobile insurance covers you when you're in Europe?

2.) On the strength of X Markers recommendations, I went with Enterprise. However, I've discovered that Enterprise does not sell supplemental liability insurance. I can purchase their damage coverage, but there is no personal liability coverage beyond the standard, stock...and very minimal coverage that's included with the rental price.

So I checked with Hertz. Come to find out that their supplemental liability coverage is better, but slightly less than useful. For example, should there be an accident and someone dies, the coverage is $60,000. That's right, sixty thousand dollars, with a $100,000 "per accident" maximum. My policy with AAA is for $300,000 per person, and $500,000 "per accident" maximum.

I think I'm going to have to look into third party insurance.

[sydnie7]

Check with your credit card company, too. They may only have damage ins but doesn't hurt to ask.

[imrichmond]

Back in the late 1970s, my wife and I drove around Ireland for two weeks. Some of the roads were so narrow that I was often scraping the passenger side of the rental car on fence posts, stone markers and whatever else happened to be close to the road any time I met an oncoming vehicle. To top it all off, we stopped in one town towards the end of our trip and parked on a street with cars parked along both sides, leaving just slightly more than a single lane in between. We went into a shop and, as we were coming out, I saw a lady driving a Volvo station wagon try to squeeze between our rental car and an oncoming vehicle. The passenger side of our car was caved in and the car came to rest with two wheels on the sidewalk. That car was a wreck when I returned it at the airport in Dublin. I was embarrassed to turn it in. I was certainly glad I had taken the collision insurance.

A few years later, in 1983, along with my parents, we rented a car in Glasgow. By the time we got to Edinburgh the next day, the car was making a noise rather like a circular saw going through metal. I parked the car in the B & B's car park and the next morning called the rental company, who sent out AA mechanics. In the meantime, the car had acquired a large dent in the driver-side door over night. I never did discover how that happened. Anyway, it turned out that the fan had broken loose from its bracket and was grinding its way through the radiator. The mechanics condemned the car and we had to get another. The only car still available at the rental agency in Edinburgh was a rather sporty Triumph sedan. Great fun to drive, but short on luggage space for a group of 4 people. Back at the B & B we took an hour or so to figure out that our luggage had to be placed in the trunk in a specific configuration and loaded in a specific order or else it would not all fit. As it was, you would have been hard pressed to slip a sgian dubh blade between any of the suitcases. The rest of the trip passed without mishap (except for when I took a wrong turn when looking for the piping museum on Skye and we ended up in a farmer's field with a herd of cows--and we hadn't visited a single distillery that day, honest!).