What time to leave monday morning?

[Wm.!]

What time do we have to leave on monday morning to be sure there'll be no traffic jams on the way to London Luton airport.? Also considering we 're driving two campers and it's an appr. 3 hour drive.

[hazey_jane]

Leave by 7 at the absolute latest and you'll be fine.

[Laura_Babs]

We live in Surrey and it usually takes us 2.5 to get home, 3 very tops. That is taking into account the festival traffic and one quick stop off at a service station. The official advice is always to go on the A303 and I think it will be the same if you are going to/from Luton. We don't do this and last year ended up back before our friends who did chose to go back on the A303. We always go on the M4 instead which is never busy with festival traffic as non of the official directions say to go down the M4! I would say you need to take the same route as us only go round the M25 in the other direction when you hit it.

So basically in a long winded way, I am saying that I would recommend going down the M4 instead of the A303. To be on the safe side, I would leave 2.5 hours to get to the M4/M25 junction and then a further 45 minutes from there. Add on to that an hour for service station stops, I would say that 4.5 hours would be plenty.

So if your flight is at 7, I'm guessing you need to check in by 5 (ish...to be on the safe side), work back from there and I would say leave by midday and you will probably be safe.

But then I would probably be really worried about accidents and missing my flight so I would want to leave earlier. If you leave by 10am you should be safely there I would say, bearing in mind that if there is an accident then you will have an extra two hours to fall back on and also you could give the service stops a miss.

In 2005 I left the site at about 8am and traffic getting out wasn't bad at all. In 2007 I left about 10am and it took about half an hour to get off site and then last year we left at 2pm and it took about half an hour again so have never experienced bad traffic. Of course it often depends what car park you are in and there always seems to be a bad one. I certainly remember in 2005 and 2007 that people had to Q to get out for hours in some car parks.

Hope that helps.

[paulo999]

The main variable isn't route (although I'm sure the route advice above is useful) it's car park queue. In a bad year, it can be 8+ hours for some, during peak time which is about 8am onwards.

So, as above, 7am walking out of a gate and you should be fine.

(In theory, if it's dry, and you are parked in a 'good' field, you can drive straight off, but with non-changeable flight tickets, it's a quite a gamble )

[incident]

I'd say just see what feels right at the time - As you're in a Camper, then you'll be able to see what the conditions on the paths out are like anyway, and that's likely to be by far your biggest potential delay. Obviously the worse the conditions are, the longer it'll take to exit the site. Also have a look around at the exit routes when they open on Sunday afternoon, and try and factor that in.

Once you get on the main roads, it might be slow but at least it should for the most part by consistently moving and the further away from site you get the more traffic will thin out.

My best guess would be start driving about 8am if it's bad, and 11am if it's dry.. Both of those should get you there in more than enough time.

[Sam Crawley]

The main issue with the A303 is getting stuck behind the bl**dy campervans. Oh, you're in one! :angry: Well either should work, and as others say, it's all about whether there's a hold-up getting out of the fields, which is basically weather dependent - take a call Sunday evening as to what time to head off, no need to worry too much about it before then.

[steamrunner]

I concur with the point that if you absolutely positively have to get to somewhere else during the day on Monday that you make sure you've left site before 07:00 approx at the very latest. Otherwise you risk the possibility of being in the car park all day.

(Last year I left my pitch at 05:00am. Was at the car and loaded up by 05:30. By 05:33 I was out and on the main road driving away... home for breakfast, shower, and a lazy day recovering... hee hee :-)

S.

[strudders]

I concur with the point that if you absolutely positively have to get to somewhere else during the day on Monday that you make sure you've left site before 07:00 approx at the very latest. Otherwise you risk the possibility of being in the car park all day.

(Last year I left my pitch at 05:00am. Was at the car and loaded up by 05:30. By 05:33 I was out and on the main road driving away... home for breakfast, shower, and a lazy day recovering... hee hee :-)

S.

[Paul ™]

This year I have to go to Blissfeilds to drop a bod off so I can be a bit leisurely about what time I leave..... Means I can have a beer on Sunday evening as well!

[strudders]

No rush for me either mate

[DaveMac]

Good cos I have the Tuesday booked off so if you dont mind we can have a bit of a lay in Monday to recover!

I have a good feeling about this year..... It WILL be massive!

[Paul ™]

Good cos I have the Tuesday booked off so if you dont mind we can have a bit of a lay in Monday to recover!

[strudders]

Corrected for you.