UKH

Hiya,

Considering buying a small car but I live in London though! If I do get one it will be ULEZ compliant and I'm over 25. Lets say I take the car out to drive 250mi for 25 weekends of a year. Half of it with friends to share fuel cost.

I'm just wondering if it's worth it? Are there any weekend warriors out there in London that has a car that could share their experience?

Thanks in advance!

My car cost about £800 off of eBay it's a small petrol 2003 fiesta, I expect I'll get 4 years out it after which it'll probably die. It needs about £250 a year spent on it to get it through mot,  MOT which is £50. £50 of oil a year. Tax is £300 and for you insurance maybe £600 a year. Petrol maybe £50 a trip, half so £25 for you, 25 times a year , so £625. Breakdown cover of £200. Add it all up is a out £2.3k a year. If it's only for climbing then £2.3k / 25 means about £100 per trip rounded up a bit for sundry expenses like tyres, service, parking, etc.

If you don't get out 25 times a year then the cost per trip will go up.

This is with a bad car, and assuming it doesn't break down and need major work, a good car could end up cheaper or more expensive depending on your luck.

I used to do this in zone 3, in the 90s so pre congestion charges. I was primarily a whitewater kayaker so really needed a car to move boats, but I also climbed regularly at mile end and outside. Honestly it's so much hassle doing outdoor stuff in London unless you're Mick Fowler the best you can hope for is to eventually move to within an hours drive of your chosen sports. It was nice and handy getting to the tunnel for our annual alps trip though. 

The maths above looks fairly accurate. Had a similar age Focus for years and it cost about 1-2 grand a year to run, excluding petrol. Got used a lot while I was in London. But not for many weekends out the city as driving north from New Cross on a Friday afternoon was depressing. 

If you will exclusively use it for weekends away, looking into rentals may be better. At Enterprise Soho, Friday evening till Monday morning next week you'll get a Corsa, Focus, or Astra for about £80 + whatever you spend on petrol. By the maths above, 30 trips a year will roughly be the break even point. Car share schemes may work out better. 

I'm guessing you're considering the other option of renting a vehicle for the weekends.

This means no running costs and no worries if there is a break down. You can also rent a van and with an airbed have a cheep and very basic camper. Costs can then be spilt equally between friends of the hire and fuel

After I moved to London, when my car got stolen I didn't bother replacing it for a good few years, until I got into climbing.

I tried hiring cars for weekends for a while, but it was hassle; co-ordinating the weekend around pick up and drop off times was a pain. It's fine for the odd trip, but not if you're going most weekends.

Having the car loaded and waiting when you get home/clock off on Friday afternoon makes life a lot easier; you can get as far as Pembroke or Fontainebleau by a reasonable hour to get a good kip before the weekend. 

Sleeping in cars and tents does get cold, so eventually I got a van instead.

Location is important for weekend warrioring in London too. You either want to be in West London or North London, depending on your favourite rock type, and close to the motorway. I found Shepherds Bush pretty handy for the M4 and A40.

I lived in London a long time... depending on how keen you are 25 trips a year might or might not happen.  I can see the appeal of cheap rentals, especially as you don't need to sort out maintenance, and parking in the week, but returning them late on a Sunday night is a. p.i.t.a.

I'd agree that location is important, and that west or north are best though I much preferred living on the west side

A car is the most useful piece of climbing equipment you will ever buy no matter where you live, but especially if you live somewhere where public transport to crags is virtually a non starter.

It will massively expand the number of times you are able to get out and the choice of venues you can get to. It transformed my climbing experience when I first got a car and I lived in Manchester, living in London makes it even more useful.

Yeah I live in London and have a car, nothing fancy just a used Skoda Octavia Estate (natch). Pretty much a must for us as we have a family and dog, so it’s great for getting out with them, getting the shopping in etc (big retail park close by).

Along with proper weekend trips, it’s also useful for trips to The Castle or The Reach. Public transport to both would take over an hour, with the motor it’s less than half.

Word of warning, insurance costs in London can be high - I’m well over 25, never had an accident and don’t use ours for work and it’s still over a grand just for 3rd party.

My tax, insurance and MOT all land on the same month. I don't get much change out of a grand for that. 

Fuel very expensive at the moment.

Saying that, I don't think I would cope without one. I don't use it for work so it is purely for climbing and carrying heavy stuff for the house renovation. 

The other thing to think about is replacement costs. Once you have a car you'll want to be factoring that in and squirreling away money each month because it will eventually come to the end of its life and a car is a big expense to drop in one go (I certainly couldn't afford one if mine blew up today). And once you've had a car, it's a lot more difficult not to.

Thanks everyone for the responses!

I think in the end of the day it's weighing up whether I want to go for more climbing trips and paying up owning a car. And for me, climbing trips wins out any day!

I'm hoping to get a honda jazz as the seats drop down to let me camp inside it comfortably. It's reliable and complies to ULEZ too.

My girlfriend has a Jazz, 1.2 petrol lacks a bit of poke but if you have a lighter foot than I do you can get pretty sweet MPG out of it.

Absolutely cavernous boot for such a small car (got 5 peoples worth of kit that we were taking to Kaly in the boot on an airport run) and the square ends and short bonnet mean it's pretty easy to park which I imagine is handy in London as well.

Did you ask her permission to tell us that?

If you’re doing a lot of motorway miles then you want a decent car not a little tin can. Just about anything with a petrol engine will be ULEZ compliant so it’s not a massive factor. What you really want to share a car for is not the petrol cost so much as the actual driving itself, especially if you have to do anything vaguely demanding on Monday. To me doing a weekend every month (actually more as Nov - Feb is grotty even in the south of England) where you’re on your own sounds too tiring to be sustainable. 
 

I live in west London and that’s excellent for getting out - you want to be able to get onto the motorway as quickly as possible. You can have a satisfying climbing life whilst living in London but it’s really only worth it if you’re also taking advantage of the generally superior work opportunities that the city offers. 

I live in East London. An absolute arse to get to Portland after work on a Friday evening…

Not bad for a day trip down to Harrison’s though, but SS doesn’t quite have the same appeal for me, lovely as Harrison’s is!

Whereas I can be on the M3 in half an hour and on the M1 in less than 20 minutes, but Harrison’s? It’s a full hour and a half, just not worth it for me. I also tend to prefer sleeping in my own bed and leaving early in the morning. 

Yeah with you on that. Getting over/round/through London is such a battle it really helps to be on the right side of town!

Back when I hung out at Mile End wall (20 years ago!), the thinking in the pub on a Wednesday evening was that London was the best place in the UK to be climber, because if you wanted to climb you _had_ to travel, and thus you would go all over the country - the Peak, Wales (North and South), the Wye Valley, the south coast, and then occasionally further away to Cornwall and the Lakes and Yorkshire and Scotland. By contrast, if you lived in Sheffield you just climbed in the Peak all year - ergo, we were better off in London. At least, that's what we told ourselves!

To your question, for a climber in London, a car is a no-brainer. I had a Passat estate which I bought for a grand from some bloke in High Wycombe. It was a cracking crag car, and had the benefit of being quite comfortable to sleep in. I drove all around the country in it, and it even took us to our new home in Spain, after which the gearbox gave up, and it now rests sunbathing in a scrapheap somewhere near the Med. Ah well. It had a good life! 

edit: you will learn to hate the M1 on a Sunday night though.

Now the southern section of the M1 has variable speed limits it’s a vastly better experience compared to before.

That was how I felt too, at least until I started to think more about the carbon footprint. When I quit London to travel in a van full time for a few years, my mileage dropped to about a third of what it had been weekend warrioring.

So cheap and easy to fly all over Europe on a Friday evening too - knew people with weekend projects in places like Ceuse and El Chorro.

That's what I thought till I moved somewhere with decent climbing (no, not Harrison's) within half an hours drive