The trees in the Lakes grow closer to the road than they do down South! and I ended up scraping the whole of the side of my car (2005 Ford Focus, metallic silver) with a tree last week. Not the trunk, the whippy branches
It's not awful, but I want to give it a bit of a polish to try and get the scratches out. What polish would STW recommend?
Cheers

3m perfect it 3 compound followed by a good wax/glaze

Been told farecla

Try a duster with a bit of WD40 on it. Works a treat on that type of scratch.

Wash the paint straight away afterwards though.

I too have several car length scratchs after a weekend in the lakes 🙂 , so keep em coming – especially the 'what you might have around the house' variety.

T-cut and many hours of your life.

Something like Autoglym super resin polish will help by filling them.

Other than that find someone with a proper polishing machine,Eg UDM or a Meguiars g220 and some Menzerna power gloss cutting compound.

I have 2 polishers i m about to put on ebay if you are interested

Pay a car valeter £50 to 'mop' the car for you? Mopping is a powered circular polisher that is far faster than hand polishing, but if you try one yourself you may go through the paint with it.

polishing out scratches by hand is a pain in the arse, and you'll end up buying £20 to £30 worth of stuff to do it properly. £20 extra to get a pro to do it is a good idea.

and that should get the whole car done, so the paintwork should look like new all over unless there are big chips out of it

Modern car paints generally consist of a coloured base coat and then a clear coat over the top. If it's just a scratch through the clear coat (i.e. you can't see bare metal), then Meguiar's 2.0 Scratch-X. Works really well and is very hard for you to get wrong. Did a lot of this last year with a car I had – branch scratches the length of car. Takes an age without a random orbital polisher but does amazing things. Spend the money and get the little foamy pads, too, not just a J-cloth.

Avoid T-Cut if possible, clean the area thoroughly (gently off course of all dust) then use two layers of gentle polish/wax.