Bristol Airport car hire

Flying in to Bristol from Porto at the end of December for a week to visit family in Somerset, planning on hiring a car again but this time with granddaughter (2yo) need to have a child seat …. extra £150!!

That aside whoever planned (?) Bristol Airport connectivity  ……. no words! No rail, roads to South are horrendous, narrow lanes (on the way back last time, I even had to stop and wait for cattle wandering up the road!), awful signage and a few dodgy junctions. I thought Stanstead wasn’t great (comparing it with Porto) but Bristol is in another league, seems fine if you want to go to Bristol and nowhere else?

Cattle in the road? you’re lucky it wasn’t a Swan!

2/10

narrow lanes

Its on an A road, unless you got lost? It does have terrible connectivity though,  we usually pay the £100 or so for on site parking as its much easier than public transport.

Done the trip twice using gps, twice across country (via Burrington Coombe and Shepton Mallet), once at night and once in daylight, (not sure which was worse). A couple of times I went down to the M5 and then to Yeovil but the A38 to M5 section is still pretty rural with ever changing speed restrictions and in total quite a bit more distance.

I live 106km north from Porto Airport it will almost always take me 1hr 15min to drive there (any time of day), our trip from Bristol Airport to Yeovil is 67km and 1hr 22min.

I flew to bristol once, it cost me 200 quid compared to the usual 30 quid or so to manchester. I hope car hire isnt priced the same, if i had to go back i d fly somewhere else and use public transport or hire from a local indie.

There’s a frequent bus connection to central Bristol.

https://flyer.bristolairport.co.uk/

For car hire, just avoid the company which has a tie in with easyJet – europcar – as the queue at the desk can be long.

The car hire isn’t on site so remember to factor in the extra faff factor/time of an infrequent shuttle bus.

The car hire has a shuttle and is a lot less faff than anything in Bristol, so as a bit of a captive audience I guess it can be a bit more expensive. There is a bus to Bristol or Bath or coaches to Exeter, Plymouth. To be fair for a place not on the rail system it’s connectivity isn’t horrendous and there’s going to be a shedload of roadworks trying to improve the A roads over the next few years.

If you are choosing narrow lanes instead of the A roads, that’s not the airport’s fault. Burrington Combe is nice in daylight. Your main issue is Yeovil is in the middle of nowhere and has shit connectivity north and south. The problem is Somerset (tongue in cheek, winky smiley etc)

I say this as I work in Bridgwater, commuted from south Bristol for about a year (the A38 is perfectly fine as long as you pay attention to read the speed limits), my boss commutes from the independent people’s republic of Yeovil to Bridgwater and Blandford Forum and both journeys are crap.

You could try the Chew road to the A37 but that’s got a few tight spots as well.

I used to live in Suffolk so maybe a bit spoilt for straighter roads and Stanstead being next to M11. As said connectivity from terminal to car hire (silver parking) is good but for getting away from the airport the choices are limited. From Porto there are links by bus and coach in all directions and regularly. From Ponte de Lima (20min from me) a coach to the airport was €7.20 (it varies but max is €14.00), at least three main companies (Rede Express, Flixbus and Get Bus) run to and from airport.

I get the lanes if Google decides it wants to take me to the M5 via Portishead, just don’t. A38 south and you’ll be fine till you hit the M5 at J22. If North then aim for Brunel Way and the A4 to J18. Yeovil looks like an arse but surely if you skirt the Medips on the A371 rather than driving over them it’s better?

Agree it’s an absolute arse to get to and the shuttle never seems to run at the advertised frequency later at night. If Birmingham ran a better schedule it would be there every time.

Yeovil looks like an arse

It’s the nearest largish town to me and I wholeheartedly concur.

Yes, the Google route is best avoided other than on sunny dry days, as I did last month and as for the traffic system in Yeovil is a whole ‘nother story! ? ? (I lived around there till 2002) and ‘arse’ is putting it mildly.

this time with granddaughter (2yo) need to have a child seat …. extra £150!!

You can take your own as luggage free of charge. You need to check your airline but every budget flight I’ve ever done from UK to Europe (even Ryanair) permits it as checked in luggage.

Plus the one time I did rent the quality and cleanliness of child seats was grim…

Thanks Scuttler, I’ll have a look at that.

To be fair, we did rent one last year (£120 for the week then) and it was clean and in almost new condition, may have just been lucky.