Driving to Cornwall on Saturday

[beresh]

A German friend's flying into Luton on Saturday 1pm with her 3 kids, youngest is 5. She saw on google maps it is 5 and half hours to St Ives. I thought it took hours to get to Cornwall in the summer, but I've been out of the uk for years. She has already paid for a mobile home in St Ives for Saturday night so she doesn't want to stopover, but I'm imagining nightmare jam scenarios - should I strongly encourage her to stop off overnight eg near Bristol? Any tips for last minute rooms if it all goes wrong? Thanks for any help!

We're just back from cornwall and they have finally made the last bit of the A30 two lanes all the way. That'll help.

Like others have said, the A30 roadworks at Temple have finished now so the road should be far faster than it has been for the last two or so years since they began.

Can she get a flight to Exeter and then drive rest of the way? Would that be possible?

It will be a nightmare scenario for her, trust me but you live and learn. Going to the South West, especially so far down, is a bloody nightmare and seemingly endless. She will get there in the dark. That's for sure.

All she will think about thereafter is the crap journey back.

She really should have flown to Bristol and then travelled down (probably 3 hours journey).

Can she get a connecting flight to either Bristol or Exeter?

DSS and DGCs live in Looe. Last Bank Hooiday weekend it took us 7 hours from Surrey to Looe and best part of 9 hours back - for a journey that usually takes no more than 4.5-5 hours. Combination of holiday traffic, accident on M5 and roadworks meant A303 was stop start all the way.

And, for those reasons alone, I've declared we're not going down to Cornwall till after the school summer holidays are over and done with!!

We went down at half term and had a pretty straight run from Suffolk (M4,M5). But we left at 3am. We were down in Okehampton for breakfast. Still took a good 7-8 hours to get to our final destination.

Everywhere we want to visit seems to be the opposite end of the country to us . Off to Pembrokeshire next

Hope they had a reasonable journey.

We spent most of the weekend in various parts of the South West and were amazed (and relieved) by how little traffic there seemed to be on M5/A30.