Renting a car in the UK & Ireland

[emilyj]

Has anyone done this? I am trying to decipher what the rules are for car insurance, and what I am supposed to buy/what they are going to make me buy/what I can get through my credit card (if available), and I'm lost.

I'll rent one car in Scotland for a couple days the UK, and then I'll rent one car in Ireland - the non-UK park - for a week. It looks like Ireland is going to be the more stringent rental.

Any advice?

[Deleted]

Before I bought a car here I rented them occasionally. I had an Australian license and had no problems. It's like renting anywhere, you need to choose whether you want to pay extra to reduce the excess to zero.
In Scotland, be careful of renting from Thrifty in Edinburgh. They tried to charge me for scuffed hub caps and I hadn't parked next to a kerb the whole time. I'm bitter about that.

[Norticprincess]

In Scotland we used National without any problems. DH is an Emerald club member and includes the LDW/CDW in the rate, he normally rents for business. Some of the roads on the way to the more out there abbeys etc are less than one real lane and have pull offs to let on coming traffic pass, whomever is closer gets to pull off, even if it is behind you. We ended up with a few tree scratches, but didn't have to worry about them.

For the manual part, at least on our rentals there was a button on the shifter that you only needed to push to get it in reverse, don't use it every time you try to shift (use only the clutch). We had no problem with the manual, but DH's car at home is a manual.


Our credit card will cover the UK, it excludes non uk Ireland from the rental insurance. I think DrLoretta had a write up about their trip a few years back. She is sometimes on MM and the Adoption boards.