Three roads run this coast. One of them will not take a van.

The coast, and where a car can wait

Not what is inside these places, but what each one does to a car. Which entrance, which side street, and which of them empties all at once.

Greenwich Avenue

Greenwich · the hill down to the station

A steep street with angled parking on both sides and people crossing it the whole length, which leaves nowhere for a car to hold. We take a side street off it, such as Elm, Lewis or Havemeyer, or the bottom of the hill by the station.

The eastern villages

Cos Cob, Riverside, Old Greenwich

Three small New Haven Line stations a few minutes apart, each on a short approach road with a car park that is full by eight. Name the station rather than the town and the chauffeur is at the right one instead of the famous one.

Stamford Transportation Center

Stamford · South State Street

The busiest station in the state, with Amtrak calling as well as Metro-North, which is why this kerb has suitcases on it rather than briefcases. Long-running building work keeps moving where a car may stand, so we confirm the side on the day rather than the week before.

Downtown Stamford

Tresser and Washington Boulevards

Towers whose front doors are on one-way streets with no standing, and several of them emptying inside the same twenty minutes at six. A named cross street beats a building number here every time.

Harbor Point

Stamford · south of the tracks

Waterfront blocks on a peninsula reached under the railway, with effectively one way in and the same way out. An event down there leaves through a single junction, so we agree the meeting point before you go in.

New Canaan

Elm Street, and the branch line

Inland and nowhere near I-95, so the road is the Merritt, which decides the vehicle before anything else does. The branch from Stamford thins out at weekends, and that is usually when the car is booked instead of the train.

Darien

Route 1 through the centre

The Post Road runs straight through the middle with a set of lights at every junction, and the two stations sit either side of it. A drop at Noroton Heights and a drop at Darien are not the same drop, and ten minutes apart at the wrong hour.

Rowayton and South Norwalk

Norwalk · the water and the SoNo streets

Rowayton is narrow lanes with almost nowhere to turn anything large, so a van is met at the top rather than at the door. In SoNo the restaurants empty onto the same street at once. A pickup a block off it moves, one on it does not.

Westport and the Saugatuck bridge

Westport · Railroad Place, Saugatuck

The station is not in the town centre; it is across the river in Saugatuck, beside an old swing bridge that is narrow and opens for boats. A car caught on the wrong side of it is simply stopped, so we allow for that instead of promising around it.

Fairfield

The Post Road and two campuses

Two universities in one town, which puts the whole Post Road at a standstill on move-in and graduation weekends. Three stations as well: Fairfield, Fairfield Metro and Southport, so tell us which platform rather than which town.