The Super Valet across Hertfordshire

Town by town

What the Super Valet puts right in each part of the county

Hitchin, Letchworth and Baldock

The north of the county parks under the oldest trees. Letchworth's were planted from 1903 and Hitchin's market town streets have had theirs longer; a car here goes into autumn with a summer of sap on the paint and a boot full of Chiltern chalk. The wax half of the Super Valet keeps next summer's sap from bonding; the shampoo half lifts the chalk out of the carpet rather than grinding it in.

Welwyn Garden City and Hatfield

The second garden city has the shadiest streets in Hertfordshire and the dampest cabins to go with them, and Hatfield's cars do the A1(M) and the university term. The interior restoration is the half that matters here: seats and carpets shampooed and extracted, the leather fed, the plastics dressed back to matt, the inside glass finished for the winter sun on the motorway.

Hertford and Ware

River towns. The Lea keeps cars damp all winter, and the salt the county lays on the A10 and the A414 walks into the cabin on wet shoes. The autumn Super Valet goes in first, so the paint carries a wax into the salt season; the spring one takes the winter's tide marks out of the carpets before they set.

St Albans and Harpenden

The county's newest cars and its most committed commuters. A car that does the Thameslink run from Harpenden or the M1 from St Albans every day collects motorway film outside and a working week inside, and a Super Valet in April and September, with a Deluxe between, keeps a lease car looking new to the end and gives you dated photographs to prove it.

Knebworth and the villages

Family country. Datchworth, Codicote, Whitwell and Kimpton are lanes, horses, dogs and muddy boots, and the car that does it all looks like it by the end of a season. The Super Valet after the muddiest months is the reset; the Deep Clean is the first booking for a car that has gone a year without any care at all.

Across the county

Two dates a year, set by the gritters

Hertfordshire's winter service launched on 1 October with crews on standby around the clock until the end of April, and that sets the Super Valet's calendar. Book the first for the first dry fortnight after the gritters stop, when the wax goes onto paint that has just lost its salt and the carpets lose their tide marks before they set; book the second in September, before the clocks go back, while a half day still fits inside the daylight. After the change, the 10am window is the one to take, and the washer does the outside while the light is good.

Postcode into the booking page, the Super Valet, and the page shows the two slot windows for the days a Network washer is near you. Someone unlocks the car at the start, the washer brings water and power and works through the outside, the wax and then the inside, and the before and after photographs arrive when it is done. Between the two Super Valets, a Deluxe Inside & Out every four to six weeks keeps the car where it was left.

The cars that book it across Hertfordshire

• A Letchworth family car under the limes: September first, for the wax before the sap and the salt.
• A Hatfield commuter at the end of term: the interior half is the point; April and September.
• A Hertford car that fogs up every morning: Super Valet in April with the damp lifted out of the carpets.
• A Harpenden lease car with a year to go: twice a year, with the photographs kept for the hand back.
• A village estate car after the muddiest months: the Super Valet, or the Deep Clean if it has been a year.
• A car going on sale in St Albans: the Super Valet the week before the photographs.

More on this: the Super Valet in Stevenage and the deep clean explained.