Mobile tyre fitting
in Horn Park.

A fitter at your car
in Horn Park.

Living between two trunk roads has a cost, and tyres pay part of it. Grit and metal get thrown off the A20 at Sidcup Road, kerbs get clipped on the approach to Cliftons Roundabout, and a wheel that takes a knock there can still be holding air when it reaches the estate roads. No jack goes under a car on Westhorne Avenue, so the drill is simple: get onto a residential turning, park properly and ring with the size and the door number.

Drives, bays and car parks.

A front drive is the first choice and usually there for the taking. Otherwise a quiet residential road off Baring Road, with the car pulled in square to the kerb, leaves enough space to lift a wheel clear and lay it flat on the pavement side. Parking areas on the estates each have a managing agent, so a word first avoids an argument. No good at all: any of the trunk roads, or a car left at an awkward angle on a slope where the jack has no level point under the sill.

The calls come from the streets inside the triangle, from the houses along Baring Road and Burnt Ash Hill, and from the Burnt Ash and Burnt Ash Green edges where SE12 gives way to SE9. Most have frontage or a hardstanding at the door, which makes this one of the easier districts in the borough to work in. There is no public car park worth naming here, so the plan is always the property itself or the street outside it. Off limits are the A205 at Westhorne Avenue, the A20 either side of Cliftons Roundabout and the Yorkshire Grey approach, all of them carrying traffic at speed with no room to stand clear. Greenwich is ULEZ territory at every hour, though the charge never touches a car parked up with a wheel off.