Mobile tyre fitting
in Knebworth.

A fitter at your car
in Knebworth.

A flat in Knebworth tends to show itself at one of two moments. Early on, the car on the drive is sitting low just as the train or the school run beckons. Later, a tyre starts to thump on the way home along the B197, where London Road becomes Stevenage Road. Neither situation needs the car taken anywhere. Text over the address plus those sidewall figures, and the fitter leaves north London with a matching tyre loaded, then sets up beside the car wherever it was left.

Drives, bays and car parks.

A private drive is the usual answer in Knebworth, and nothing needs moving off it. A quiet residential road works too, provided the jack goes on level tarmac and the wheel being changed is not facing moving traffic. Around the station, a space with room on both sides beats a tight gap between two commuters' cars. The B197 itself is no place to change a wheel, since it carries the village's through traffic in both directions, and anything that goes wrong on it wants steering into the nearest side road first.

Most calls start in the roads either side of the railway and along London Road through the village centre, then spread out to Woolmer Green, Datchworth and the hamlets such as Pottersheath, Painter's Green and Mardleybury. Old Knebworth is a separate small village, and there a drive or a farm gateway with a firm base is the working spot. Near the station the kerb fills with commuters' cars during the day, and the fitter needs clear space on the traffic side to reach the wheel, so a car wedged between two others might need shuffling along a few lengths. Astonbury Farm and Business Park has room for a van if whoever runs it knows a fitter is expected. North Hertfordshire has no clean-air scheme, so no charge comes into it.