Mobile tyre fitting
in Locksbottom.

A fitter at your car
in Locksbottom.

A hospital changes the pattern of tyre calls in a place. People arrive at odd hours, park, come back out to a flat and have nowhere sensible to take it. The A21 runs past on Farnborough Way and Hastings Road, throwing up whatever has been dropped, and the B2158 High Street carries its own traffic, so Locksbottom sees a steady flow of punctures and split sidewalls. Nothing needs driving anywhere: the tyre and the fitting gear travel to wherever it sits.

Drives, bays and car parks.

A home drive is first choice and Locksbottom has plenty of them. Failing that, a residential turning off the High Street, with the car tucked tight to the kerb and the job done from the footway side. Glebe Farm Business Park has yards that suit a van when the operator is content. The hospital car parks need permission, being managed ground. The A21 in either direction is not somewhere a wheel comes off, whatever the hour.

The residential calls come from the streets between Crofton Road and the High Street, from Crofton itself and from Farnborough and Southborough on either side. The hospital is the other source. Its parking is laid out for patients, visitors, ambulances and blue badge holders, all of it managed, so a fitter using one of those bays needs the hospital to agree to it first; a residential street just outside is often the easier answer. Nothing happens on the A21 at Farnborough Way, which is dual carriageway, nor at the kerb of Crofton Road. The ULEZ covers BR6 exactly as it covers inner London, but a car that stays parked while its wheel is off is not charged for anything.