Mobile tyre fitting
in Shirley.

A fitter at your car
in Shirley.

Out here the tyre is nearly always found at home rather than on the road. Houses along Wickham Road and the avenues behind it have their own drives, so a slow puncture picked up on the A215 Shirley Road or the A232 shows itself as a soft tyre in the morning. That is the easiest kind of job to do properly: the car has not been driven on the flat, the rim is undamaged, and the tyre can be taken off and looked at before anything is decided.

Drives, bays and car parks.

The drive is the working surface in Shirley and it is the right one: room for the van at the kerb, the car on its own ground, nobody obstructed. A hardstanding beside the house does the job too if the slope is gentle. Where a house has no off-street space, a kerbside spot on a residential avenue does the job, provided the car is clear of a bend. Supermarket car parks nearby are private property, so ask at the desk first. The A232 carriageway is out of the question.

Shirley is a name that turns up in several counties; this is the Croydon one, CR0, out beyond Addiscombe towards West Wickham. Calls come from the housing off Wickham Road, from Monks Orchard, from the roads climbing towards Gravel Hill and Coombe Lane, and from Upper Elmers End and Eden Park. Almost every address has off-street parking, which removes most of the difficulties: no permit bay to worry about, no red route, just a drive and room to swing the wheel off. Where it gets awkward is a steeply sloped drive, which needs the car moved onto the flat part or onto the road outside. The A232 itself carries too much traffic to stand beside a jacked car. ULEZ covers CR0 in full, and standing still costs nothing.