Mobile tyre fitting
in Thamesmead.

A fitter at your car
in Thamesmead.

A flat in SE28 is a larger inconvenience than it would be somewhere with a train to fall back on. Abbey Wood and Belvedere stations are both a walk off, so the car has to work. Most of the damage arrives from the dual carriageways ringing the estate, Eastern Way and Central Way, where anything a lorry drops gets pressed into the next set of tyres behind it. The repair, or the new tyre, then happens where the car is parked.

Drives, bays and car parks.

Communal parking courts and resident bays take most of the work, with a drive where a house happens to have one. The fitter wants level ground and a car length clear behind the vehicle, nothing more. Morrisons, Aldi and Sainsbury's parking around the estate gives a car that still drives somewhere open to wait. Grass, service verges and the approaches to the dual carriageways are of no use whatever. Where the car sits in a covered bay under a barrier, say so on the phone and the kit is walked in.

Calls come from the housing off Central Way and Carlyle Road, from blocks near Harrow Manorway, and from businesses on the ISIS Reach Industrial Estate. The estate layout helps: roads are wide, bays are grouped rather than squeezed along a terrace, and there is generally space behind a car for the van. A communal bay is perfectly workable, though it pays to mention a height barrier or a covered parking area. Most addresses read SE28, with SE2 edging in towards Abbey Wood, so the postcode is worth quoting. The through roads are the exception and always will be. Harrow Manorway carries traffic across the estate and Eastern Way runs alongside, and neither offers anywhere a wheel can safely come off.