Mobile tyre fitting
in Wallingford.

A fitter at your car
in Wallingford.

Tyre trouble in Wallingford has a geography to it. The Hithercroft end, where the A4130 runs along Nosworthy Way and Bosley Way past the industrial estate, produces the screws and the shredded shoulders. The old streets in the middle of town, laid out long before anything had four wheels, produce the kerbed sidewalls. And Reading Road, the A329, brings in whatever the through traffic has dropped. The size on the sidewall, plus a note of where the car is standing, is all it takes to load the van.

Drives, bays and car parks.

Castle Street Car Park, Cattlemarket Car Park, Thames Street Car Park and Goldsmith's Lane are all public and all within a short roll of the centre, which gives a fitter firm ground and elbow room. Out at Hithercroft, a unit's own parking or yard is better still, provided the site knows somebody is coming in. At home, a driveway or the kerb outside does the job perfectly well. The bridge, its approach and the tightest of the centre lanes are the places to keep away from.

Calls come from three directions. From the town centre streets and the housing behind them, where the roads are narrow and cars sit nose to tail but nothing is permit controlled. From Hithercroft Industrial Estate, which is where the vans and the working vehicles are and where there is proper room to swing a wheel off. And from over the river at Crowmarsh Gifford, Newnham Murren and Mongewell, or south through Winterbrook towards Cholsey. The bridge is the pinch point: narrow, carrying everything, and a car stopped on or near it holds up the whole town, so no wheel comes off there. The centre has public car parks close at hand instead, and those are where a car that can still move ought to go.