Mobile tyre fitting
in Westcombe Park.

A fitter at your car
in Westcombe Park.

Two sorts of damage turn up in SE3. One arrives off the Rochester Way Relief Road below, where the A2 runs in a cutting and flings grit and broken debris about at speed; the tyre is usually already soft by the time the car climbs back up to the house. The other is pure geometry: a high kerb, a narrow street, a nearside alloy scraped while reversing into a gap. Quote the numbers moulded into the sidewall on the call, so the van carries a tyre that actually fits.

Drives, bays and car parks.

Off street space is the pick of it, and where a house has it the car stays put. A controlled bay works too, provided it sits square in the bay with enough width on the offside to kneel. For anyone with neither, Blackheath Grove and the Old Dover Road car park are both public and both have the room, which suits a car still safe to drive that far. What is no use: a spot half on the pavement on a slope, and anywhere on the relief road itself.

Calls come from the terraces climbing away from Westcombe Park station, from the roads either side of Kidbrooke Park Road, and from the Blackheath Village end where Royal Parade and Tranquil Vale meet the heath. Parking here is a mixture: controlled bays near the station and the village, unrestricted stretches further up towards Shooters Hill Road, and a fair few houses with off street space of their own. The fitter needs the street name and the bay it is standing in, permit or otherwise, because that decides how much room there is to swing a jack. Nobody works at the kerb of the A2 or on the A102 slip down to the Blackwall Tunnel approach. ULEZ covers this borough around the clock, but a wheel coming off a stationary car attracts no charge.