This
week I had an encounter with a traffic warden who told me that I should have
bought a ticket to put on my car in the Sandbanks car park. Payment is required
24 hours a day. It was fortunate that Jade and I had left the beach and arrived
back at the car in time to see him looking at it. He said he would let me off
the £35 penalty. He also said that if I arrived as usual at 10 to 8 a £1.50
ticket would only take me up to 07:59 instead of giving the usual hour. There’s
something wrong there and I might write to the council about that. I didn’t
blame the warden who was very chatty and trying to be helpful. Apparently I can
buy a £78 ticket that will give me free parking at any beach car park for a
year. I could have told him that would be more than 50% of a week’s state pension,
and I have rather more pressing things to spend it on, but I didn’t.
Since
that morning I haven’t driven into the car park. We’ve walked elsewhere. But
Jade loves to run on the beach, so this morning I parked outside the row of
shops across the road from the car park. You can have up to 20 minutes there.
Then we strode quickly across the car park for a fairly brief visit to the
beach and got back with seconds to spare.
On
the way back as usual I took the scenic route harbourside and along the quay.
We had a good view of the Brittany Ferries Barfleur on her way out of
the harbour to sail to France. In this photo, which I found at Wikimedia Commons, it looks as though she is coming the opposite way towards the port in Poole Harbour.
Pic by Chris Allen
I also found this pic of the Condor Ferries Catamaran sitting in port, just as we see it every morning.
pic by Collin Foot
Original Articles. Constant-Content.
6 comments:
Heavens, what a wonderful traffic warden! the ones where we live, seem to take a real pleasure in nailing your head to the ground - they're really tough and will give you a ticket for being an inch outside the white line of the parking bay, etc.
I was rather surprised myself, Jenny. Perhaps it was because I prefaced my question abut tickets with a "Good morning".
Have I understood that right? £1.50 for 9 minutes?! And I thought the charges around here were expensive!
That's right Linda. It's normally £1.50 for an hour in summer, but apparently everything resets at 8 am.
You are lucky to avoid that ticket! Goofy system that resets itself like that.
Cheers, Joan. My new system of parking at the shops gives us 20 minutes plus however much time before 8 that I get there. It's working well so far.
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