Bromley man documents his bid to park in every space at his local Sainsbury’s

A man from Bromley has taken to Twitter to detail his project to park in every spot in his local Sainsbury’s car park.

Gareth Wild explained how he has kept a spreadsheet for six years listing every available spot in the car park, marking each off as he stopped for his weekly shop.

The company director explained that “After quite a few years of going each week I started thinking about how many of the different spots I’d parked in and how long it would take to park in them all. My life is one long roller coaster.”

After deciding to track his progress in 2015, he used a satellite image of the car park to create a line drawing layout of each space. He then marked where the trolleys are kept, as well as disabled and motorcycle bays – including one irregularly shaped spot that was too small for a car – as places he could not park, leaving a series of bays he would need to stop in over time.

Wild noted that he has children, so could make use of the family bays, leaving 211 spots to fill. When it came to a timeframe to complete this, he said: “I do a big shop once a week with the occasional additional trip to pick up extras but a conservative figure of 60 visits a year meant that I could in theory have completed my challenge in under four years. Annoyingly a global pandemic slowed me down.”

Wild split the car park into six zones to make tracking his progress easier, marking each stop in a spreadsheet as he went.

After completing it this week, he even put together a handy guide for anyone visiting the Bromley Sainsbury’s, highlighting the ‘God Tier’ and ‘Useful’ bays – as well as those to avoid.

Replying to curious folk on Twitter, Wild revealed that he doesn’t think he ever doubled up on a space, excluding when taking the children and parking in family bays. He also noted that space ‘C1’ is the best spot in the car park, and confirmed he never took any late night trips while the store was empty to grab any difficult spaces.