This hilarious tale of trying to park in every space at the supermarket is magnificent

John Plunkett. Updated April 28th, 2021

This is an absolute treat, a thread by @GarethWild about the time he’s spent trying to use every space of the car park of his local supermarket.

Gareth kept a spreadsheet to help him in his task but really the best person to tell you is the man himself in a thread which went viral – wildly viral – because it’s simply magnificent.

For the last six years I’ve kept a spreadsheet listing every parking spot I’ve used at the local supermarket in a bid to park in them all. This week I completed my Magnum Opus! A thread.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

I live in Bromley and almost always shop at the same Sainsbury’s in the centre of town, here’s a satellite view of their car park. It’s a great car park because you can always get a space and it is laid out really well. Comfortably in my top 5 Bromley car parks. pic.twitter.com/Q1CwLdFqJ3

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

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.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

Rather than walking around the car park counting each space and exposing myself as a lunatic, I used the overhead view to mark out a vector image to make it easier to identify each space.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

The orange boxes dotted around the car park are trolley bays, the black space is an irregular shaped patch which is too small for a car and is therefore void and then there are a number of family, disabled and a motorcycle bays. pic.twitter.com/EWJE2xOCYo

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

I don’t own a motorcycle and I’m not disabled but I do have children so I can legitimately use the family spaces. This means that in the car park there are 211 parking spaces that I needed to conquer.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

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.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

To make it easy for me to identify which space I was parking in I assigned each ‘block’ a letter and within each block, bay numbers which I would make note of on my phone and then add it all to my super awesome spreadsheet. pic.twitter.com/y785tdxhhw

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

The spreadsheet has been given a bit of extra razzle dazzle to spruce it up a bit for presentation but this is it, this is 6 years of monotony. pic.twitter.com/kjCpMXeKo6

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

10.

For anyone keen on taking a pilgrimage to the Bromley Sainsbury’s car park to bathe in my glory I’ve also marked out the best and worst spots to park because I’m such a swell guy. Seriously though, avoid the spaces next to the trolley bays, they’re just terrible. pic.twitter.com/M5gNBRJwja

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

11.

I will now be taking a short AMA for all you car park nuts. Fire away.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

Bravo! And here are just some of the many, many things people were saying about it.

You might not be surprised to learn he’s not alone in doing this sort of thing.

I walked every street in Edinburgh in lockdown. A friend just recommended your thread to me as my next challenge! You Sir are a hero. Lovely work. pic.twitter.com/LRBwl9CTVx

— Gary Wicksted (@chegaw) April 27, 2021

If you drove an Audi you'd have been able to complete this in half the time by parking across two bays

— PW (@waltonyeah) April 27, 2021

god. this really puts my “places i have cried” google maps project to shame.

— noelle faulkner ⚡️ (@noelleflamingo) April 27, 2021

I've gone the other way since the pandemic hit sweden. I decided to use as few parking lots as possible. For three month i managed to use the same due to shopping at unpopular hours. 13 month later I have used 3 different. One of them only twice. No one but you knows about this.

— Per Graner (@theGranerator) April 27, 2021

When I was 17 I went to Berlin for 2 weeks on my own so I could do whatever I wanted; turned out what I wanted to do was to keep a meticulous record of every street and park I walked on by filling them in in my map

— ve 🦐 (@vvveracruz) April 27, 2021

Thanks, superb. I've become increasingly disenchanted with the UK but then someone like you pops up and I feel that there is hope after all

— still down the Winchester (@jason_steinmann) April 27, 2021

This is wonderful – and there is at least a book here, if not a film. The planning, the struggle, the deeply misunderstood hero, the security guards watching it all on CCTV, the sense of mission, and the joy of ultimate achievement.

— Graham Brack (@GrahamBrack) April 27, 2021

As someone new to the area this is a remarkable public service. What will you do next?!

— Kara Šegedin (@KSegedin) April 27, 2021

When Lidl opened up me and the family got dressed up in our finest clothes, waistcoat, pocket watch the full works to attend it as if we were the ones opening the store. They didn’t look impressed. I enjoy the mundane.

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

Last word to Gareth.

If you like car parks you'll love donating to food banks, @BromleyFoodbank do amazing work across the borough and have drop off bins in Sainsbury, so why not visit the historic car park and do some good whilst you're there!

— Gareth Wild (@GarethWild) April 27, 2021

Source Twitter @GarethWild