I did notice in Stratford that most on street parking now seems to require payment by app. That would do more to dissuade me from parking somewhere than it being somewhat over priced but payable by card.
Our town is more-or-less dead on its feet for decent shops, and getting worse - even some of the charity shops have closed. I only bother when I want to go to the library, and then I'll do a quick walk around to pick up anything else I want, if I can find it. I can't support what isn't there, much as I'd like to. There are plenty of fast food places, vape shops and mobile phone repair shops, but there hasn't been a proper department store since Debenhams went, ladies' clothes shops are mostly small ones aimed at teenagers/twenties, plus a small M&S and a Primark. There's nowhere to buy fabric (except Boyes which has a small but variable and fairly random selection so worth looking if I'm in there for other things, but no good if I want something specific) and only Boyes or a market stall for haberdashery so the chances of finding, for example, a zip in the colour, type and length I want (or longer to cut down) is small. The market itself is a shadow of its former self, rumour has it that the rents are too high so stallholders have gone elsewhere.
Oh well, that's enough curmudgeoning for now!
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
Same here, Jenny. Â We have charity shops, though many of those have closed, coffee bars, mobile phone shops, but our haberdashery shop closed, along with a dept store, post office, HMV, Next, EWM, Clinton's, etc. Â The number of boarded up places grows almost daily. Â It is sad to see. Â
I got an app to park in a local town. After all the faff, I found it was only for one car park and they would charge me an extra 20p 'for the convenience' Bggggr that, says I and I now park in the M&S car park which is just far enough away from the town centre that I can't be bothered to walk in. There are several towns we no longer visit. If there was one app that covered all car parks, I'd use it but I'm not filling up my phone with multiple apps. If garden centres etc can manage to accept payment to multiple franchises , I don't see why the parking companies can't.
We are taking advantage of the winter parking charges in the Sidmouth council run car parks. ÂŁ2 ( two hours at winter charges )will buy you parking until midnight. All the car parks are busy from 10am, so there are lots of locals taking advantage of that. The rate doubles from April, and you canât then exceed the hours you pay for. Iâve run out of coins for the machine, but have finally worked out how to pay by credit card. Itâs clunky and slow, and not at all intuitive, but after a few attempts, I think Iâve got the hang of the system. Just means standing around while the machine works out what you are trying to do, and whether it is going to cooperate. No way am I using a phone app to pay, moot point anyway as I donât have a smart phone!
We can pay for parking by card or cash, but the machines won't take 5p coins or coppers any more. I used to get rid of the small coins that way but I suppose it means emptying the machines too often if everybody does it! These days I don't accumulate them as much (there's not much I pay cash for) but when I do I feed them into the supermarket self-service machine when I'm only buying a few bits.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
Our meters just take debit cards. easy-peasy. If I had to pay by phone I'd have to elsewhere.  I forget to charge mine most of the time.
Our local ones take card, and I'm fine with that. I just did a search on Dr Google, and according to it there are over 30 parking apps in the UK. Utterly ridiculous.
I don't know if it's still the same, but one of our car parks was a nice little earner for our council. There were rates for parking before 6pm and rates for parking after 6pm. The problem was that if you arrived at 5:50 for example, you had to buy one ticket that only covered you for 10 minutes, then another for after 6pm. You couldn't buy a single ticket to cover from 5:50 right through the evening. Many people assumed the ticket purchased at 5:50 was all they needed to get - wrong!
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Bggggr that, says I and I now park in the M&S car park which is just far enough away from the town centre that I can't be bothered to walk in.
There are several towns we no longer visit.
If there was one app that covered all car parks, I'd use it but I'm not filling up my phone with multiple apps. If garden centres etc can manage to accept payment to multiple franchises , I don't see why the parking companies can't.
Iâve run out of coins for the machine, but have finally worked out how to pay by credit card. Itâs clunky and slow, and not at all intuitive, but after a few attempts, I think Iâve got the hang of the system. Just means standing around while the machine works out what you are trying to do, and whether it is going to cooperate. No way am I using a phone app to pay, moot point anyway as I donât have a smart phone!